Velocette built motorcycles in Birmingham under the Goodman family from 1905 until the firm went into liquidation in 1971. Across those years it built a long line of single-cylinder bikes, and its most powerful one, the Velocette Thruxton, arrived in 1965.
The six models below trace that line from the first overhead-cam K to the Thruxton. Each one carries the dates and figures that period histories and valuation records give for it.
1. 1925 Velocette K model
Velocette developed its overhead-camshaft four-stroke in 1924, and the K that came out of it became the blueprint for the singles that followed. Its 348cc engine drove the camshaft through a shaft and bevel gears and used a narrow crankcase. That layout stayed a Velocette feature for decades.
Sales took off almost from its early beginning in 1925, according to Old Bike Mart. A 1926 Junior TT win then pushed demand so high that the firm moved to bigger premises at Hall Green, Birmingham. As a result, the K-series sold about 1,000 a year until the 1931 Depression roughly halved that figure.
2. 1927 Velocette KSS
The KSS followed in 1927 as the sporting K. Grace’s Guide lists its recipe: narrow mudguards, a larger fuel tank and a tuned engine. In other words, it was a K built for riders who wanted more pace on the road.
The name also outlived the original bike. Around the 1935 Olympia show, Velocette launched a redesigned 348cc MKII KSS, closer in design to its KTT racers, and the earlier bikes became MKI after the fact. Works rider Ted Mellors did road testing that lifted an early top speed of about 68 mph. Production then ran largely unchanged until 1948, apart from the war years, and it ended because each engine took too long to assemble.
3. 1929 Velocette KTT
Velocette turned the overhead-cam single into a customer racer with the 1929 KTT. It was a 350cc SOHC machine with its camshaft driven by a vertical shaft. webBikeWorld credits it as the first motorcycle with a positive-stop, foot-shifted sequential gearbox, in this case a three-speed with right-foot shift.
The KTT line ran until 1949. Along the way, development produced a series of Mark numbers, Grace’s Guide notes. Stanley Woods then won the Junior TT in both 1938 and 1939, during that stretch of KTT development.
4. 1933 Velocette MAC
In 1933, Velocette took the range in a second direction. It added the MOV and the MAC, both with pushrod overhead valves instead of an overhead cam. Old Bike Mart notes that the MAC’s valve gear was fully enclosed, unlike the exposed gear on the cam models.
That made the MAC a tidy, cheaper choice. The overhead-cam bikes cost £10 more, yet their performance was near identical. Grace’s Guide pictures the 350cc MAC in photos from 1938 to 1955. It also records engine changes to the MAC between 1951 and 1953.
5. 1956 Velocette Venom
In 1956, Velocette announced a pair of high-performance pushrod singles: the 350cc Viper and the 500cc Venom. Grace’s Guide describes both as fast and powerful. During the 1960s, they also appeared in many variations under various names.
Hagerty’s valuation notes put Venom production at 5,721. The Venom mattered for what came next, too. In 1965, Velocette offered a high-compression head for it, and that tuned Venom became the Thruxton.
6. 1965 Velocette Thruxton
Velocette named the Thruxton after the Thruxton endurance road race, which a high-performance Venom had won. Grace’s Guide dates it to 1965 and calls it the company’s most powerful machine. Meanwhile, Velocette claimed 41 bhp and 110 mph for the Velocette Thruxton’s 499cc single, according to Hagerty.
A Thruxton won the first 500cc Production TT on the Isle of Man in 1967. Even so, Velocette built only 1,108 before the company’s demise. It went into liquidation in 1971, and Grace’s Guide notes that the Goodman family settled all outstanding debts.
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