~ Auto Buzz ~: FOUND! The “Last” Cache of Unrestored Brough Superiors Rusting relics expected to fetch big bucks at auction. Is this your final chance?

Hoarders. They’re great fodder for TV reality shows, as piles of junk make picturesque backdrops for uncomfortable truths about human nature. We can all be greedy and covetous and secretive, but thankfully a few standouts make the collectors among us feel downright normal. Plus, we love a good rumor, especially the one circulating in old bike circles for years, about the old guy with a shotgun hiding a bunch of Brough Superiors (“the Rolls Royce of Motorcycles”) in a series of leaky sheds, somewhere in southern England. I’d heard that story enough times to believe it, but wasn’t prepared for a photo recently sent by Ben Walker, global chief of motorcycles at Bonhams Auctions, of eight Brough Superior motorcycles and one Brough Superior automobile (they made 85), all absolutely riddled with rust. “This is one of the greatest motorcycle discoveries of recent times,” says Walker. “A lot of mystery surrounds these motorcycles, as very few people know that they still existed, many believing them to be an urban myth. There was a theory they were in the West Country, but few knew where. Stored in barns for more than 50 years, the motorcycles were discovered whole, in parts, and some were partially submerged under decades of dust, old machinery parts, and household clutter.”

The collection belonged to the late Frank Vague of Cornwall, and while most of the machines were nominally stored indoors, their protection proved wholly inadequate, and leaky roofs did their worst. While the eight motorcycles are surprisingly complete, their tanks and fenders are rusty lace, and frame tubes and even aluminum castings will need to be examined closely for future use. The Brough Superior car fared worse, being stored outside for 50 years, and its chassis is nearly gone. But all that’s unlikely deter the bidders at Bonhams’ April 24 Stafford Spring auction, where the bikes will no doubt attract an absolute frenzy of bidding. Any genuine Brough Superior, even dismantled or incomplete, is currently worth over $100k. As proof, last October at Bonhams’ Stafford auction, two Brough Superior SS100 basket cases were among the most expensive motorcycles ever sold at auction, at $365,000 and $400,000. That’s big fat money for a box of parts, and shows that open-wallet collectors aren’t daunted by a trip to the restorer’s shop. Specialists like Dave Clark in England have tackled less complete machines, with gleaming beauties emerging to do battle on Concours lawns worldwide. A similar hoarder’s auction, of a French car collection, brought eye-watering prices for rusty Ferraris and Bugattis; rust is catnip to collectors because if it’s rusty, it’s probably real.

While Vague’s pair of SS100s are rare, rarer still is the one-of-eight Brough Superior four-cylinder “BS4,” featuring a pair of driven wheels at the back end – the notorious “3 wheel Brough.” George Brough, while making his reputation with powerful V-twin motors, always felt the four-cylinder motorcycle was the future, and Honda proved him right 40 years later. The Brough factory produced several four-cylinder machines, the first a longitudinal V-4 with sidevalve motor, then an inline sidevalve four from Motosacoche, and a mysterious few OHV flat-fours in the late ’30s, called the Dream, intended for serial production but never sorted before War broke out. The only Brough Superior four produced in series used an inline water-cooled 800cc powerplant from the Austin 7 car. With the driveshaft emerging from the center of the Austin gearbox, Brough had a slight problem, which he solved by running a pair of close-coupled wheels on either side of the driveshaft and final drive box, with no differential. The resulting BS4 was intended for sidecars, but the spectacular three-wheel Brough could be ridden solo, George Brough claimed. That was put to the test with the prototype from the 1931 Olympia show, which was loaned to journalist Hubert Chantry to compete in the London-Exeter Trial that December! He rode the bike 500 miles to the trial, made quite a spectacle of himself on the rough stuff, then promptly ordered a BS4 for himself, so impressed was he with its performance. That forlorn, rotten BS4 you see here is Chantry’s personal machine, the last of the eight BS4’s produced to emerge from hiding. He was known to ride it – in reverse – around Piccadilly Circus in London! “This is the last known collection of unrestored Brough Superiors,” claims Walker. “There will not be another opportunity like this. Only eight four-cylinder machines were built, and the example in this collection is the final one to be re-discovered.”