In a village garage beside the main road through Spaldwick, a small independent team set out to create an entirely new British racing motorcycle. The result was the British Magnum: a hand-built sidecar racing machine that competed at the Isle of Man TT and other leading international events. Its story encompasses world-championship racing, original engine design, local manufacture and thousands of hours of largely self-financed work. This forms part of the fascinating story of Spaldwick Service Station.
Tony Wakefield and Graham Milton used Spaldwick Service Station not simply as a racing headquarters, but as a development workshop. Here they designed engines, a frame and a gearbox, assembled complete machines and pursued an idea ambitious enough to challenge factory-supported competitors.
On this page: Origins · Why build one · Building it · 1975 TT debut · Later development · Why it matters · Tony Wakefield · Sources
From grass track to the world championship
Tony Wakefield and Graham Milton began racing motorcycle-and-sidecar combinations in the late 1950s, initially on grass tracks. By the 1960s they had moved into road racing and were competing internationally on privately entered BMW machinery. Race programmes from the period identify Spaldwick Service Station with their entries, firmly linking the team to the garage. [1] [2]
Their finest early period culminated in 1967. Wakefield and Milton finished third in the French Grand Prix and fourth in the Sidecar World Championship. In Motor Cycle News, leading racer Pip Harris called Wakefield one of the brightest prospects he had seen in sidecar road racing. Harris’s judgement carried particular weight: he was himself an accomplished international competitor and was acting as entrant for the Spaldwick pairing. [3]
The results were achieved with an ageing long-stroke BMW engine. Harris estimated that it was at least five miles per hour slower than the works machinery, forcing Wakefield to drive at the limit and exploit the slipstream of faster outfits. The article portrays fourth place not as the product of equal equipment, but as an achievement won despite a substantial technical disadvantage. [3]
A racing team—and an experimental workshop
The 1967 report is important because it shows that development work at Spaldwick began well before the British Magnum appeared. Harris referred to careful thought, repeated experiments and many all-night sessions in the workshop. He also noted that the team sometimes sacrificed immediate racing results in order to test modifications. [3]
This was the practical foundation for everything that followed. Wakefield and Milton were not simply riders who delivered a motorcycle to somebody else for preparation. They combined racing experience with hands-on engineering, learning what failed under competition conditions and returning to the workshop to improve it.
The pair continued to race BMW combinations into the early 1970s. A June 1969 Cycle World report places them among the British competitors at an international Snetterton meeting, while a surviving Brands Hatch programme from May 1972 provides further contemporary evidence of the Spaldwick Service Station connection. [1] [2]
Why build a completely new machine?
After several seasons, Wakefield and Milton concluded that an independent team using privately maintained BMW equipment would never consistently match the German factory machines. British manufacturers, meanwhile, showed little interest in producing a competitive 500cc sidecar engine. Pip Harris estimated in 1967 that a credible development programme would require £10,000 or factory backing—resources the team did not possess. [3]
Around 1973, they stepped away from world-championship racing to concentrate on their own design. They sold their existing racing machines and used the proceeds to begin a completely new 500cc engine. A later newspaper feature describes this as a four-cylinder, horizontally opposed, two-stroke unit. It was given the name British Magnum. [4] [5]
The choice was exceptionally ambitious. Designing an engine from first principles was difficult enough; making it survive the sustained loads of sidecar racing, while working with the limited resources of a village garage, was a different order of challenge.
The British Magnum takes shape
The engine demanded an equally purpose-built chassis. Wakefield and Milton designed a frame to carry it. When they discovered that no suitable gearbox could be matched to their design, the team created one of those as well. Contemporary reporting estimated that three complete machines absorbed about 10,000 working hours and were capable of speeds approaching 150mph. [4]
The project drew on a small circle of specialists. Brian Dors, Tony and Graham’s brother-in-law and an aviation stress technologist from Cheltenham, designed the gearbox. Jim Foster, a bricklayer from Ellington, carried out the glass-fibre work on the racing fairings. Engineer and experienced international rider Robin Williamson became part of the competition effort. Parts that could not be produced in the garage were commissioned from other local manufacturers. [4]
This makes the British Magnum a particularly rich piece of local history. It was designed and assembled at Spaldwick, but it also depended on a network of skilled people and small manufacturers. The project was both intensely local and international in its ambition.
The 1975 Isle of Man TT
The team chose the Isle of Man TT for the British Magnum’s Grand Prix debut in 1975. Few venues could have provided a more severe first test. The Mountain Course was almost 38 miles long and exposed engines, transmissions, frames, riders and passengers to sustained high speeds and punishing mechanical loads. [6]
Three British Magnum combinations started the 1,000cc Sidecar TT. Graham Milton brought one home in fourth place, averaging a little over 90mph across more than 100 miles of racing. Robin Williamson finished seventh. Tony Wakefield’s machine was forced to retire after breaking down. The official TT database confirms the fourth and seventh places and records the British Magnum as the machine. [6] [7]
For three newly built machines on their first TT appearance, two finishes in the first seven represented an extraordinary result. It showed that the Magnum was not simply an ingenious workshop prototype: it could survive—and compete—in one of the world’s hardest motorcycle races.
A contemporary local report celebrated the result under the headline “It’s champagne all the way for Spaldwick team”. It described the interest created by the all-British machine and recorded the team’s intention to continue at continental meetings in Belgium. [7]
Development beyond 500cc
The original 500cc engine was not the end of the project. A later workshop feature describes its development into a 750cc unit that was only about six millimetres wider but capable, according to the report, of propelling a racing combination at approximately 160mph. An 815cc version was subsequently built. [5]
Surviving race records support the later part of that account. A 1979 Easter programme lists both Graham Milton and Tony Wakefield of Spaldwick on 815cc British Magnum machines. The official Isle of Man database also records Magnum entries from 1975 to 1979. [8] [9]
At the 1979 TT, Graham Milton and John Brushwood finished fifth in the second sidecar leg, averaging 98.67mph, while Tony Wakefield and Eddie Kiff finished twenty-first. These results demonstrate the project’s longevity: four years after its debut, the independently built Spaldwick machine remained active at the highest-profile road-racing event in Britain. [9]
An engine with wider ambitions
The later newspaper account reveals that Wakefield and Milton hoped to move beyond building a handful of racing machines. They wanted the engine to be manufactured on a larger scale and saw it as a possible response to the decline of the British motorcycle industry during an era increasingly dominated by Japanese manufacturers. [5]
The design was also considered for applications beyond motorcycle racing. The surviving article refers to its possible use in speedboat racing, suggesting that the team viewed the Magnum as a versatile high-performance power unit rather than an engine tied permanently to one sidecar chassis. [5]
Finance remained the central obstacle. Racing was necessary to test and publicise the engine, yet racing consumed the money and time needed for development. The team’s work was largely self-financed; contemporary reports emphasise the members’ willingness to absorb the cost themselves in pursuit of mechanical improvement.
Why the British Magnum matters
The British Magnum story changes the way the former Service Station should be understood. It was not simply a garage that allowed a local team to use its name or premises. It became a base for sustained experimental engineering, small-scale manufacture and international competition.
Wakefield, Milton and their colleagues developed a complete racing system: engine, frame, gearbox and bodywork. They turned workshop ideas into three functioning machines, finished fourth and seventh on their Isle of Man debut, enlarged the engine through successive versions and explored whether the design might have a commercial future.
That achievement is especially striking because of its setting. The work was carried out not in the research department of a large manufacturer, but in an ordinary-looking garage at the edge of a small Huntingdonshire village. For a remarkable period in the 1960s and 1970s, Spaldwick Service Station stood on the international map of motorcycle racing and British engineering.
In memory of Tony Wakefield
This article is dedicated to the memory of Tony Wakefield, who died on 31 October 2024. Many years after the British Magnum was created, Tony continued to bring the machine to Spaldwick Fetes, where villagers could see and hear an extraordinary piece of the village’s engineering history. This photograph was taken at the 2014 Spaldwick Fete.
Explore Spaldwick’s wider history
Spaldwick Service Station through the ages
Do you remember the British Magnum team?
Contact the website with photographs, programmes or first-hand recollections.
References and further reading
1. Cycle World, June 1969 — “Continental Report”. Contemporary account of Wakefield and Milton racing BMW machinery at Snetterton. https://magazine.cycleworld.com/article/1969/6/1/continental-report
2. Brands Hatch race programme, 29 May 1972. Contemporary programme evidence connecting sidecar racing entries with Spaldwick Service Station. https://daveriley.weebly.com/uploads/4/8/4/5/4845046/brandshatch29may1972.pdf
3. Motor Cycle News, 26 July 1967 — “Wakefield—bright hope”, by Pip Harris. Supplied scan. Evidence for Wakefield and Milton’s fourth place in the championship, the limitations of their BMW, workshop development and the lack of factory support.
4. Pre-TT British Magnum development feature, circa 1975. Supplied newspaper cutting beginning “Three motorcycle sidecar combinations designed and built in the tiny village of Spaldwick”. Principal source for the 500cc engine, frame, gearbox, three machines, 10,000 hours and project personnel.
5. “World challengers in local garage”, later 1970s. Supplied newspaper cutting. Principal source for the workshop manufacture, hand-built crankshaft, 500cc/750cc/815cc development, claimed 160mph capability, financing difficulties and proposed speedboat application.
6. Official Isle of Man TT database — 1975 1,000cc Sidecar TT. Official results confirming Graham Milton fourth and Robin Williamson seventh on British Magnum machines. https://www.iomtt.com/tt-database/events/races?meet_code=TT75&race_seq=2
7. “It’s champagne all the way for Spaldwick team”, 1975. Supplied post-TT newspaper cutting. Contemporary report on Milton’s fourth place, Williamson’s seventh, Wakefield’s retirement and the team’s intended Belgian appearances.
8. Easter international race programme, 13–16 April 1979. Lists Graham Milton and Tony Wakefield of Spaldwick on 815cc British Magnum combinations. https://daveriley.weebly.com/uploads/4/8/4/5/4845046/bh_mallory_oulton13_16april1979.pdf
9. Official Isle of Man TT database — British Magnum results. Machine-indexed results for British Magnum entries from 1975–1979, including the 1979 finishes. https://www.iomtt.com/tt-database/events/races?mach_id=661
10. Supplied team photograph and full pre-TT feature. The wider scan identifies Tony Wakefield, Jim Foster, Brian Dors and Graham Milton and shows three complete sidecar combinations.
11. Spaldwick Service Station page. Information about the Spaldwick Service Station through the ages. https://www.spaldwick.com/spaldwick-service-station
12. Isle of Man TT database — event archive. Official context and race-result archive. https://www.iomtt.com/tt-database