• Phone:
    01257 485222
  • Email:
    sales@motogb.co.uk
  • Opening Hours:
    Mon-Fri: 8.30 - 17.30

Why Hanway?

HANWAY Have a passion for making quality affordable bikes that both excites & satisfies in equal measure the riders need to live the ride.

HANWAY CHARACTER DEFINED

Watching social trends, anticipating where demand will be then taking quality components and melding them with intuitive design to produce some of the most desirable small capacity machines on the market today, this is what sets HANWAY apart.

From the moment you set eyes on the bike you feel empathy with the care and effort that went into the development of this utterly practical machine, this is where the bond between rider and machine starts.

THE INGREDIENTS

Begin with a tried and tested punchy 4 stroke single cylinder engine.

Place this inside a sturdey chassis that has been designed to provide class leading strength alongside performance led geometrics, it gives the bike the feel of a larger bike but retains all the advantages of a lightweight, quality inverted forks gives a stability competitors envy.

Benefitting from high visibility LED Lighting, a throaty Stainless Steel Exhaust system, lightweight Alloy Rims, Digital Speedometer, all these feature as standard fitment on Hanway just emphasises the focus on Quality right out of the box.

As standard every HANWAY comes with a comprehensive 2 year parts & labour warranty giving peace of mind alongside that warm feeling of ownership not just of 2 wheels but of Self.

This and more is why HANWAY have found a place and an audience for our motorcycles, this is just the beginning...

CAFE RACE A BRIEF HISTORY

In 2014, journalist Ben Stewart described the café racer as a "look made popular when European kids stripped down their small-displacement bikes to zip from one café hangout to another."

In 1973, American freelance writer Wallace Wyss, contributing to Popular Mechanics magazine, wrote that the term café racer was originally used derogatorily in Europe to describe a "motorcyclist who played at being an Isle of Man road racer" and was, in fact, "someone who owned a racy machine but merely parked it near his table at the local outdoor café.

The term developed among British motorcycle enthusiasts of the early 1960s from Watford, and London, specifically the Rocker or "Ton-Up Boys" subculture, where the bikes were used for short, quick rides between cafés, in Watford at the Busy Bee café and the Ace Café in London.

In post-war Britain, car ownership was still uncommon, and for many, the motorcycle, often with a sidecar, was the family vehicle. By contrast, the café racer's significance was that a bike had come to represent speed, status and rebellion, rather than mere inability to afford a car.

In addition to a light weight chassis, a tuned engine and minimalist bodywork, the café racer typically features distinctive ergonomics. Dropped bars that are low, narrow handlebars called clip-ons enabled the rider to "tuck in", reducing wind resistance and improving control. Along with the rearward located seat, the posture often required rearsets, or rear-set footrests and foot controls, again typical of racing motorcycles of the era. Distinctive half or full race-style fairings were sometimes mounted to the forks or frame.

The bikes featured minimalist styling, engines tuned for maximum speed and light road handling. A well-known example was "The Triton", a homemade combination of the Norton Featherbed frame and a Triumph Bonneville engine. It used a common and fast racing engine combined with a well-handling frame, the Featherbed frame by Norton Motorcycles Another hybrid was the "Tribsa" which had a Triumph engine in a BSA frame. Other combinations such as the "Norvin" (a Vincent V-Twin engine in a Featherbed frame) and racing frames by Rickman or Seeley were also adopted for road use.

Rockers were a young and rebellious rock and roll subculture who wanted a fast, personalised and distinctive bike to travel between transport cafés along the newly built arterial motorways in and around British towns and cities. Biker lore has it that the goal of many was to be able to reach 100 miles per hour (160 km/h)—called simply "the ton"—along such a route where the rider would leave from a café, race to a predetermined point and back to the café before a single song could play on the jukebox, called record-racing. However, author Mike Seate contends that record-racing is a myth, the story having originated in an episode of the BBC Dixon of Dock Green television show. Café racers are remembered as being especially fond of rockabilly music and their image is now embedded in today's rockabilly culture

The Café Racer sub-culture has created a separate look and identity with modern café racers taking style elements from American Greasers, British Rockers, 70s bikers, and modern motorcycle riders to create a global style of their own.

This spirit not only lives on but in recent years has flourished with Manufacturers such as Royal Enfield digging back into their history to revive iconic models like the Continental GT.