Superbly Restored and Extremely Rare 1968 Velocette Thruxton 500cc

The Velocette Thruxton was built for production and endurance racing starting in 1965, a job for which it was admirably suited. With a top speed of 120 MPH and handling identical to its Isle of Man TT winning and World Championship racers, the Thruxton became a legend in its day, despite that its design was old-fashioned by the end of the 1960s. Velocettes had an excellent reputation as hand-built sports machines of great quality, performance and reliability, which they'd proved on the racetracks through the 1950s, and through setting a record in 1961 that still stands today with a tuned Venom roadster at the Montlhéry autodrome at just more than 100 MPH for 24 hours. No other British manufacturer—not even Vincent, who tried—could equal this astounding feat of speed and reliability. Americans racing Velocettes on Southern California flat tracks had found altering the cylinder head for a steeper inlet tract and larger valves could bring reliably faster performance, and by 1963, West Coast importer Lou Branch sent one of these special cylinder heads to the factory for study, in the hopes Velocette would produce a factory racing kit. The factory duly obliged in 1964 with a new cylinder head based on the SoCal design, sold as a racing kit option initially. In 1965, Velocette combined its full racing kit onto a street-legal model, dubbed the Thruxton after the British race track on which Velocettes had won 12- and 24-hour races. The Thruxton model became Velocette's biggest seller, although this small family business never built machines in great numbers and only 1,000 examples of its No. 1 machine were produced through 1971. This 1968 Velocette Thruxton has had a full, frame-off restoration, and it's believed to have covered only 13,380 miles since new. It includes the Amal GP carburetor, a restored magneto and generator, rebuilt speedo and tach, new bearings and seals in the motor, new chrome fenders, stainless-steel spokes, a new exhaust system and new fork tubes. It's a completely fresh machine, ready for a new owner to discover the joys of a Velocette.