Photos: © Illawarra Mercury/ACM; Mike Rapley, Carnforth, England – Main Photo

Back in 2017, Trials Guru ran an article under the AJS/Matchless Trials machines in which we described the AJS of Mick Andrews from 1961 which had been registered by the factory as a Matchless, which was quite normal for AMC to do at the time.

The machine emigrated from England to Australia around 1971 and found its way to its present owner Rob Farnham in Queensland, who has owned 644BLB since 2008. The last UK registration tax disc was dated 1970. Rob bought the historic machine from Noel Shipp and has now decided that he has enjoyed owning this piece of world trials history and perhaps the time is right to move it on to someone else who can treasure it and give it a run out now and then.

The difficulty is with these machines is how much are they worth? Recently, an ex-Hugh Viney Matchless (OLD865) sold at auction for around £4,000 which in the wider scheme of things was pretty low. But given that many countries are in recession, maybe that’s a sign of the current climate.

Rob would let the machine go for 20,000 Australian Dollars. It is an ex-factory machine with history, it set Mick Andrews on the road to bigger and better things, with five Scottish Six Days Trial wins and two European Championships to name but two of his many successes in a very successful career.

But Rob is a realistic person and may negotiate the price if he is convinced that it is going to a ‘good home’ and will be well looked after.

Trials Guru is always interested to hear of such stories, and we are sure that readers of this website are too.

Here is a direct link to the original article on 644BLB.