Brough Superior

Brough Superior Logo
Brough Superior SS 100 1925
Lawrence of Arabia on a Brough Superior he called George V. Lawrence owned eight Broughs:
1922: Boa (short for Boanerges)
1923: George I
1924: George II
1925: George III
1926: George IV
1927: George V (RK 4907; see photo)
1929: George VI (UL 656)
1932: George VII (GW 2275) (the bike he died riding)
Undelivered: George VIII (still being built when Lawrence was killed).[1]
T. E. Lawrence's seventh Brough Superior, GW 2275, the one on which he had his fatal crash. It is at the Imperial War Museum.[2]

Brough Superior (/ˈbrʌf/ BRUF) motorcycles, sidecars, and motor cars were made by George Brough in his Brough Superior works on Haydn Road in Nottingham, England, from 1919 to 1940. The motorcycles were dubbed the "Rolls-Royce of Motorcycles" by H. D. Teague of The Motor Cycle newspaper. Approximately 3048 motorcycles (19 models) were made in the 21 years of production; around a third of that production still exists. T. E. Lawrence ("Lawrence of Arabia") owned eight of these motorcycles and died from injuries sustained when he crashed number seven; the eighth was on order. Moving forward to 2008, vintage motorcycle enthusiast Mark Upham acquired the rights to the Brough Superior name. In 2013 he met motorcycle designer Thierry Henriette and asked him to design a new Brough Superior motorcycle. Three months later a prototype of a new SS100 was shown in Milan.

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference TELawrence was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ Wasef, Basem; Leno, Jay (2007), Legendary Motorcycles: The Stories and Bikes Made Famous by Elvis, Peter Fonda, Kenny Roberts and Other Motorcycling Greats, MotorBooks International, pp. 95–99, ISBN 978-0-7603-3070-8, retrieved 27 July 2011