From his teenage years back in England to his present days of retirement spent tinkering in his workshop, inventions have always revved Mick King’s engine.
He’s rebuilt everything from cuckoo clocks to steam engines and motorcycles – the latter being the real driving force behind his dreams. He is the King of retrofitting.
Every motorcycle that King has owned (somewhere near the 50-mark) has been broken down, revamped, had its engine swapped or modified in some way.
“I never drive a bike unless I’ve taken it apart,” said the senior biker in his Spallumcheen home.
King could possibly even be credited with putting 450-plus superbikes in B.C., as one of the original motorcycle dealers on the west coast.
After moving to Canada from England in 1968, one of the first things King observed was very few of the two-wheeled machines on the road.
“Seeing the lack of motorcycles around I thought, well something’s gotta be done,” said King, who started off selling Norton motorcycles (a popular English brand).
King founded Superformance Motorcycles in Vancouver – one of the first performance/custom bike shops in Western Canada.
His dealership, which sold Norton, Kawasaki and Yamaha, had King not only working on bikes, but he also started a racing team.
“We dominated the Westwood circuit for the better half of three years in B.C.,” grinned King.
The motorcycle fanatic didn’t stop there.
While most custom projects involve tweaking with the original parts, King tends to take it a step further by performing transplants between products.
At the time, there were no four-cylinder bikes available commercially, but King was determined to get one on the road. Putting his invention skills to the test, he placed a car engine in a motorbike – combining a Norton Featherbed frame and a NSU four-cylinder overhead cam engine to produce the hybrid Norton/NSU 1000.
It was a long eight-month process (totalling 700 to 800 hours) involving a lot of tweaking to the engine to not only get it to fit, but to get it to perform. Therefore in the meantime some fours did emerge into the market. But once the Norton/NSU rolled out, it was still a stunner.
“It caught everybody by surprise,” said King, whose car-engine powered bike garnered him a lot of business and now sits in the Trev Deeley motorcycle museum in Vancouver. “Norton fans in particular were delighted that there was now a four-cylinder Norton out there.”
King’s knack for pulling apart bikes also drew him to the idea of putting the best of both worlds together (but this time steering away from car engines). Again using a highly-regarded Norton Featherbed frame, King incorporated a Kawasaki Z1 900cc engine.
“The Kawasaki engine was the best at the time and practically remains so today.”
After approximately 350 hours and $2,500 (in 1970s dollars) King rolled the NorKaw out of his shop.
Since all the crotch-rockets you see on the roads today didn’t exist back then, this was the superbike of the day, according to King.
The two bikes went on to take top prizes on the show bike circuit for engineering and concept and even prompted 1973 Penthouse Pet of the Year, Patricia Barrett, to pose with the Norton NSU (1971 Pet of the Year, Stephanie McLean, was racer Barry Sheene’s wife).
King’s creations have also been highlighted in online motorcycle publications and have caught the attention of bike enthusiasts worldwide.
“It’s exploded on the Internet. There’s blogs all the way around Canada, and the world, that have cropped up just recently,” said King, pleased to see the history being preserved. “People are interested in these older bikes from a nostalgia point of view and a little tired of some of the newer ones, being very expensive and overly fast.”
King, who has been riding since he was 14, still rides and currently owns a rare race-bred classic Yamaha YZF 750 Genesis motorcycle, which is currently being overhauled for the season.
“I love it, it keeps me in my youth,” said King, who drives with a lot more caution these days than when he was young, but given the chance he still gives it a good airing.
And he’s still busy customizing and catching up with his list of retirement projects.
“I love a challenge and am always looking for my next adventure,” said King, who just three-years ago mated a Honda and Yamaha to produce a gorgeous and super-speedy hybrid.
“That’s the one I got rid of before it got rid of me,” said King of the bike that would comfortably accomplish 345 kms/hr on the track.
A love for motorcycles also runs in the family.
“We are/were regarded as a motorcycling family, as we all five participated at one time and another,” said King of his two sons, daughter and ex-wife.
King sees his youngest son, Howard, as having the potential to be a top motocross rider if he put his mind to it.
Meanwhile his eldest son, Nick, followed his father’s footsteps and now runs the service department at Vernon Motorsports. Nick was also named one of the top Yamaha mechanics in Canada.
