''Bike'' is a British

motorcycling Motorcycling is the act of riding a motorcycle. For some people, motorcycling may be the only affordable form of individual motorized transportation, and small-engine displacement, displacement motorcycles are the most common motor vehicle in ...

magazine that was established and edited by journalist Mark Williams in 1971, originally as a one-off ''

Car A car, or an automobile, is a motor vehicle with wheels. Most definitions of cars state that they run primarily on roads, seat one to eight people, have four wheels, and mainly transport people rather than cargo. There are around one billio ...

'' magazine special. Taking a leaf out of ''Car'' magazine's book, ''Bike'' published "Giant Tests", namely, head-to-head comparison tests, which were innovative at the time. Before then, motorcycle journals and magazines would test bikes only individually and in isolation from other bikes. The first "Giant Test", in summer 1971, was a comparison between a

BSA Rocket 3 The Triumph Trident and BSA Rocket 3 was a technically advanced, high-performance roadster (or standard) motorcycle made by Triumph Engineering and BSA (both companies part of the Birmingham Small Arms Company) from 1968 to 1975, and sold und ...

and a

Norton Commando The Norton Commando is a British Norton-Villiers motorcycle with an overhead valve engine, OHV Pre-unit construction, pre-unit Straight-twin engine, parallel-twin engine, produced by the Norton Motorcycle company from 1967 until 1977. Initiall ...

. Mark Williams wrote a regular column entitled "Running out of Road". Other contributors included:

LJK Setright Leonard John Kensell Setright (10 August 1931 – 7 September 2005) was an English motoring journalist and author. Early life and education Setright was born in London to Australian parents; his father, Henry Roy Setright, was an engineer wh ...

, who wrote the "Cog-swapping" column;

Jim Greening Jim or JIM may refer to: Names * Jim (given name), a given name * Jim, a diminutive form of the given name James * Jim, a short form of the given name Jimmy People and horses * Jim, the nickname of Yelkanum Seclamatan (died April 1911), Nat ...

who wrote the "Short Circuits" column; and the pseudonymous "Hap Spoons" who wrote "Odds & Sods".Magazine Exchange
/ref> For more than 30 years the magazine featured Paul Sample's full-page comic-strip ''

Ogri Ogri is a cartoon character of a British rocker-style biker created by English cartoonist and illustrator Paul Sample in 1972 for UK magazine ''Bike'' until January 2009, when it was dropped but quickly taken up by Back Street Heroes, the cust ...

'', but that transferred to ''

Back Street Heroes Back Street Heroes (est. 1983) is a monthly UK custom bike magazine that helped to popularize a "new breed" of custom motorcycle, distinct from previous choppers because they combined rat bike-influenced utilitarian and minimalist design with ...

'' magazine in the spring of 2010. ''Bike'' is published by Bauer Consumer Media Ltd and edited by Hugo Wilson. The magazine claims the title of "Britain's best-selling motorcycle magazine", based on circulation figures provided by the

Audit Bureau of Circulations An Audit Bureau of Circulations is a private organization that provides industry-agreed standards for media brand measurement of print publications and other media outlets in a given country. The International Federation of Audit Bureaux of Circulat ...

(ABC). ''Bike'' publishes a wide-ranging mix of news, tests, opinion and editorial.

References

External links

Official website
1971 establishments in the United Kingdom Bauer Group (UK) Magazines established in 1971 Monthly magazines published in the United Kingdom Motorcycle magazines published in the United Kingdom Mass media in Peterborough {{UK-mag-stub