Tim Hanna: John Britten

Reviewed by RODNEY WILSON

In a country where the merest murmur of sporting success is met with acclaim, and half the evening television news is devoted to sporting trivia, it has always struck me as odd that the considerable international achievements of our motorcyclists escape largely unnoticed.

But this could not be said of John Britten, the tenacious and visionary developer of a motorcycle bearing his name.

From the outset, Britten's machine captured world attention, and, briefly when the bugs had been knocked out of it, and before his untimely death, it was a sensational success, the most powerful, fastest and most innovative road racing machine in the world. New Zealand loved that story, and Christchurch sent Britten off with a virtual state funeral.

John Britten benefited from a prosperous Christchurch upbringing. He was a charismatic, tearaway youth who developed a taste for fast vehicles, took up motorcycle racing on an elderly British Triumph, and developed his own eccentric style of riding to keep it under control. He achieved a small degree of success in racing, but then resolved to take on the world by developing his own machine, and, ultimately, his own engine.

The Britten would use technology previously unused in motorcycle manufacture and would bring new thinking to solving some of the complex issues inherent in designing fearfully fast machines that defy physics, clinging to the tarseal at acute angles of heel.

Britten was also a property developer, initially turning the same independent thinking to the conversion of a stables building into his own house behind Christchurch's Mona Vale, subsequently developing an Oamaru Stone/ urethane building system, and finally planning the spectacular Cathedral Junction shopping, pedestrian and tramway precinct to the east of Christchurch Cathedral, which remained unfinished on his death.

Tim Hanna's biography is an enormously detailed account of Britten's remarkable life. The detail, which sets the scene for Britten's achievements and his independent and tenacious character, makes for a slowish start to the book, but it quickly becomes absorbing.

It abounds with information and achieves the seemingly impossible task of gripping the general reader while fulfilling the expectations of those with a more specialised interest.

Hanna's admiration, or rather affection, for Britten comes through strongly and yet he is willing to show that John Britten could occasionally be a prat.

He reveals Britten's extraordinary perseverance in the face of persistent problems, and he dispels the backyard shed myth which New Zealanders found so compelling when the Britten triumph finally hit the news.

Most importantly he recognises the extraordinary efforts of the team of specialists who refined the dream and achieved it for Britten. He quotes team members and others extensively (at times, rather eulogistically) to reveal the commitment they had to the charismatic Britten and his dream.


John Britten was the visionary. He assembled the team and provided the emotional glue that kept it together. But the specialised knowledge that refined the ideas and made them attainable came from that bunch of fellow dreamers.

And as the team pursued the dream there were tensions, there were comings and goings and John Britten was not always as attentive to those who supported him as he might have been.

Hanna doesn't shy from this dimension of his subject, or, for that matter, some of the other negativity that arose at the end, and after John's death.

But he does so in a way that reinforces his subject. It is, to quote Ian Taylor of TaylorMade Productions' assessment of the potential for a TV3 documentary, an account of an epic struggle against the odds by one brilliant and charismatic individual.

And therein lies the book's wider appeal. Just as Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is not really about motorcycling at all, this book is much more than a simple account of a successful and courageous spannerman intoxicated by petrol, oil and speed.

It is a book that will inspire other entrepreneurial spirits to persist and follow their dreams.

* Craig Potton, $49.95