Precision parts and the global village

A Far North man is manufacturing and exporting highly specialised motorcycle parts to the rest of the world.

By Sandy Myhre

If an example of international trade being conducted from a rural setting is needed, it can be found in a large shed nestled in a verdant valley off Kapiro Road in Kerikeri. For it is from here that highly specialised precision-built motor cycle parts are manufactured and exported to various points on the globe. The man responsible is Glyn Robinson.

He is an engineer who raced Ducati motor bikes in Europe in the mid 80s. He'd teamed up with Steve Wynne who also raced Italian motor bikes and who by then was running one of the largest motor cycle shops in the UK. Steve, in fact, was the man responsible for encouraging the late Mike 'The Bike' Hailwood back to the Isle of Man TT after he had officially retired 11 years previously. He won the Senior TT on a Steve Wynne Ducati 900SS.

"Steve would come to me if he had an idea for some mechanical part of the bike and I would develop it," says Glyn simply and thoroughly understating the expertise required. He subsequently started his own race team and won the Supersport championship with a pair of 750 Ducatis and, as a result, the Japanese came knocking on his door.

"We had four factories wanting to throw product and bikes at us and we chose Honda. We had two riders, two full-time mechanics, two part-timers, a manager, a driver, a gopher, a physio, a chef, a huge truck to carry the equipment and a motor home."

It sounds like a racer's dream but there were a few sleepless nights. He had resisted making motor cycles the forefront of his living because he said he might not enjoy it when the racing became "ninety-nine per cent form-filling". It happened, and in 1999 he backed out to concentrate on the precision engineering business. But he kept his Ducati motor bikes and spares and equipment and had tooled up to make classic racing parts for Ducati bikes contesting post-classic events. It was a canny move. In both two wheel and four wheel motor sport the classic and historic registers host the largest number of entrants in the world - and they all require parts that are increasingly difficult to obtain.

Late last year Glyn Robinson came to New Zealand with his wife who runs her own business and to live down the road, as it happens, from Steve Wynne who moved to the Far North six years ago. He says where he lives is 'of little consequence' to his business which can be conducted from anywhere in the world even if freight costs from here to Europe will be more than if he was still based in the UK. But Australia isn't far away and that market beckons too.

"There's a lot of expertise here and a big aviation industry which has high-spec stuff and that's what my product relates to because of the materials and techniques I'm using," he says as the diphthongs and vowel sounds bounce around his muscular Yorkshire dialect.

He mentions he's got a bike in the garage downstairs and would you like a look? He lopes down the passageway and into the garage and there, sitting next to a Model A Ford he keeps for 'fun' is an immaculate specimen of a two wheel racing machine complete with flared carbon fibre cowling, curved steel pipes for those guttural exhaust noises and huge disk brakes nestled in front of gold alloy wheels.

He says he made this precision machine from scratch as casually as if it's the kind of thing we can all whip up every day. It's not of course yet his insouciance belies the cleverness of hand-making a piece of two-wheel racing art from scratch. You can just imagine Valentino Rossi popping his head around the door to ask if it's ready for a spin. And it probably is.

www.sportmotorcyclesducati.com