Having started building frames in his garden shed, Jack Taylor developed a global reputation for faultless machines
A Path Racer with a curved seat tube, short wheelbase and nimble handling
This is an early-period Jack Taylor ‘Road Path’ bike, a popular genre of sporting machine in the 1940s and ’50s that, in a very loose sense, combined track-inspired frames with road-going components.
The term ‘path’ was analogous to ‘track’, whether wooden boards, concrete, asphalt or grass, but these bikes were actually more popular for short-distance time trials and hill climbs.
Owner of The VeloPages, Richard Hoddinott's collection of classic bikes spreads from the early 1920s to the late 1970s. From the bikes that prevailed at the early Tours de France to bikes that belonged to legends of the British scene, from Ray Booty to Eileen Sheridan.
Jack Taylor is a fascinating brand. It began in a garden shed in the 1930s as a bike-building hobby for teenage Jack, from where it evolved into a lifelong vocation for him and his two brothers, Norman and Ken.
Norman became a master with the brazing torch, Jack was responsible for paint and finish, while Ken built wheels and assembled the finished machines.
The siblings were obsessive about building bikes the ‘proper way’, earning them a global reputation for producing faultless-quality machines. Every painstaking step of the build was completed manually – the seamless fillet brazing, the exquisite box lining, even hand-drilling the rims for spokes.
“This particular bike features a distinctive curved seat tube,” remarks current owner Richard Hoddinott of vintage specialists The Velo Pages. “This will have reduced the wheelbase for sharper handling and also serves as an eye-catching signature detail. The frame has track ends and round-bladed forks, but the crown is factory drilled for a front brake. It’s a lovely, original example of one of the Taylor brothers’ rarer models.”
Ultimately, the trio’s fierce adherence to traditional values was the brand’s undoing. Throughout the 1980s, the brothers continued to produce five bikes a week, but by then they were all well into old age. The doors closed on their lifelong adventure in 1990, and with no worthy heir to carry on their legacy, the brand’s story ended with them.
