Mead & Tomkinson Motorcycles

Mead & Tomkinson was a motorcycle and car dealership in Hereford and Tewkesbury, Gloucester, England. Three of the Tomkinsons, sons Chris and Patrick, and their father, Mike, successfully built and fielded racing motorcycles. They concentrated on the Isle of Man TT and on 24-hour and 8-hour endurance races at Spa, Barcelona, Thruxton and the Le Mans Bol d'Or. One of their riders was Neil Tuxworth (later head of Honda HRC UK racing team). A production-based BSA 441 cc Victor with race-styled control adaptations was first entered by Mead & Tomkinson in the April, 1967 Motor Cycle 500-miler endurance event at Brands Hatch ridden by Alan Peck and Tony Wood, followed by the Barcelona 24-hour race in September.

A race-prepared successor to the previous Victor model, a BSA B50 Gold Star 500 ridden by Nigel Rollason and Clive Brown, won the 500 cc class in the 1971 Thruxton 500-miler, a long-distance event for production road machines, completing 201 laps beating the second place Suzuki T500 with 194 laps.

Other 1971 successes were the Barcelona 24 hours (at the Montjuïc circuit), and the Zolder 24 hour race outright.

Mead & Tomkinson then came to fame in the mid-1970s with their specially designed endurance racer, nicknamed 'Nessie', because of the monster. The engines were conventional roadster engines, tuned for racing power. First they used a 1,000 cc Laverda Jota triple, and later a 1,000 cc Kawasaki four. Feeling that racing bike design was too conservative, the Tomkinsons gave Nessie a number of innovations.