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Matchless Seeks £5 Mil to Build New Motorcycles

Known nowadays for their clothing lines than for making motorcycles, Matchless appears to be taking another shot at glory in the two-wheeler industry. Recent reports in the British media indicate that the Malenotti family is looking forward to selling £5 million ($7.08 m or €6.3 m) bonds to fund the development and production of "two superbike models."
Matchless Model X Reloaded 1 photo
Photo: Florin Tibu
It appears that the Malenottis are either more than confident in their plans or have even deeper pockets than one might expect because the bond offer exceeds what most banks can come up with these days.

Namely, Matchless is offering a 6% annual interest for five years to those willing to invest in Matchless. The British makers's offer will be made online on the Karadoo financial platform.

Now, from what we know, this money might not be enough to develop two new motorcycles from scratch, so we suspect that the Malenotti family also has other financing sources but they just don't want to abuse them.

According to the Vintagent, the owner of Matchless declared that their machines are aimed at becoming the "Rolls-Royce of motorcycles," albeit the term was coined by another British motorcycle manufacturer, Brough-Superior.

No further details were given about the future bikes, so we're deep in unknown territory. However, we doubt that by "superbike" we should understand a liter or liter-plus sports machine. We'd rather guess that it is luxury that substitutes for "superbike," as it would be impossible for Matchless to develop and start producing such a piece of machinery, let alone two, with this money.

So far, Matchless has manufactured a prototype machine dubbed Model X Reloaded, and two years ago, when we had a talk with them at EICMA, they said they intended to build no more than 100 units, each to be sold for €50-55k ($56-62k) a pop. No sales reports surfaced, so it's hard to see how the Model X Reloaded fares, but if the Malenotti family eyes more models, we guess there is demand for new Matchless machinery.

Ultra-expensive machines are not exactly selling big these days, and looking over at how Ecosse, Horex, Brough-Superior or even Norton struggle leaves us with a big question mark as to how viable such models are in the long run.
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