KRM | 1973-76 | UK :
KRM stood for Kingston Racing Motors of Hull, and the firm built a single ambitious racer in 1973. A racing four was shown early that year at a London show, and in the style of the period it had forward-inclined cylinders, double overhead camshafts, four carburettors, four exhaust pipes with megaphones and Lumenition electronic ignition. The internals were equally of their moment. The crankcase was split horizontally, the crankshaft ran on six plain bearings with plain big-ends, a centre gear drove a countershaft, and chain drive ran to the camshafts and to the ignition rotor and a distributor mounted on their ends, with the engine and gearbox hung from a tubular spine frame on conventional suspension, wire wheels and disc brakes front and rear. Fitted with a fairing, the machine was advertised as the Silver Streak, though the overall impression was of a very bulky motorcycle.
The project carried genuine pedigree and a clear commercial target. KRM was a division of Steel Fabrications, an English boiler manufacturer, and the design came from Jack Williams, the engineer behind the AJS 7R and Matchless G50. Steel Fabrications of Hull formed Kingston Racing Motors as a subsidiary to build a 350cc four-cylinder racer at a cost of around 10,000 pounds, intended to challenge the Japanese two-stroke twins that dominated the class, with the hope of developing a clubman version in limited numbers at about 2,000 pounds, and the machine made its debut on schedule at the 1973 racing show in Westminster, where it was the highlight.
The challenge faltered quickly. The four-stroke could not compete against the Yamaha TZ350s, a problem made worse once noise regulations restricted the previously open exhaust pipes, and although Tony Rutter test rode it at Wellesbourne on a cold day around 1976, it was not campaigned as a serious racer. Production never got beyond the prototype, the Superstreak vanished almost as suddenly as it had appeared, and the prototype was sold a couple of years later. The sources differ on whether the machine ever started a race, with most accounts holding that it was only ever track-tested rather than raced competitively, so its competitive record is best treated as a string of trials rather than results.
