What?s the best part about the exploding interest in older bikes" For us, it?s not just about the finished product and the photographic eye candy.
It?s also seeing traditional skills staying alive: Lathes whirring, English wheels spinning, and planishing hammers hitting metal. And it doesn?t get more authentic than this ancient French resto-mod, brought back to life in the English countryside.

This extraordinary machine is a Motoconfort C23, which looks like it was built yesterday but is actually 84 years old. It?s the work of John Harrison, who at 63 is just a wee bit younger.
John lives in the old medieval market town of Dartford, in southeast England, and he?s been making a living as a mechanical engineer since his boyhood days.
We got the tip-off from his son Mike, who describes his Dad as ?One of those old school engineers that can make things out of lumps of steel, with dangerous looking machinery, after sketching it on the back of a cigarette packet.?
As you can imagine, getting an old French bike back on the road isn?t simple. You can?t just pick up a Motoconfort parts manual and trawl through the classified ads. But John wanted a challenge, and is particularly partial to girder forks. When the Motoconfort popped up on eBay France, he knew he had his next project.

It?d had two previous owners, and the last one had stored the bike with the intention of rebuilding it. That was in 1959, and it never happened. ?It was pretty mangled and rotten,? Mike reca...