About Hesketh

Inspired by Lord Hesketh, who at the time had a background of F1 racing being the last private team to win a F1 Grand Prix with James Hunt at the wheel. Lord Hesketh wanted to use the skills and facilities built up in that pursuit to greater effect and production of a quality motorcycle was born. The Hesketh motorcycle was developed on the Easton Neston estate, the home of the Lord, with the prototype running in the spring of 1980 with, which was then a special Weslake engine commissioned for the Hesketh machine. Research, development and road testing has continued to the present day.

After two years of intense development it was announced to the press and partners were sort for the manufacturing. As none were forthcoming and the City was interested in investing in the venture, Hesketh motorcycles PLC was formed. In 1981-2 a modern purpose built factory was set up to manufacture the bikes in Daventry (15 miles to the north) but unfortunately due to lack of cash, start-up problems and a collapsing market, this went into receivership and ceased trading after manufacturing about one hundred V1000 models for the home market.

This left the new owners without any backup and the employees without a job so the development team, which had always been based at Easton Neston, and had continued development on the machine under the support of Lord Hesketh, offered support and modifications to the bikes sold. This expanded to the manufacture of machines from 1982-4 under the name of Hesleydon Ltd. who obtained the necessary certification to sell overseas and went on to develop the Vampire after requests for a touring version of the V1000. But when the general down turn in motorcycle market started to effect sales the decision was made to cease general manufacture due to the high cost of the parts together with the fact that we could not increase our volume to implement proper production assembly methods.

Since 1984, Broom Development Engineering, have used the skill and knowledge built up in the development team over the years to help other manufactures on projects including testing and development of complete vehicles, manufacture of parts and presentations all over the world. Our roots are still with Hesketh motorcycles and we retain the capacity to assemble a limited number of bikes, to order, and this we will continue to do while people still want to own a classic. We have also continued to develop aspects on the machine to improve and make possible the supply of the bikes. Eventually we suspect that due to the very low numbers that we make it will become impossible to continue at some point due to the cost of supporting modern legislation requirements, but we are fully committed to the ongoing support and survival of the Hesketh machine. It deserves no less.

Many thanks to Broom Engineering for supplying the information on this page.