He lives south of Paris, is 67 years old and retired. However, Gérald Armand is much more than that. Manager of the Gérald Motors workshop, he has managed to gather throughout his life what for many would be a dream: a collection of more than forty racing motorcycles. Some of them are true automotive gems, icons of their time that are now proudly displayed as the reflection of a golden era.
Historic and authentic, each of these restored sports cars is part of the ‘Ecuire Gérald Motors’, a mobile exhibition that, over the last decade, has become a regular reference for motorcycling events, rallies and circuits around show dozens of classic motorcycles in their original condition, as well as several MotoGP and even a Yamaha owned by Kenny Roberts. So, in order not to miss an appointment, Armand and his team travel around Europe in an old Renault truck, in whose box there are fifty years of history.
From the very rare CZ 250 from 1963 to the Avintia MotoGP CRT that the Valencian Héctor Barberá piloted in 2013, the chronological arc of Gérald Armand’s collection extends. These two frames are what define the total of a set that reflects not only the evolution of racing motorcycles, but also the passion and effort of a lifetime dedicated to the two-wheeled sector. Now, what else can we find inside this transportable garage?
The sample is mainly made up of two-stroke models from the 70s and 80s, of all types of displacements and categories, as he himself stated for the YouTube channel of the French media Moto Magazine. In this way, we find great automotive classics, such as a ’68 Honda CYB350 or the Suzuky TR750 XR11 belonging to the British driver Barry Sheene.
Among the most striking motorcycles that he has managed to collect, we can discover the Yoshimura Suzuki GS1000s with which Wes Cooley won the AMA Superbike Championship in 1979 and 1980; as well as the Yamaha YZR500 OW53 of the Three-time 500 cc World Champion, Kenny Roberts. The OW53 was the last version of the inverted inline four-cylinder with which the American won the third of his world titles in 1980, although with a lighter aluminum chassis.
Likewise, Armand also treasures an exclusive 1973 Kawasaki H2R, air-cooled, two-stroke and triple, for which he had to sell a Patrick Pons TZ500, a TD3 and a Honda CB750. All types of models have thus passed through his collection, increasing a heritage that would make any enthusiast of the two-wheeled sector go crazy.
As reported by the French media Le repaire des motards, Gérald Armand shows an “almost encyclopedic knowledge of motorcycling”, acquired through what we could consider the documentary part of his collection: more than 50,000 magazines and 500 specialized books. This (very expensive) set that he treasures configures the story of his life, a story that he began to write when, at the age of sixteen, he was old enough to ride his first motorcycle: a Yamaha AS3 125.