1954 Tilbrook Dandaloo sidecar – $8,500

Tilbrook sidecar for sale

SELLER SAYS: 1954 Tilbrook Dandaloo sidecar, complete with mounting hardware. Outstanding condition. Very rare as only six were made. The upholstery is in top condition. I can assist with freight and pack onto a pallet for east coast buyers. I can do a walk-around video showing mounting etc. Contact Lenny on 0488 450 154 (Bunbury, Western Australlia).

EDITOR TERLICK SAYS: In these days of mass production and globalised production chains, it’s hard to comprehend inventors and businessmen like Rex Tilbrook. A car-and-bike enthusiast and fabricator from an early age, Rex is credited with designing, making and selling everything from universal pillion footpegs to an electric scooter and complete motorcycles. But it was his sidecars that paid the bills — and made him famous in the world of motorcycles. Operating from the late 1940s into the late ’70s, his South Australian workshop sold almost 2,000 sidecars across Australia and around the world. Many of those sidecars were small — his ‘Tom Thumb’ was made for small-capacity bikes and weighed just 26kg — while the Dandaloo was at the luxury end of the spectrum. With a bucket seat, rubber connection mounts (ala Norton isolastics, but more than a decade earlier), and coil-spring suspension, passengers were cosseted in luxury! A quick search on the internet confirms Lenny’s belief that only six Dandaloos were made, and I found a recent Facebook post in the UK asserting only four of those have survived; one in England and the other three in Australia. This example looks to be in magnificent fettle and will undoubtedly be a prized possession for its next owner.