14 replies to this topic

[Sharman]

It's curious how something or someone you have never heard of crops up in a conversation or a piece in a magazine and then within a very short time you happen across the name or event again. This happened with the above name, I was reading about 50s motor cycle racing and read that Harry Hinton was a works Norton rider in 1953. A few days later I visited my very old friend Bill de Selincourt and saw a motor cycle racing photo on his wall, knowing that he had competed on 2 wheels before turning to 4 I asked was it him. He was in the picture right enough with his older brother acting as pit crew and refuelling Hinton's Norton at the Dutch Grand Prix. Bill commented that it was a great result to finish 3rd as an amateur, Which begs the question was Hinton a works rider because of the result or was he already on the strength albeit not entered as a works bike?

[larryd]

There is a hell of a lot to the Harry Hinton story, and indeed to the story of the Hinton tribe unto the third generation!

Better that I leave this to be told by his grandson, who is a member of this Forum . . . . . .

[Paroni09]

It's curious how something or someone you have never heard of crops up in a conversation or a piece in a magazine and then within a very short time you happen across the name or event again. This happened with the above name, I was reading about 50s motor cycle racing and read that Harry Hinton was a works Norton rider in 1953. A few days later I visited my very old friend Bill de Selincourt and saw a motor cycle racing photo on his wall, knowing that he had competed on 2 wheels before turning to 4 I asked was it him. He was in the picture right enough with his older brother acting as pit crew and refuelling Hinton's Norton at the Dutch Grand Prix. Bill commented that it was a great result to finish 3rd as an amateur, Which begs the question was Hinton a works rider because of the result or was he already on the strength albeit not entered as a works bike?

That picture must be from Dutch TT 1950, when Harry Hinton senior was thurd in 500cc class. I've a picture of hem with mecanic standing in front of the pits, but i don't know how to place a picture here..

[john medley]

To a small boy growing up in Bathurst, Australia, in the late 40s/early 50s, Harry Hinton was the pre-eminent racer, already a veteran and already in a small boy's eyes incredibly old.

I look forward to the Hinton family's posts on the great man

[GD66]

Harry was first given works Nortons for the 1949 Ulster GP. His third in 1950 was on a works bike.

I have pm'd Peter to jump in and expand.

[Quixotic]

I believe that Harry Hinton was also blind in one eye. I may be wrong.....

[RTH]

I don't normally post in the motorcyle section although I do watch all the MotoGPs.
However understandably the title of this thread caught my eye having the same surname as myself - no relative as far as i am aware.
So suddenly i am keen to hear all you know about this man.

[GD66]

I believe that Harry Hinton was also blind in one eye. I may be wrong.....

Yes, Harry lost his left eye in a road accident in 1931, aged 20. Yet he raced until he was 44, retiring in 1955.

[RTH]

Just got this in, I am sure he will not mind me reprinting it.

 

Richard

 

I can`t say I knew him well but I certainly knew him. He rode Nortons and was one of the first, if not the first, Australians to come over to the UK to compete in the TT and, thanks to his self-taught Australian "can do" engineering competence (in those days, divorced from the far-off UK factory support, they had to make-do themselves, which they did with embarrassing competence) he actually went quicker than the Norton works riders at times. He was one-eyed (don`t know why), baldish, very slim and wirey and no mean rider. I`m away at the moment but if I was at home and within reach of my library I could give you chapter and verse oin his achievements. However, unless I am vey much mistaken he had  TT podium and ( I think) did very well in the ultra-demanding Ulster Grand Prix. Since, in those days, there weren`t the proliferation of short circuit meetings that there are today it means that he was no mean rider. Don`t reallly know what happened to him but I think he went back to Oz and, I imagine is certainly not with us now.

 

Take care

 

Murray

[GD66]

No Isle of Man podiums (podia ?) but Harry finished third in the 1950 Dutch 500 TT, and third in the 350 in Ulster and Italian GPs of that year.

He was badly injured in a crash at Laurel Bank in the 1951 Junior TT. Won the 250, 350, 500 and Unlimited at Bathurst in 1953, and won the 350/500 double in 1955, retiring that year. Harry died in 1978, aged 68.

Edited by GD66, 04 September 2013 - 23:15.

[RTH]

Wow there are loads of them

 

http://members.optus...mono/hinton.htm

[Rennmax]

Some pics taken from the Keith Bryen collection

 

http://velobanjogent...eith-bryen.html

[7okai]

I have not had time to pull out the boxes of photos during the last couple of visits to mum and dads. I am sure there are some Norton Works Team photos stahed away. I think Harold Daniel was in one with him. Junior & Senior "B" Teams, I am sure. 1949, 1950 and I think it was a Featherbed Works Norton at Laurel Bank in 1951. He was on the Garden Gates for quite a while and did pretty well. Pop and Geoff Duke got on quite well and I think being born in Birmingham helped him being popular at the Factory.

 

He developed a technique of moving his head and shoulders left to right to simulate stereoscopic vision which helped restore the depth perception that he had lost with his eye. 

 

I will dig them out, scan them in and post them up soon.

Edited by 7okai, 05 September 2013 - 07:59.

[larryd]

Thank you Peter - very much look forward to that !!

 

Ooops - sorry Peter and thanks Glenn!!

 

     

 

I have the Don Cox book, and am on my way through it for the 3rd time.

 

Absolute magic!!

Edited by larryd, 05 September 2013 - 22:35.

[GD66]

That's Peter !

 

Eric and Robert stayed overnight in 1970 at my family's place when they were in NZ for the Christmas racing, accompanied by a large, painfully shy and very nervous young mechanic called Mick Smith ! Some years later while doing commentary at Eastern Creek I met Eric and ran it past him, and his memory of that weekend 35 years previously was amazing, so much so that I prodded Jim Scaysbrook a couple of times to get Eric's tales from Europe down on paper, with no result. However, when I mentioned it to Don Cox, he said, somewhat mysteriously, something's under way. Turned out Eric had contributed generously to Don's Circus Life book, so many of his ripping yarns have been captured for our enjoyment. A good man.