Levis
Levis motorcycles, manufactured by Butterfields of Birmingham, were for many years one of England's leading manufacturers of two-stroke motorcycles. They built two-stroke machines from 1911, and added a line of four-strokes in 1928, that ran to 1941 when production ceased. The first Levis was made in the Norton works by designer Bob Newey, but James Norton turned it down. Newey then joined with the Butterfields, Arthur and Billy, and sister Daisy, to set up a motorcycle company. Their first model had a capacity of 211cc. Among the bikes that provided Levis' bread and butter, the Levis Popular was perhaps the most important. It had a simple construction with a light frame and forks and a transmission consisting of a belt driving the back wheel. With no kickstart or gears, starting was by pushing off, using a decompression lever to help the engine turn over easily. A large external flywheel kept the engine running evenly. Brakes were simple with a bicycle-type stirrup brake on the front rim and a heel-operated rear brake. But such simplicity did not mean crudeness. The Levis was well engineered and simple to repair. It even included such sophistication as separate oiling, at a time when most two-strokes relied on a premixed petrol. The Popular was in production until 1924 - a run of over a decade - when more apparently sophisticated models from both Levis and their rivals had come and gone. In 1920 Levis entered bikes in the Junior TT, which included a newly introduced trophy for bikes of 250cc or less in which they took first, second and third.