Welcome To Pitmonkey London Vintage Monkey & Mini Bike sales spares bikes and parts.

There are many ways of achieving celebrity status in the motorcycle world; a bike can have an abundance of power, razor sharp handling or stunning looks. But there’s one machine which has none of these and is still revered: the utterly quirky Honda Monkey Bike.

The Monkey bike was an accident of time and place and was never intended to be a commercial product. In 1961 Honda was developing its huge Suzuka circuit complex and wanted something for enthusiastic Japanese children to play at being bikers.

Honda already had a ready made power plant in the 50cc C100 Cub engine. This motor was bullet proof and, being horizontally inclined, could be fitted into a tiny chassis. It also had a semi-automatic gearbox so the baby Japanese bikers just had to open the throttle and away they went.

The first Monkey had a rather neat fibre-glass petrol tank but when production went into full swing, raids on Honda parts’ bins were made. The tiny frame - with no rear suspension - and the crude front forks were the major elements unique to the Monkey Bike - or the Z100 as the bike became known.