John Taylor (Velocette)

Johannes Gütgemann, also known as John Taylor and John Goodman, was the founder of the Velocette motorcycle company.

Gütgemann was born in Germany around 1857 , and moved to England in 1876. He married Elizabeth Ore in 1884, settling near her home in Birmingham. They had five children together.

Shortly after his marriage, Gütgemann went into business with a partner named Barrett, who had inherited a company called "Taylor & Co." Gütgemann then adopted John Taylor as his English name, and began making bicycles and fittings.

He met another bicycle maker named William Gue, and they started building bicycles together in Birmingham in 1896 under the name "Taylor Gue Ltd". In 1904 they took over the Belgian firm Kelekom Motors and began experimenting with motorized bicycles, and created their first motorcycle, the 2 horsepower Veloce, in 1905. It struggled on the marketplace and Taylor Gue collapsed.

Taylor then founded the company Veloce Limited in late 1905 to market motorcycles and related products.

In 1911, Taylor became a naturalized British citizen, and in 1917 formally anglicized his German name to John Goodman. His sons Percy and Eugene Goodman also became involved with Veloce and several related companies.

In 1913, the company first used the trade name Velocette for a small two stroke motorcycle invented by Percy, and the name was then used for many later cycles as well. Velocette achieved great success with four stroke engines in the mid-1920s, and became a common name on racing tracks and record books.

The Velocette company folded in 1971, as both rising development costs and the owners' racing expenses took their toll on the company's bottom line.

References

* "Velocette: Technical Excellence Exemplified", by Ivan Rhodes -- Motorbooks International (August, 2003) ISBN 0-7603-1693-7
* [http://www.velocetteowners.com/history/history.html Velocette Owners - History]
* [http://www.mkviiiktt.co.uk/ Velocette KTT information]