FEATURE - Classic Style

Words: Mike Ryan

Photos: Classic Style and JUST BIKES

They say that if you find a job you love, you’ll never work a day in our life. For Jon Munn, the founder and boss of Classic Style Australia, it’s an adage that rings true. And for Jon, motorcycles have been a constant, even before he turned his passion into a business.

To hear Jon’s thick accent, you’d assume he’s from the UK, but he was actually born in Australia to British parents. In 1956, when Jon was still a child, the family moved back to the UK and he spent his formative years there. Jon returned to Australia for work in 1966, was transferred back to the UK before coming ‘home’ to Australia in 1989 and settling here for good.

Tiny Singles and Big Doubles

Jon’s first motorcycle was a 150cc James Cadet that he learned to ride on. Showing the trading nous that he would employ on a much larger scale at Classic Style, the young Jon had bought and sold several bikes by his early teens, including a BSA Bantam for the road and a Matchless 500 for scrambles.

While dirt and grass track racing usually leads to road racing, Jon didn’t follow that path. In fact, he’s done no circuit racing, but he has ridden at VERY high speeds as one of the most successful drag racers in Britain. That introduction to drag racing was an innocuous one.

In 1972, Jon was at a party in London with friends who were going to the drags at Santa Pod (a strip in the British midlands) the next day, so he decided to join them. By this stage, Jon had quit his job in finance to study engineering and what he saw on the quarter mile instantly appealed to his mechanical mind.

“I got really enthused at that meeting, so started building a drag bike!” Jon laughed. “Drag racing is a real ‘engineer’s sport’, because you have to put so much into it. What it takes to gain fractions of a second is incredible.”

Jon’s first drag bike was cobbled together from a Triumph Thunderbird engine, a stripped frame and other parts, which cost him a grand total of 200 pounds when rivals were spending thousands –sometimes tens of thousands. 

An upgrade to a Norton 750 Commando engine followed, then fuel injection, then two Norton 850 engines in the style of the famous “Hog Slayer” built by American racer Tom Christensen. Jon’s double Norton was consistently one of the fastest non-supercharged bikes in the UK, which meant he was racking up plenty of wins, culminating in the 1978 British ‘Superbike’ Championship for drag racing.

Racing was put on hold soon after that, due to domestic obligations (ie., buying a house), but Jon was back in the saddle by 1980, this time on John Hobbs’s ‘Hobbit’ twin-engined dragster. At around the same time, Jon sold the Kawasaki dealership he’d bought back in 1976 to move into home renovations, but continued drag racing (in the UK and Europe) and always tinkered with old bikes in the background.

From Four Wheels back to Two

In 1989, Jon and his wife Maggie moved back to Melbourne, with the initial plan to continue in house renovations. However, another chance meeting – this time with Win Percy at the Australian Formula 1 Grand Prix – led to a job with Glenn Seton’s team in the Australian Touring Car Championship.

Rebuilding the fast but fragile Cosworth engines in Seton’s Ford Sierra became a full-time job, but the ATCC circus isn’t a great life for a man with a young family, so after a couple of years, Jon exited that job and took the plunge of turning his hobby for old bikes into a business.

“I was flipping bikes from home for a while,” Jon recalled of the time before Classic Style was founded in 1996. “Often, I would buy a bike to get the bits I needed for a bike that I was restoring. And I found that, every time I advertised a bike, I was inundated with calls, so that gave me the idea.”    

From Small to Large

Soon after setting up Classic Style, a trip to the US for a big motorcycle auction netted a swag of bikes for Jon’s nascent business, as well as a meeting with Frank Callinicos of British Motorbikes in North Hollywood, who was selling up and did a deal that saw Jon buy all the dealership’s stock. Jon also made some valuable contacts in the US that became great sources for good quality classic bikes.

Jon needed those sources, as what had started with around half a dozen bikes swelled to dozens to meet demand. The business soon outgrew its original premises in the outer Melbourne suburb of Seaford and relocated to a much larger warehouse – only a street away – in 2002. More recently, a further expansion has added a quarantine station for imported bikes, meaning the main building can house Classic Style’s constantly changing inventory, which these days numbers in the hundreds at any one time.

Jon’s presence in JUST BIKES has been a constant since he started the business, and he’s become the ‘go-to’ guy for many people when they’re looking to buy their first (or sometimes their second, third, fourth and fifth!) classic bike.

“People ring me up and say when they get JUST BIKES every month, the first page they turn to is mine!” Jon laughed.

Comings and Goings

With Classic Style now in business for almost 30 years, Jon's seen plenty of change in the tastes of buyers when it comes to old motorcycles.

“Obviously, the market’s been changing as people are aging,” Jon explained. “We used to be almost exclusively British bikes. But, for the last ten years, we’ve moved across to classic Japanese, because all the baby boomers want the Honda fours they had when the were young, the Kawasaki 900s and triples and the like.

“British bikes are still very popular, though,” Jon adds. “Nortons are always hot property, so Commandos are gone in a flash. Triumphs have always been popular. BSAs, too, as well as the vintage stuff.”

While Classic Style customers often have an exact idea what they want, Jon says he’s often contacted by newcomers to classic bikes who have no idea what they want – they just want something that looks cool and can be ridden casually on weekends: “I’ll generally suggest a little Japanese bike – maybe a Honda 350 Four, 350 Twin, or bigger, if they want it.”

Whether they be newcomers or longtime enthusiasts, most customers are still buying bikes to enjoy. Jon has seen the “investment” angle behind the rise in classic car sales start to permeate the classic motorcycle scene, but it’s in the minority.

Unlike classic cars, Jon notes that classic bikes are still relatively affordable. Sure, you can spend big bucks on Vincents, Brough Superiors, early Harleys and exotic Italians, but a good, usable classic can still be had for around $10,000 or less. Jon stocks both, so there’s usually something at Classic Style to suit any budget.

Still on Bikes

While Jon is looking to sell Classic Style (see breakout), he says he won’t be walking away from motorcycles in retirement. He still has an impressive personal collection, with many restoration projects on the go, too, including a very rare Indian Fury, ‘63 Bonneville, a BSA Gold Star and some Nortons, to name a few.

“I’d like to ride my own bikes more," Jon said. "And go to rallies overseas. I plan to still do that.

“I just love motorcycles.”

Classic Style - for sale

As much as he’s enjoyed what he’s built over the past 30 years at Classic Style, Jon’s looking to retire, so started putting feelers out last year that the business would be for sale – to the right buyer.

Obviously, this would be ideal for someone who loves classic bikes and doesn’t mind spending their day around them.

With a strong customer base, a fully-sorted warehouse and contacts in the US and UK already established, it’s a business you could literally step into as is, while Jon can mentor the next owner for a period of time to help the transition.

If this sounds like an opportunity, Jon would love to hear from you.

Call 0414 700 700 for more details.