War’s good for business, sad to say, provided your factory doesn’t get bombed, and your workforce isn’t conscripted to go and fight on the front line. So building motorcycles for your nation’s Armed Forces has always been a prized endeavour for any manufacturer, especially in peacetime, albeit often achieved against the stiffest of competition from rival firms in terms of price, delivery times and overall performance in the all-important comparative tests with rival products. Leaving aside the obvious benefits in terms of prestige and brand recognition, it’s prized because once you’ve won the contract to supply the bikes in question, you then have a substantial ongoing order which can form the crux of your business, and underpin it for years to come. Well, provided you quoted a really profitable price,…