Ok, so, how did it all begin…?

After gallivanting around the planet during the 1980’s and 1990’s in my previous life, I ended up in the early 2000’s in Shanghai, China, as a co-owner and general manager of an Irish Pub, called O’Malley’s. As you do...

Early one evening, whilst sitting in O’Malley’s pub garden, quaffing Guiness & enjoying the craic (it was, after all, an Irish Pub) I was approached by an Aussie gent, called John, asking if I’d like to meet Amanda & Dwight. Of course, I said…Mi Casa, Su Casa, I said. What sort of silly question was this…? Off he disappeared and the next minute he arrived on Amanda, the scruffiest looking sidecar I’ve ever seen, accompanied by his trusty rescue pooch, Dwight, seated proudly in the sidecar seat…. This was the beginning of a great friendship (Aussie John & I are still besties) and my love affair with sidecars. Fast forward a few years to John being booted out of China for undisclosed indiscretions with the result that Dwight was shipped off to a new family home in Europe and yours truly became the de facto owner of his scruffy Amanda.

This was the moment in my life (and I’m still living in this moment!) that I discovered that riding sidecars was indeed the most fun one could possibly have with one’s clothes on….

What pure unadulterated fun I had! Including hurtling through the streets of Shanghai on the weekends at 3.00am in the morning with a load of inebriated pub patrons on board transferring them from O’Malley’s to the next den of iniquity; or loading up all the offduty hookers on my way home at 5.00am & dropping them off at their chosen noodle shop for breakfast; or terrorising the locals & frustrating the traffic police by racing around Shanghai’s highways and byways, usually on the wrong side of the road, and overloaded with inebriated riff-raff…

However, all good things come to an end, and sadly, family responsibilities loomed & I ended up back in Cape Town in late 2003 with no prospects and an old scruffy sidecar called Amanda. I realised (thankfully) that I was unemployable, and I needed a plan of action to earn a living. Amanda was deployed as my weapon of mass distruction & I started marketing the idea of sidecar tours around Cape Town. By mid-2004, Cape Sidecar Adventures was founded with 6 bikes & a battle plan in place… I reckoned it would take a maximum of a year or 2 before I could retire with loads of cash & spend the rest of my days on Camps Bay beach drinking G ’n T’s and perving… Little did I know…!

Anyway, after 21 years of blood, sweat, tears & loads of laughs, Cape Sidecar Adventures can boast the following statistics….

a. Our fleet of 52 fully operational and fully compliant bikes, make us the biggest commercial sidecar tour operator in the world.

b. Total mileage completed by all the bikes together since the company was started, is in excess of 2,000,000 kms. In 2024 alone our total mileage completed was 380,000 kms which is the equivalent of our fleet travelling in relay to the moon!

c. Since our humble beginnings 20 years ago, we’ve created memories for almost 75,000 passengers. In 2024 alone we carried in excess of 10,000 passengers.

d. We currently have 85 highly experienced and fully licensed drivers in our database. Some of our drivers have been with us since we began and have clocked up individual mileages of over 100,000 kms. Very impressive.

And let’s not forget our trusty chariots. We wouldn’t have achieved anything without our elegant vintage ladies. The bulk of our sidecar fleet are decommissioned Chinese Military Cj750 bikes dating back to the 1960’s and 1970’s. There are all sorts of urban legends about the origins of this Chinese military Cj750 sidecar & the following is my simplified version…

Towards the end of World War II, the Russians cloned the German BMW R71 which resulted in the birth of the Soviet Ural sidecar that was deployed to aid their endeavours in the closing stages of World War II. This sidecar was manufactured for both military & civilian use and after WWII, in the late 1950’s, some sort of deal was sealed between the Russians & the Chinese whereby technology & manufacturing capability was transferred to the Chinese military which resulted in the latter cobbling together the Chang Jiang, or Cj750 motorbike with sidecar. This Cj750 was manufactured & used by the Chinese military until the early 1970’s when they were then decommissioned & sent off to be scrapped…

This is where I come in…. One of my O’Malley’s regulars knew someone who knew someone & within a few weeks I was standing in the middle of a huge sidecar graveyard in Beijing where all these sad survivors were being stripped & carved up & being sold off to the scrap dealers. The happy ending is that over the last 20 years, with the help of a few enthusiasts in Beijing, I’ve managed to rescue & rebuild some of these ladies & have been able to share the thrill of a sidecar experience with thousands of happy visitors to Cape Town.

Our bikes all have unique personalities & it was unthinkable not to identify them all with an individual moniker. So, all of the ladies, and a few gents, who have now joined Amanda’s harem, have names such as Bianca, Blossom, Dani, Goldie, Hotstuff, Lolita, Nellie, Sahara, Sexy, Tammy, Wanda & Zandi to name a few.

So, when you’re next in need for something on the side, why not mount one of our ladies & enjoy the ride of your life…!!