One for Oddjob

[AshimotoK0]

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[Oddjob]

Lmao, I recognise that building.

[philward]

Bought my 72 500k1 and 78 GS1000 from Queenies

[Oddjob]

Never managed to get into that Pagoda shape part of the building, it looks to be over where Suzuki/Yamaha parts were kept. The 3 first floor far windows were the Honda parts dept, the 2 first floor windows over the Honda sign were the Suzuki/Yamaha parts, not sure but Suzuki may have been 1st floor and Yamaha the floor above. The 2nd floor window closest to the pub is where the CB750K0 was kept in the room behind at the back, unpacked but mainly complete.

We made a paper dart out of a cardboard Honda crate, it was nearly 5ft long and so heavy it took 2 of us to launch it off the roof, this was at the back of the building, it sailed off around a corner and just then the boss Clive came walking round the near corner of the building, the dart then made a re-appearance getting lower all the time, it ended up hitting Clive right on the back of his head, it was so heavy it knocked him off his feet, needless to say we made ourselves scarce but having Honda written on it sort of gave us away, he never did find out who launched it though.

[MCTID]

LOL.....my confession is that I bought my Zundapp Bella Scooter from QPM around 1965....I was 15 years old - before I was old enough to hold a Licence. I paid £5 for it and they delivered it to my house in Eccles. I bought it from their other (earlier) showroom on Broad Street, Salford...just around the corner from the building shown in this photo.

It was a pig of a machine and I never got it to run properly....probably me and my youthful lack of knowledge. I can't remember what happened to it. I then went on to buy a few Lambrettas before I found out the joys of Brit Bikes with a 1958 BSA 650 Flash....which I changed the oil every week or so with oil from the Machine Tools where I worked on Nightshift.....I was unsupervised and I had a lot of free time....and the oil was free !
Happy daze.

[AshimotoK0]

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[Johnny4428]

C90 outside the shop?

[Oddjob]

Or a 50 or 70.

That part they are parked outside became just a salesroom for bikes, the one next door became an insurance office, the next 3 and around the corner were also salesrooms, every morning me and the rest of the lads would walk from the back of the building to remove all the bikes sold the day before so we could PDI them etc, due to the amount of bikes in the rooms that could involve moving 6 others to get to the one we wanted. We'd then freewheel them round the corner to the workshop, not a great start to the day in bad weather.

The door in the middle was the entrance to Suzuki/Yamaha parts. Honda parts entrance was inside the 3 showrooms part. That's a VERY early picture, it had changed a lot since that pic and when I started.

[Johnny4428]

Interesting old pic Ken! No 5ft darts flying about in this pic! 🤣🤣

[Oddjob]

There is Johnny but it's at the back of the building, out of picture 

I was talking about Queenies and the building in particular last night in the pub and I'd forgotten what a rabbit warren of passage etc were in that building, all those towers for instance, I'd forgotten about those, upstairs on the 1st floor was the remains of a night club called the Waterfall, the stage was still there and all the tinsel and glitter decorations were still hanging up, the 750K0 was parked almost on that stage.

There was also a CB350K4 still in it's crate, stored on it's end so the forks were pointing towards the floor, we cut a small flap in the cardboard outer so we could see what colour it was etc, it was a metallic olive green IIRC. It was still there when the place shut so someone must have bought it and put it back on the road.

In the basement, lower than the road, is where the workshops were, there was also a cellar (under the 3 showrooms) where all the write offs were just thrown into, hundreds and hundreds of all sorts of bikes, just in a huge jumble, the smell of that room I can still recall, stale petrol, old oil and rust and corrosion, a very distinctive smell. Oddly, I had to go to a place near Lancaster last year to pick up a job lot of CB550 parts I'd bought, they were stored in a huge old hanger type building, near the back, as we walked further in, the smell got stronger and stronger, until I said that it reminded me of being in the cellar at Queenies, at which point the owner said, well it should, as all these came out of the cellar there, he'd been PAID to empty that cellar, he didn't pay for anything, it was all free so long as he took it away, the stuff down there would be worth a fortune today, old Bridgestone motorcycles, some Vespas and Lambrettas for some reason, quite a few old British bikes including some Velos IIRC, shed loads of CB160 type bikes, hundreds of C50/70/90s. Some people just have all the luck.

[AshimotoK0]

I got those pics off a Facebook site Ken and a few people who worked there commented. If you don't do FB I can copy their names/replies for you and post on here.

[Oddjob]

Quite a few of them are dead Ash, I know Jeff Hill killed himself (Jeff was deaf in one ear, so his nickname was Mutton Jeff, which is really funny when you think about it) Dave O'Neal died recently, Paul has died, Johnny Parker (who was front page of the Sun for 2 days running about 20 years ago) has died, AFAIK, only 4 of us are left out of the workshop although there could be others. Let me know the names as I'd like to see if I remember them, some may have started after I'd left, I met someone on another forum who claimed to have worked there and it appeared he took my old bench when I left so I didn't know him.

If you want to know why Johnny was front page of the Sun for 2 days running let me know, it's the most unusual story I've ever heard, truly mind boggling in fact and one that I didn't believe until he showed me the scars. He worked on the next bench to me for many years and I miss him a lot, funny bloke with a huge amount of knowledge that he didn't mind passing on to me, I owe him a lot.

[AshimotoK0]

Looks like you gave 'em good discounts too Ken 

Alexander French, Paul Mark O'Toole and John Hopwood are a couple of the commentators on F.B.  that appeared to work there Ken

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[Laverda Dave]

£709 for a CB400F😟. A repro exhaust on its own is nearly that these days!
I thought the Bennelli Sei was a good price until I compared it to a Gold wing and it was still expensive🙄.
Did you sell many Italian bikes Ken?

[Oddjob]

Never sold a Benelli or any other Italian bike whilst I was there Dave, advert was probably before my time TBH. Never sold an MZ either.

John Hopwood sounds familiar Ash but I'm betting he was a salesman, the other 2 are unknown to me, maybe ask whereabouts they worked?