Turn back the clock to the 1950s, and imagine how profound was the cultural revolution which took place across Britain as American rock ‘n’ roll launched an invasion on our shores and young men, flush with some disposable income for the first time, noted with interest the hire-purchase schemes which would allow them to buy Triumphs, BSAs and Nortons just like the ones which screamed around the TT course.

In a curious collision of two worlds, motorcycle racing blended with youth culture to create a new phenomenon, and one which has stood the test of time: the café racer. Hot-blooded ton-up boys, half Vince Taylor and half Geoff Duke, assembled their own home-brewed motorcycles in the style of Manx racers, and proceeded to use them for dashing along trunk roads and between transport cafes.

Pretty soon, popular consensus agreed that the best way to build a café racer involved cramming a Triumph parallel-twin engine into a Norton Featherbed frame, and the Triton was born. Eventually, the popularity of Tritons reached the point where it was profitable for some shops to construct them for paying customers and, of those, few have achieved such renown as Dresda Autos.

Dresda Autos was a run-of-the-mill scooter shop on Putney Bridge Road until 1963, when it was taken over by Dave Degens and Dick Boone. They moved away from scooters and began constructing Tritons, which received a glowing review in the June 1964 issue of Motorcycle Mechanics. Editor Bill Lawless took two Bonneville-engined machines, one heavily tuned and one more mildly so, and managed to squeeze 126 and 105 mph out of them respectively. 

After a few years, Dresda was well ahead of other Triton builders. From 1970, Degens began offering his own Dresda frames, inspired by the Featherbed but with altered proportions to better accommodate engines of different sizes. The Lightweight was created with the 500cc Triumph Dayonta engine in mind, as it could look dwarfed by a Featherbed. The frame was made with heavy-duty T45 tubing and was around two-thirds of the weight of a Featherbed.

Dresda bikes certainly were not just the preserve of coffee-bar cowboys; they were built to a highly professional standard and achieved numerous race victories, including in the 1965 and 1970 Barcelona 24-Hour Races and the 1972 Bol d’Or 24-Hour Race. 

Not everyone was impressed; some people claimed that a Dresda should not qualify for production-class racing. The official verdict found in Dresda’s favour, though, and anyone who’d bought one could revel in owning a race-bred bike. Today, Dresda is still going strong, but you have to pay for what you get. In the 1960s, a Dresda-built Triton could cost up to £400 when a new Bonneville was only £330; a bike from Dresda today could cost upwards of £20,000.

This Dresda Lightweight was built in early 1972 with a Triumph Daytona 500cc engine. Believed to have had only four previous owners, the present owner acquired it from a motorcycle mechanic in London who had serviced it for a customer for many years before he eventually bought it.

The vendor worked alongside Dave Degens at Dresda in the 1980s, so is very familiar with the bikes and has rather a soft spot for them. He purchased this one on April 2019 and immediately started spending money on it, but he is now offering it for sale as his wife has decided they need a new kitchen…

The Dresda comes with little paperwork, but it does have a current V5 and a small collection of MoT certificates, the most recent of which is from 2016.

Low and lean, the Dresda Lightweight makes no effort to disguise the fact that it’s a racer for the road. Since Dresda was in the business of building café racers, it should go without saying that the Lightweight has the full complement of a racing tank, racing seat, clip-on handlebars and megaphone exhausts. This example is in excellent cosmetic condition, with the paint being generally free from damage and all the outer surfaces looking to have been kept very clean.

The frame is powder-coated and the racing seat, with its suede-covered top, is in very nice condition. Since many Dresdas were destined for competition, they were built with mountings for race fairings, and all the original mountings are present and correct on this bike.

Shortly after purchasing the bike, the vendor took the bike to Dresda to be fitted with a number of new parts, including tyres, a front mudguard and an ethanol-proof fuel tank.

Unlike some builders back in the ’60s, Dresda did not make posers’ bikes. They were thoughtfully designed and properly engineered, so you’ll be wanting to know that everything is working just as Dresda intended. Although we have not been able to inspect it ourselves, the vendor advises us that it is all in good working order.

The motorcycle mechanic who owned it previously rebuilt the Triumph Daytona engine with its beefy twin Amal carburettors. He reset the odometer at the same time, which shows that it has been used very sparingly of late as it was on 11 miles when the vendor bought it and has now covered only 209 miles. With that in mind, it could probably do with being run-in a bit more. The vendor tells us that it always starts on the first or second kick, idles quite contentedly once warmed up and is ‘a lot of fun to ride’.

Based on what we’ve been told, we might imagine that it goes pretty well, but does it stop? With that huge single-sided, four-leading-shoe drum brake, it certainly should. The vendor describes it as ‘amazing’, but quite apart from that it’s also extremely rare. The is Dave Degens’s own design and was a single-sided variation on the unique-to-Dresda eight-leading-shoe brake. The vendor describes it as ‘very effective for road and track’. Such a brake can no longer be bought new and you’d have a tough job to try to find one second-hand, so it really is a very special item.

When the vendor took the bike to Dresda, he had them service the front brake and fit a new Motobatt battery. Other notable features include the original optional steering damper, alloy-flanged rims and electronic ignition.

Of course, while the bike looks ready to ride, bidders should bear in mind that it has not been presented for an MoT since 2016 so they will need to satisfy themselves of its roadworthiness before taking to the road.

If you’re hankering after a classic café racer, you could soon find yourself doing one of several things:

Really, that last outcome is preferable, and you know you’ll be in safe hands when you buy a Dresda. Original Dresdas from the ’60s and ’70s are extremely rare machines these days, and though you could go straight to Dave Degens’s workshop and commission a brand-new one, this represents an opportunity to acquire one at a fraction of the price and with that magnificent front brake which is in itself a collectors’ piece. 

When this Dresda Lightweight was built, it represented the last word in café racer construction, and even today it’s a formidable piece of engineering. If we were in your shoes, we’d buy it right now because its value is only going to increase.