Howard Raymond Davies
Epithet: TT Rider 1920s: TT Rider who "came back from the dead"
Record type: Biographies
Biography: Howard Raymond Davies was born in Birmingham in 1895. Prior to the First World War, he had ridden in the TT for Sunbeam. During the war he trained as a pilot with the Royal Flying Corps. He was shot down in 1917 and presumed dead, his obituary appearing in ‘Motorcycling’, but Davies had survived and was in a German POW camp, dreaming of building the perfect motorcycle.
After the war he returned to racing and in 1924 founded HRD to build and race motorcycles at the TT. Success at the 1925 TT meant that orders for his motorcycles (marketed as ‘Produced by a Rider’) exceeded production at his Wolverhampton works, but the firm was never profitable and was absorbed into Vincent-HRD.
Gender: Male