Real or Replica?

As the MSDS/GS bikes are sought after, & prices reflect this, a market in fakes or dressed up Turismo models exists & is growing. With most other makes of bike a dressed up roadster is not so easy to pass off as a more sporting version e.g a BSA B31 can be made to look (& go) like the far more desireable Gold Star but will never reach the price of , or be mistaken for, the genuine Goldie no matter how well the upgrade has been completed.

In contrast it is very easy to turn a late 175SS into a 175 MSDS lookalike - very few people will be able to tell a real one from a replica. Parilla themselves made fakes possible by using several MSDS/GS components on far more humble 125cc bikes.

As long as one is aware of precisely what one is buying, & paying an appropriate price, an MSDS/GS replica can be a very handsome machine to own & use. Indeed the only chance most of us will have of owning an MSDS/GS will be to build, or buy, a replica.

Over the years I've come across several Parillas which had been either modified to ape the 60s Cafe Racer look or had lost parts during storage - to other projects or to use on similar but more popular Italian lightweights. Mudguards, seats & tanks often missing or replaced with items from another bike.

In the days when Parilla was an unknown & unloved marque these bikes were worth even less than the low prices fetched by carefully restored original examples. Most were destined to be bought as "parts bikes" to support the restoration of an original model.

It has become evident that events such as the Motogiro D'Italia has increased the demand for 175cc bikes generally & Parillas in particular. This fact is not lost on some of the UK (& Italian) dealers in classic machinery. Some have rather more imagination than integrity when it comes to machine descriptions & provenance. About 12 months ago a mundane Turismo was advertised as an "ex works racer" at £4500. ...with a 402xxx engine number?

The hacked about & incomplete bike is now the basis of a works constructed "Parilla Racer".

I was recently approached by the owner of a 175SS which had suffered the indignity of a "Cafe Attack" & was in quite a sorry state. Not irretrievable as some of the original parts were still with the bike but with odd wheels & some bodgery to be undone. He sold the bike & it has now reappeared at twice the price in a UK classic bike dealers advert...as a Racer. Whether the dealer was conned or the prospective buyer is about to be I'm not sure. The bike appears to be in exactly the same sorry state it was when I first saw it.

How to avoid being conned? Difficult. One fairly reliable indicator with 99% of Parillas is that the series number tells you what the bike started out as - whatever it looks like now.

Very few 175cc Parillas were raced in the UK but in Italy several ran in the F2/F3 series. True "racers" were produced by the factory & these models were available to order. The vast majority of these bikes bore the 500xxx or 501xxx series numbers. The road models ran with series numbers from 400xxx to 410xxx. There are some exceptions to this "rule" but any bike offered as a true racer with numbers outside the 500 / 501 series will no doubt have provenance to support its claim. Some engines have no series number & this is used as evidence of "works" race shop involvement. This may be the case but engines & cases were supplied in large numbers with no series numbers for dealers to stamp when replacing/repairing engines under warranty. I have just such a 250 engine.

It is quite possible that a Parilla road model could be converted to perform as well as the true racer in the same way that a B31 BSA can be fitted with BSA Gold Star parts & run very well indeed. The difference is that a modified B31 sells for less than a Goldie.......

More on replicas....From PJ Johnson - A man who knows a race Parilla from a cobbled up roadster,

The subject on many minds seems to be the stupid money prices, sellers are getting for fraudulently represented Parillas. This one takes the cake at least for the present.

Remember the Original Red Rockett ? built by Earl Workman using a rather short list of Parilla Tourist parts back in 1978. It was covered in Richard Renstrom's coffee table book. Richard tried to tell everyone that the bike was a factory "works" bike. The factory, he said, the factory used red engine cases and red hubs as the racing colors...."Bull Sh*t I told him to his face way back then ! I've spoken to many others whose opinion was...'Richard would say anything to sell his publication.

The engine was stock with one plug. The painted red engine, hubs and graphics as well as the fenders. The fender bracesare coat hangars ! All this from the fertile imagination of Earl Workman. He was a nice man and never pretended that the bike was anything special.

The bike was bought by a USA Fellow whose name I can't recall just now. He kept it for about 8 months and then advertised it world wide. Alan Puckett of Sydney

When last I heard of it, after it changed hands several times, it was being displayed in the window of "the Duck inn Hotel" in Perth.

Then just recently The bike surfaced again with outrageous claims as to its heritage. It is now said to be the bike that took second at Daytona with Alan Shepard as the rider ! Anyone that is "down under" should be aware of this huckster. He claims he never ran the bike in all the time it was in the window of the hotel and bar, but it was meticulously looked after How does a person do that ?...did he dust it every day ? Here's how it looks now...That must be an "Ex Works" header pipe on it now. ?

Earl Workman asked me about 5 years ago if I might have another collection of bits that would help him to make another one. I told him I would look out for him as they just weren't available currently. He died a year or so later. Believe it or not, the pictures of the bike taken in front of that old wooden store... are Polaroid's...I have them in my files.