Bespoke British motorcycle brand; Hesketh Motorcycles are in serious risk of going bust as they are facing up to failure to deliver a motorcycle order after a customer paid a deposit for a purpose built Sonnet some two years ago.
It is reported that in May 2021 a potential customer paid a £10,000 deposit for Hesketh Motorcycles to build a £30,000 Hesketh Sonnet Cafe Racer. Whilst there was acknowledgement from both parties that the bike would take a few months to build, it soon became apparent that the bike was not being built.
The story gets rather hazy thereafter. The customer emailed repeatedly for progress reports but these were allegedly not forthcoming. Hesketh motorycles in turn reported they did reply but not come to an agreement. There are further reports that the customer wanted the intellectual rights to the Hesketh name as some kind of collateral until the deposit was paid back or presumably that motorcycle was completed.
So two years later, no motorcycle and no agreement could be reached between the two parties and seemingly all aspects of communication had broken down with the rights and wrongs not as clear cut as one would assume in a failure to deliver case.
The customer ultimately passed the matter onto his solicitors to take steps to force a payment and this has led to the company insolvency.
This was on the back of the company claiming that Covid and Euro 5 regulation issues had contributed to the failure to deliver, however it had also launched the 450cc Hesketh Heresy so one can only imagine it was this bike that had issues with Euro 5 compliance and this must have distracted the company from other matters at hand?
With a case like this there is always two sides of the story and much of the facts appear to be shrouded in he said-he said accusations. However the result is that the customer has served a winding up order and this could be the very end of Hesketh Motorcycles unless this matter can be resolved in the mean time.