Half a century
of open road.
Born on the Wirral in 1975.
A workshop in chapters.
One workshop. One idea. (Don’t tell Honda.)
David ‘Fid’ Fiddaman finishes his engineering apprenticeship and sets up a workshop on the Wirral. The first product is a vacuum gauge for balancing carburettors, made because nothing good enough existed. Honda UK becomes a customer, and Davida produces tuning equipment here right up to 1980. They never know that ‘Unit 2’ is his mother’s garage at 385 Leasowe.
“I never actually told them that Unit 2 was my mother’s garage — and we always smiled about that.”David ‘Fid’ Fiddaman
Thursday night, Birkenhead. Friday morning, France.
Fid and his friends ride out from the gates of the Birkenhead shipyard to the Le Mans 24 Hours, leaving Thursday night and back at work by Monday morning. The company name ‘Davida Moto’ carries the French ‘Moto’ as a permanent reminder of those early journeys. The wing on the logo still reads it today.
“I liked the sound of the French words and phrases. The type face of our brand is very much a thing of that era — the same as the 1970s music type faces, and bikes like the Honda CB.”David ‘Fid’ Fiddaman
The big Japanese superbikes had one problem. We fixed it.
The GS Suzuki, Honda, Kawasaki and Ducati Hailwood are the machines of the era: fast, powerful, and notorious for a speed wobble at 120mph. Davida starts producing swinging arms and mono-shock frame conversions for all of them. Fifteen minutes on a revolving welding fixture, powder-coated and anodised, £100 each. Not a single one ever came back out of alignment.
“These were the bucking broncos of the era. I do wonder if those 120mph speed wobblers were more dangerous than choppers.”David ‘Fid’ Fiddaman
We rode to Köln. We drove a van to Milan. We never looked back.
Fid rides his XT500 to the Köln motorcycle show, passing USA military convoys on the German autobahns. The following year, they drive a van to Milan for their first international trade stand. A major Swiss customer places one of their first international orders. Davida has always thought of itself as a global company. Now it has proof.
“As we left Köln, I remarked that we should have our own stand at one of these shows. We did so the following year.”David ‘Fid’ Fiddaman
Everyone thought Fid was crazy.
The pudding basin is dead, or so the industry believes. Davida starts production of the Classic (60), a fibreglass shell with hand-cut leather lining, and takes it to the Köln IFMA show. Strange enquiries begin arriving in the post from Japan: clippings from Classic Bike magazine, cut out by people who want one and don’t know how to ask. Classic Bike UK puts Davida on the cover. The first of fifteen.
“Everyone thought I was crazy to resurrect the 1960s helmets. We just liked the look of them. As it happened, so did a lot of other motorcyclists.”David ‘Fid’ Fiddaman
They came looking for us.
Fid flies to Tokyo on a UK Trade Mission, meets at the British Embassy next to the Imperial Palace, and immediately decides to navigate the city on his own. The Japanese distributor he meets at Köln that year represents Davida for over twenty years. The helmet has barely arrived and it’s already international.
“I decided from then on I would be an independent traveller and just get about on my own.”David ‘Fid’ Fiddaman
We built a paint shop from a shipping container. It worked.
Moving to a larger building in Moreton on the Wirral, Davida focuses fully on helmets. The swinging arm business winds down as Japanese manufacturers improve their own frames. A paint shop is needed and there’s no budget for one. So they build it themselves from a shipping container, wiring in extraction fans and flame-proof lighting by hand.
“I don’t reckon we could do that now. But then it was a matter of needs must.”David ‘Fid’ Fiddaman
Alan comes back. Everything changes.
Alan Davenport rejoins Davida. He first joined in 1980 before leaving to study industrial design. Together, Fid and Alan develop the Classic Jet, choosing the European ECE R22-03 route rather than the British standard. It’s a decision that defines Davida as a European company. Sue Kirkham joins the following year as financial controller and becomes a permanent presence at every major show for the next three decades.
ECE R22-03. And, officially, a limited company.
The Classic Jet earns its first European certification. Davida is incorporated as a limited company. The company is, for the first time, formally what it has always been: a British helmet manufacturer built to a European standard with global ambitions.
Ken Danks, the North Circular, and a photographer nobody knew was following us.
Davida shoots at the reopening of the Ace Café in London. Their helmets have been at the heart of the café racer scene since the mid-1980s. As they pull away from an arch on the North Circular, Fid notices a figure in pursuit. A year later, a book is published in Japan, ‘Rockers and Café Racers’ by Ken Nemoto, with photographs taken that night. Many of the Japanese rockers in its pages are already wearing Davidas.
“A Japanese photographer had followed us round, so we unwittingly contributed to the book’s success.”David ‘Fid’ Fiddaman
CAD on the screen. Chavant clay on the bench.
Design begins on the Davida Jet (80), taken to ECE R-22-05 using CAD, while the form is still shaped by hand in traditional Chavant clay. The two methods derive our classic shape and shell together, with equal emphasis on fit and on look: a helmet anyone can wear for serious riding without giving it a second thought. It becomes our second European Standard helmet as the goalposts move again: by now both Britain and France have joined the rest of Europe under harmonised standards.
Seventeen world champions. Their original racing designs. One series.
The Davida Signature Racing Series: seventeen world champions’ original racing designs, sourced in person, reproduced on the Classic shell. It launches at Ferry Brouwer’s Centennial Classic TT at Assen, the event that gathered the 1960s champions back together on their original machinery. Davida was there, helmets on.
Low profile. No compromise. Ahead of its time by a decade.
The design process for the Speedster begins, a close-fitting open-face with a silhouette unlike anything else on the market, developed for the Japanese market and reaching the JIS T8133 standard the following year. Japan responds immediately. The Scandinavian chop scene adopts it through the early 2000s. Nobody at Davida calls it an icon. They’re just making what feels right.
Reproducing the 1950s Ducati works liveries. For the actual Moto Giro.
Davida collaborates with Ducati on the Motogiro d’Italia, reproducing the 1950s works rider liveries, including the helmet of Leopoldo Tartarini, worn by riders on the event itself. Period-correct in every detail.
Pilgrim Street. Within sight of where Fid served his apprenticeship.
Davida moves into a 150-year-old building in Birkenhead, within sight of the dock cranes where Fid completed his engineering training three decades earlier. Over the years it was fitted out as a complete helmet works — spray booths for the hand-painting, sewing machines for the leather linings, a masking bench where shells were lined off by hand under a laser guide, and a showroom. ISO 9001 follows in 2007.
Wheels & Waves. Dirt Quake. The Bike Shed. The world catches up.
Davida begins appearing at the festivals defining the new wave of motorcycle culture: Wheels & Waves in Biarritz, Dirt Quake, and The Bike Shed in London. Austin Vince wears a Davida Speedster for 4,000 miles off-road from London to Mauritania. Gary Inman rides one 8,000 miles from New York to California and back. The helmet that never went away is everywhere again.
“A national treasure.” — Sideburn Magazine
Gary Inman, the most authoritative voice in the global café racer and custom scene, writes an eight-page feature on Davida for Sideburn Magazine. His verdict: a national treasure. It is the most significant editorial endorsement the brand has ever received. They haven’t mentioned it once since.
Thirty years of Speedster development - the v3 launches. And, incidentally, the Rolling Stones.
The Speedster V3 launches, dual certified to ECE R22-05 and DOT, and the first Davida developed with designers from outside the company: the Italian MotoGP and F1 racing-helmet team. It fulfils a long-held ambition, a road-legal version of the original Speedster, held at an exceptionally low profile through advanced orbital lamination shell techniques over multi-density EPS liners, with a removable leather liner now offered in five colours. In the same year, Davida collaborates with the Rolling Stones. It is not the strangest collaboration they have ever done.
Grayson Perry. Brough Superior. Neither needed an explanation.
Davida collaborates with Grayson Perry CBE, artist, Turner Prize winner and committed motorcyclist, on a limited edition helmet. The same year brings a partnership with Brough Superior: the most prestigious name in British motorcycling history, revived. Two of the most resonant names in motorcycling, in a single twelve months.
A full-face, at last. And unmistakably a Davida.
The launch of the Koura at EICMA 2017 is the realisation of a long-held ambition: to produce a full-face helmet. Available from Spring 2018, the new Koura is retro-inspired and high-performance, clearly identifiable as a Davida, with an exceptionally low profile and a strikingly bold style that is impossible to ignore on the street or the track.
It is Davida’s first full-face, the result of their Technical Team working alongside the Italian MotoGP and F1 racing-helmet designers who delivered the smallest-profile road-legal Speedster V3 in 2016. The Koura integrates the clean contours and compact proportions of 70s and 80s full-face helmets with key race-bred features: an uncompromising fusion of innovative design, exceptional ergonomics and superior comfort. A modern safety product, transcended through Davida’s unique aesthetics.
Neil Campbell breaks the world bicycle speed record at 175mph in a Koura.
Neil Campbell reaches 280.5 km/h (175mph, motor-paced) in a Davida Koura. He chose it himself. Davida also supplies custom helmets to Aston Martin and races at Goodwood Revival with Ian Bain alongside John McGuinness. It is, quietly, one of the most remarkable years in the brand’s history.
Fred Perry. The original renegade.
Davida collaborates with Fred Perry, a brand with its own long history of being claimed by subcultures it never planned for. Two British originals. Fifty years in.
The Speedster V4. ECE R22-06. Still made the same way.
The Speedster V4 launches, certified to ECE R22-06, the most stringent European safety standard. Four dedicated shell sizes for genuine proportional fit. The most accessible Speedster ever made. Forty years of development. Still hand-finished. Still leather-lined. Still unmistakably Davida.
Discover the V4A wall of years.
