Peter's right, of course. There are so many stories and half-truths about Mike's Bike, and I won't pretend to know even half of it ... But here goes!
Ducati/NCR originally supplied three bikes. Two - those for Hailwood and Roger Nicholls - went to Steve Wynne/Sports Motorcycles via the UK importer, Coburn and Hughes. The third, the one that Jim Scaysbrook rode (he crashed at Governor's Bridge when the front carburettor slide jammed open), belonged to the Australian importers; but it too was race prepared by Steve Wynne.
Each originally came in NCR colours; but, for the TT, they were re-painted in the main sponsor's (Castrol) colours - coincidentally red, white and green.
Now here comes the confusing bit ...
There were FOUR engines on the Island: 088238 (Hailwood), 088239 (Nicholls), Scaysbrook's (I don't know the number) and a extra motor, 088243, that Franco Farnè, acting as one of the factory race mechanics for the event (and himself a great racer and a pivotal engine developer working closely with Ign. Taglioni) brought over with him.
Before the race, Mike's bike was fitted with this spare engine because Farnè was worried about the work the original engine had done in testing. As it happened, the new engine blew its bottom bevel gear just after it crossed the finish line!
So you can imagine there was an amount of changing bits around in order to get the bike ready for the next outings, first at Mallory Park and then at Donnington. The old engine (088238) was re-fitted for these races. Then at Donnington, Mike crashed and smashed the fairing. So that too was replaced for the final outing at Silverston.
For the rest, this is what Steve Wynne says:
"At the end of 1978, the Hailwood Ducati was sold unrestored and as used - complete with Donington crash scrapes - to a Japanese collector. This was the same engine and chassis, both bearing nos. 088238, that Mike had used at Mallory, Donington and Silverstone, and the same chassis - but NOT the same engine - that he won the TT with, too; and, in my book, it's the chassis that determines a bike's identity: Mike Hailwood sat in that seat to win the TT, and nobody else did so on a race track after that round at Silverstone.
The second bike that Roger Nicholls rode in the TT (he retired with, of all things, a broken oil level inspection window) was purchased from the factory by the British Ducati importers, who then refused to sell it on to me as my original deal with Ducati had been, but instead turned it into the first 'forgery'. This they later sold to a German enthusiast together with a letter certifying it was the Hailwood bike, which it most assuredly never was - Mike never even rode a single practice lap on it, and the importers in any case had no involvement whatsoever with our race effort, so couldn't have known which bike was which.
"I still owned not only the blown-up TT-winning engine (088243), but also thedisastrous full-works 950F1 bike ridden to fifth place in the 1979 TT by Mike. In 1982, I decided to enter myself in the Daytona BoTT race, using the 1979 chassis which Ron Williams of Maxton had by now transformed from a camel into a thoroughbred handling-wise, into which I installed the 1978 engine that I'd heavily modified while rebuilding it in search of more power. The blow-up had meant that timing gears, crank, big bore pistons and cylinders, valves, gearbox etc. were all replacements, which basically only meant the crankcases and head castings were original Hailwood TT items, even if modified inside. However, I'd overdone the tuning, and at Daytona the crankcases split which, being special sandcast units, were irreplaceable, and unrepairable. For a second time, the engine was cast under a bench!
"A year or so later the next 'con' artist appeared on the scene, contacting me from the USA purporting to be the world's biggest Hailwood fan. Did I even have just a nut or bolt off the original Hailwood bike lying around which he could have to worship? Being a gullible type, I informed him that I still had the TT-winning engine, even though it was scrap and heavily modified, plus a spare wheel and a damaged fork slider that apart from the trashed fairing was the only casualty of the Donington crash. I sold him the stuff for just a few pounds - then a year or so later I find 'The Original TT-Winning Mike Hailwood Ducati' has gone up for sale in the USA, completely cloned from just a cracked crankcase and a broken fork leg! After correspondence between myself and the buyer of this fake, the purchaser has now sued the man who created it, and the bike itself is now in the hands of a third party, who has now broken it up.
Meanwhile, the genuine bike re-appeared from Japan in 1996, and was sold at auction in Los Angeles to the present owners - and I can assure everyone who sees the bike that this is indeed the genuine Hailwood Ducati and, as the mug who sold to Japan for £5,000 in 1978 and tried unsuccessfully to buy it back at auction in 1996 with a failed bid of £80,000, I have absolutely no axe to grind about its authenticity. In fact, of all the people involved, I'd be very unlikely to try to put up that much money to buy a forgery! The original engine with matching numbers - which Mike used in practice at the TT and won the race with at Mallory - that came with the bike when new is still installed in it, together with every nut, bolt and washer that he raced with during the 1978 season. Odd bits do exist elsewhere which wereused at some stage by Mike, but that's the nature of racing's wear and tear."
And finally:
According to Philip Aynsley, Jim Scaysbook's bike went to Oz, was raced - including by one Wayne Gardner - and now lives in restored retirement in Queensland.
I don't know how the bike in the factory museum fits into this story. The decals on the fairing are subtly different what you see in photos from the TT - but then they would be, seeing as this fairing was smashed to smithereens at Donnington. But it wears a no. 12, the number Mike had on the Island.
And Steve says there is now only one ... but what about Roger Nicholls' bike, the bike sold erroneously to a German collector ???
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