And the town's representative in Westminster is no stranger to two wheels – the born-to-be-wild politician used to own one in his youth.

"I had a BSA in my younger days and I really enjoyed riding it," he said. "I was very tempted by some of the gleaming models on show in Birmingham, but perhaps I'll stick to four wheels these days.

"Seriously, the issue of born-again bikers is a serious one. A lot of the casualties on the roads are people who used to ride in the 70s like myself and have bought a bike to revisit their youth. The modern bikes are so much more powerful than the ones we were used to and as a consequence they tend to have accidents. The Conservatives feel there ought to be better training available for motorcyclists to cut down on accidents for groups like them."

Mr Goodwill was invited to open the show in his capacity as Shadow Transport Minister and gave a keynote speech to the industry.

"First of all I told them that the Conservatives plan to roll out the policy that Boris Johnson has introduced in London, allowing bikes to use bus lanes – we want to see that introduced across the UK," he said. "I also talked about the contribution that motorcycling can make to reducing CO2 emissions and congestion on our roads, I feel that contribution's really valuable.

"We need to do more work to get the figures straight about how much motorcycling can help with reducing emissions, " he added. "At the moment there's no agreed test cycle as there is for cars, which makes it harder to promote bikes as a green mode of transport. The Conservatives are committed to drive that forward."