I might be interested in a "Whispering Copper", as the LE Velocette was known. They were quite heavily used as city patrol vehicles for the police. Since they were water-cooled and heavily muffled, they were very quiet.
A fellow apprentice at BAC had a very early one, which I rode fairly regularly when going out to pick up the ofiice's lunch order. It had an automobile-type gearbox, 3-speeds, non-synchro, with an H-gate shifter on the right side of the spine. To down shift, you had to operate the clutch, move the shift to neutral, blip the throttle, pull the clutch in again and then shift the lever into a lower gear. Since the "blip" was done with the same hand as the shift, not many people bothered to downshift!
Later versions got redesigned to be more like mainstream bikes, with a constant-mesh transmission, shifted by a foot lever. I always thought the early versions were designed by a guy with no left leg, as the back brake was on the right, the shifter was hand operated, also on the right. There were no left-foot functions.
The handlebars were unusual too. They looked like the handles on a wheelbarrow, as the headstock was so far forward of the seating position. The bars came almost staight back towards the rider and were really strange to work with. You had to move the whole assembly off to the side to change direction.
A late-model LE would be fun. With 200 very relaxed (L-head - UK term side-valve) ccs, you sure wouldn't win a stoplight Grand Prix. I doubt it put out more than about 8 horsepower on a good day.
Velocette made an OHV, air-cooled sport bike (called the Valiant, I think) that was based on the LE and I think it kept the shaft drive.
