Egli Motorcycles Workshop To Close
The motorcycle business has never been easy, and even a famous name cannot ensure a future for a small factory. Alexander and Felicitas Frei purchased Egli Motorradtechnik AG from Fritz Egli in 2015, with high hopes to carry on with his legacy of building amazing high-performance cafe racers. This week, the Freis put out a press release stating they are shuttering the famous house of Egli:
There's a time for everything...
More than 9 years ago, Fritz W. Egli was looking for a successor for his Egli Motorradtechnik AG and finally found it in 2015. When we stepped in to continue the company at its location in Bettwil, our aim was not just to keep the workshop as it was at the time and to continue importing brands. We wanted to raise Egli to a higher level as a Swiss Motorcycle brand and also to build up a classic department which, in addition to the Egli range, would carefully restore vintage and classic motorcycles by hand.Our re-entry into the racing scene with our involvement in the IOM Classic TT was intended to be a further step towards revitalizing the brand. At the same time, we tried to bring the Egli-Vincent trademark back to its place of origin. Unfortunately in vain - the Vincent and Egli-Vincent brands were sold to a group in India [actually, the names were licensed by their owner many years ago - ed.].
After the presentation of the new Egli "Fritz W." in 2017, the idea of an Egli Motorcycle developed and manufactured entirely in Switzerland - including its own engine with road approval - became more and more concrete, until the starting signal for the new project was given in 2018 with a team of young engineers and qualified employees. The new Egli with a 1400 cc V2 engine is running, has already passed the first noise and exhaust measurements and has covered a considerable distance on closed roads. We have come a long way, but we are still too far away from road homologation and it will take a lot of time and additional financial commitment to overcome the final hurdles in the „forest“ of standards and regulations.
The world has changed rapidly in recent years - economically, politically and environmentally - and the requirements on motorized traffic are changing at the same pace. We too have now reached retirement age and have therefore decided to step back from daily business.
Over the past 9 years, we have had many great moments with customers, employees, business partners and friends. We were able to celebrate successes and also had to deal with setbacks - everything that is part of an exciting motorcycle life. We would like to thank you all very much for this. Without your support, many things would not have been possible. But everything has its time and so we will cease business operations at the Bettwil on November 30, 2023 and put the company into an orderly liquidation.
We are pleased and grateful that all employees have already found a new job or have decided to become self-employed.We wish you all the best for the future!
- Alexander & Felicitas Frei
For your additional interest: the following is an exclusive interview for The Vintagent with Alexander Frei, after his purchased the Egli name outright from Fritz W. Egli. Paul has long known Alexander's cousin, John Frei of San Francisco, via a long association with the Velocette Owners Club. John Frei’s grandfather was brother to Alexander's grandfather, and was watchmaker in Switzerland who emigrated to US.
Alexander Frei (AF): Motorcycles take over your life.
I started my professional career in the watchmaking industry; starting the traditional way with an apprenticeship as a micromechanic, then earned a microengineering diploma. When I met my wife Felicitas, her father owned a medical implant company, so I joined the business. When her father died his businesses were sold, with the last in 2000. Then I started a career in car racing, as more or less a hobby. At the beginning I raced Lamborghinis, then was a factory driver for Courage Competition, a French endurance racing team in the Le Mans series. I raced LeMans four times with the LMP1, and three times with and LMP2. Kevin Schwantz was racing the same LeMans team as mine, and Mario Andretti too, but a few years before me. Mario Andretti was old but still a good endurance driver – the cars were fast, but the materials were not always first class as they were short of money. You’d be going fast them boom, you waste time in the pits. I’m not as good a motorcyclist as car driver, but I’ve always had motorcycles, since I was 19 or 20. In 1982 my family went to Laguna Seca with my cousins, and saw Randy Mamola in Battle of the Twins racing, against Norton, Triumph etc. Kenny Roberts was still racing.
AF: One of my sons is 32 years old, he started as a car mechanic, then became a motorcycle mechanic. He worked for Harley-Davidson, and one said he’d like to open his own workshop. We discussed this, and he was looking for motorcycle brands to open his own dealership. One of the names was Norton, the other Royal Enfield, and the Swiss distributor was Fritz Egli, and they had a meeting. Of course I knew his name, I'd read about him, but didn’t go to this meeting. My son told me he’s selling his company, I said ok let’s have a look! I was fascinated about the whole thing. I realized of course for 25 or 30 years they hadn't built any motorcycles: they built frames and parts, and strange things like Yamaha Vmax tuning, but not real Eglis anymore. I started discussing with my son how he might start his dealership: I could buy Egli to restart some kind of motorcycle manufacturing, and also a restoration business. This was the initial idea, in the summer of 2014. I bought the Egli business on Jan 1 2015. I never thought I’d start a business again, certainly not in motorcycles. But when I saw the Egli company with such great history and bikes, I thought 'let’s try it, it can only break'. Otherwise the name is gone! I’ve seen this in the Swiss watchmaking industry many times, smaller shops breaking down, then a revival with external investors, but it's really difficult to do this.
AF: Euro3 vs Euro4 means much less noise, and pollution is much stricter, these are the two main factors, plus ABS and OBD now. The petrol tank must breathe through an active carbon filter, etc, which makes construction much more complicated. I’m a afraid instead of two wheels and an engine, there will be a lot more gimmicks to hide, which is no longer simple. In Switzerland we are still allowed to sell Euro3 bikes, but I think the rest of Europe cannot. For example in Germany, lots of bikes had a fire sale as they couldn’t pass Euro4. In Europe we can still sell Euro3 bikes now, all that were imported or built before 2016. So Egli is more or less in the last minutes… but we are so limited in production. They inspected the bikes before the end of the last year, and we were not allowed to build more than 6, but for me it’s ok. Everything we do in the future must pass Euro4, and in 2020 will be Euro5, and it’s not clear what will change – definitely more regulation; less noise, less pollution, and so on.
AF: I don’t know, maybe we have to look at electric bikes.
It's not possible to use older engines for manufacturing. For example, the Godet-Egli-Vincents have to match Euro3 too, so he can’t use a newly manufactured Vincent engine, it's only possible for an old bike restoration: you cannot start new production with an old engine. You’d have to design a new Vincent motor, and even Fritz tried - I saw the plans, he looked for financing, the approached bankers, but couldn’t raise the money. It must have been in the 1980s, a Vtwin. We will have to tackle the Euro4 regulations, from the structural side the bike is not a problem, but the ABS is not so easy to get. I was in discussion with motorcycle companies who were willing to sell us an engine, but the problem is with Bosch who has the patents for ABS, but they don't sell a full package with all the electronics. And that's very costly to develop; we would have to pay them to develop the software for our bikes, and with only 6 or 12 bikes its not workable. Thierry Henriette had the same experience with the new Brough Superior; ABS makes everything more complicated and expensive. Fritz Egli was in the workshop many times saying how difficult it is now, and how easy it was then!
AF: If one of our customers wants to race our 6 new bikes, we have tuning kits, exhausts etc, but of course that's not street legal. We’re a bit into classic racing, we race a Godet 500 Vincent at the Classic TT, with Horst Zeigel riding for us, and we’ll go back this year. I think we’ll do another bike like Egli did in the past, in Switzerland we have one or two classic races, and there are 500 Honda motors available. For now that’s enough to put in a foot, but not jump wholly into classic racing. Plus, we've decided to show a 750 Honda Egli at the 2018 Concorso Villa d’Este, so see you there!
[All of us at The Vintagent lament the closure of Egli Motorcycles, and wish all parties the very best in future projects. The Egli name will surely live as long as motorcycles are remembered.]
Do Cafe Racers Dream of Electric Starts?
By Scott Rook
Being a child of the 1980s, I never knew a time when fast bikes on the showroom floor didn’t mimic the factory's race bikes. Kawasaki had the Ninja and Honda had the Hurricane. [Shameless plug: read our history of the cafe racer, 'Ton Up!'] The bikes appeared on magazine covers in the school library that all my friends drooled over in study hall. When I got interested in vintage bikes in the 1990s, the idea of an old street bike that was kitted out in race trim took hold: a cafe racer. The Honda CR750 was the bike that did it for me. Cycle World ran a story about Dick Mann and his Daytona-winning Honda CR750 from 1970: someone built a replica and was racing it at Daytona in the AHRMA series. The factory CR750 racer looked nothing like the old CB750 that I'd owned. The Honda had been replaced by a 1979 Triumph Bonneville, but when I saw the CR750 in the magazine I thought, I could build that and ride it on the street. After all it was just a CB750 underneath that root beer colored fairing, and CB750s could be found cheap in the early 1990s. This was my cafe racer dream. I started making spreadsheets of parts and searching the internet with my dial-up Internet connection. I perused the newspaper looking for any old cheap CB750. I found one; a non-running K1 for $250. My girlfriend (who would later become my wife) went with me to check it out. We stopped at U-Haul on the way and picked up a motorcycle trailer just in case. The bike was rough. The cases were cracked but most of it was there, and it had a title. The 1971 CB750 came home with me that day and has been with me ever since.
I had loved the process of building my Dunstall Honda: it was full of the anticipation of riding a bike that belonged in a different era. The Dunstall Honda was something different, like a lost treasure that the world had forgotten. And I brought my cafe racer dream to life in my garage. The realization was exhilarating, but the ride was terrible. I remembered my old CB750 and how it did literally everything: I rode it on grass while learning to ride a motorcycle, I rode it to school and took it on camping trips with my friend on the back. That old CB750 took me and my high school girlfriend everywhere. The Dunstall Honda did nothing well other than go fast and look great. I couldn’t take it anywhere without experiencing pain. Maybe that is how beautiful strange things from a different era are supposed to be. They have to extract a toll from their owners for their existence. Not just a financial cost, but actual pain when used as intended. I wanted to like riding the bike, and gave it my best, but never really enjoyed it. So I changed clip-ons and played with different hand grips, and tried to make it even more cafe racer by adding a boxed swingarm and rear Hurst Airheart disk brake conversion. I changed the wheels to the even more rare Henry Abe mags, all in an effort to love the bike I had built. None of it worked. I rode the bike once or twice a summer for many years. I polished the aluminum covers and waxed it. I kept it in tip top running condition hoping that someday I would love riding it. But that never happened. The cafe racer dream had become a painful nightmare.
I still have a cafe racer dream, but it doesn’t involve Dick Mann or clip-ons. I want to build a bike that has the cafe racer look but keeps the standard riding position. Paul Dunstall built Sprint versions of his Norton Atlases and Commandos. These were bikes with performance upgrades and the cafe tank and seat but with regular bars and pegs. A bright red Dunstall Domiracer Sprint sounds about perfect for me. I guess I have a new cafe racer dream. Stay tuned.
The Pornography of Speed
The Detroit-built V-8 engine is as big a chunk of American identity as the flag, the cowboy hat, and the jacked pickup with tires as big as Daisy Duke’s inflatables. American-style drag racing squeezes a nation’s worth of sex and violence into this engine’s compact lump, and within its confines, hot steel shafts push oily pistons up tightly-bored holes, mad hot with the stroking, exploding every four thrusts. It is powergasm on asphalt for all to witness; the earth-splitting bellow of crazy-revving engines, the flaming cannonfire of exhaust stacks, the steely whine of a supercharger, the rippling deformation of tire-skin under the wrenching torque of actually unmeasurable horsepower. The V-8 engine is nearly ubiquitous in the drag scene (and NASCAR), like the Frenchman’s bread and the Swissman’s cheese…more like the goddamn air, because V-8s are everywhere. With hundreds of millions built since the 1930s, the foundation for outrageous power is as common as mud and weeds, and about as cheap.
[This article was originally published in the Spring 2015 issue of At Large magazine]
The Remarkable Mister Cox
The label ‘artist’ is tossed around lightly these days, for which we can blame Marcel Duchamp - but he had his reasons. Anyone building an aesthetically pleasing custom motorcycle gets an A in this post-‘Art of the Motorcycle’ world, but if a good custom doesn’t deserve a museum slot, what does? Still, the realm of aesthetics is not necessarily the realm of art, and a talented stylist with bodywork and paint doesn’t necessarily see the world through the strange prism of an artist. That’s not a put down; the world needs good design - it makes life better. But natural born artists are weird; they do what they do because they’re compelled to. Lucky for us, some artists stick their hands in design with remarkable results; for example, Paul Cox.
And then there’s the question of fame (or notoriety); some artists get famous, most labor in obscurity. Paul Cox hasn’t shunned the spotlight, but he certainly hasn’t had his due, which is partly due to honest humility, and partly the company he’s kept on his journey as an artist-craftsman. Cox rose to visibility in the late 1990s beside his friend Larry DeSmedt, who burned very brightly as the consummate showman Indian Larry. It was easy to misunderstand Paul Cox and Keino Sasaki’s role at Indian Larry Enterprises, given Larry’s charisma, and his fully reciprocated love for the camera. But anyone who’s seen Paul Cox’s work understands his past contributions, and the incredible range of his talents, from painting on canvas, making knives from Damascus steel, tooling the finest leather seats anywhere, and building kickass NYC-style choppers.
Growing up in the late 1960s and early ‘70s, Cox painted and drew as kids tend to, but not many children copy the paintings on their grandparents’ walls. “That was my first body of work – my grandmother would buy them for a dollar, which planted the idea of making a living as an artist.” Mid-‘70s choppers and Bicentennial graphics inspired him to create extended-fork bicycles, which soon progressed to minibikes, and making boats and hang gliders; “Basically anything I could make into a moving contraption.” After attending VCU (Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts), Cox moved to New York City (1988). He landed a job in commercial illustration; “I had a ton of work printed in newspapers and magazines, and was making art paintings at home. That lasted two years, until I got sick of advertising illustration.” He started modifying a Yamaha XS650 and a couple of Triumphs; friends soon wanted bikes built for them too.
For a Lower East Side biker, the center of the 1990s universe was Hugh Mackie’s 6th Street Specials. “A lot of my bike world connections were made and grew there, with Hugh and Dimi. They were the first shop to pay me to make a seat; they’d just opened, and it was a high energy scene, really raw, and really a blast.” Paul met Larry DeSmedt at 6th Street, and the pair clicked. By 1992, both worked at the new Psycho Cycles, Larry fabricating and mechanicking, and Paul doing leatherwork and fabrication. “That’s when things really took off. Steg and Frank and Larry and I made up our tight group, but it was my relationship with Larry that was truly inspirational.”
The 1990s chopper scene was volatile and hand-to-mouth, and when Psycho Cycles closed around ’98, Larry built bikes in a little garage below his apartment; “He was totally thrilled doing that, no strings attached, he could walk downstairs in his flip flops and underwear, it was perfect for him.” Hugh Mackie offered Cox space inside 6th St Specials for his leather and fabrication. “I owe so much to Hugh in so many different ways. He’s just a humble soft spoken guy, and it’s easy to pass him over because he’s so laid back, but how much he meant to me coming up in this scene gets glossed over, because there are so many other colorful characters.”
Indian Larry was primary among those; in 2000, he, Paul and other artisans leased a 5000 sq/ft warehouse on North 14th Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. “That’s the space everybody knows, it was one-stop shopping,” laughs Cox. With Keino Sasaki as a mechanic, the shop was re-branded Indian Larry Enterprises. Bobby and Elisa Seeger came on board to manage branding and merchandising and help run the show. The world spun faster when Jesse James invited Larry on his Motorcycle Mania TV show, which brought Indian Larry into the mainstream. “We’d done a lot of film work previously as ‘biker gang guys’ - you’d show up and get $100. Larry really dug that, and did it whenever he could. Motorcycle Mania was right up his alley. Like Ed Roth, Indian Larry was his own finest work of art; he created himself, and wanted to be a showman.” Before the Internet, TV exposure was gold, and people were floored by Indian Larry’s charisma. “He was a real guy, times 10. The world connected with him. It was all going well in 2002/3/4, and Bobby and Elisa really worked with him to keep things on track.”
When Larry left this world on August 30th 2004, the outpouring of emotion convinced Paul, Keino, Bobby, and Elisa to change the shop to Indian Larry Legacy. “We thought we had to carry on what we’d started together, what Larry had built, all that momentum, and not turn it off overnight. The industry was really amazing and accepting. We kept building bikes like we had, but kept moving forward in design ideas in the same niche NYC chopper style - that little hotrod Harley we’d always done, which I still do today. The style is based on where I ride, what I ride, and what inspires me.”
In 2007, Cox decided to branch out. “It was a delicate time, but whatever I was doing creatively, I wanted to do professionally. That’s why my shop is Paul Cox Industries, not Paul Cox Choppers - it’s more about a creative lifestyle. I might look at architecture or furniture, and bring those ideas into leather or knives or bikes. I’m coming full circle to painting again, getting into a kind of pure art instead of only the ‘high performance art’, as I call my chopper work. Painting gets me excited, and influences my other work, and it all plays against each other. For me, painting, leather, and metalwork are always happening at the same time. My shop is set up in zones; there are people who are interested in certain aspects of what I do, who may not know the other things I do!”
[This article originally appeared in the inaugural issue of 1903 magazine, in 2016]
Is This Motorcycle Cursed? A BSA B50 Story
Story and Photos by new Contributor Scott Rook
I had wanted a BSA B50 for many years. They were the final distillation of BSA’s unit singles that won World MX Grand Prix championships with Jeff Smith in the 1960s and were the last competitive factory four stroke MX bikes in the early 1970s. CCM and Cheney built special framed purpose-built racers around the B50 engine that kept them competitive into the mid and late 1970s. The B50 also had the weirdest and one of the most beautifully shaped alloy gas tanks ever conceived for a motorcycle. It wasn’t exactly round but it wasn’t rectangular either. It was dubbed the lozenge. Triumphs had Pear shaped tanks and Harley had Tear Dropped tanks, BSA came out with a cough-drop shaped tank. The B50 was also recognized as one of the last great British singles in a long line of bikes that stretched back to the early teens and twenties. British singles won Grand Prix Championships with great riders like Geoff Duke and John Surtees. Names like Comet, Manx, Goldstar, Venom, Thruxton and Victor were all great British singles. The B50 also performed admirably in road racing and endurance racing, often bettering larger displacement bikes. I wanted a piece of that heritage.
The rebuild started immediately. The night I brought it home, I took it for a quick run around the block and then started taking off all the stuff that had been done to it over the years. Within a few days the engine was out and the frame was getting stripped for powder coat. We have long winters in western New York which becomes rebuild season. The goal was to have my Dick Mann approved BSA B50 D/R ready for spring. I sent the engine to the foremost rebuilder of B50s in the U.S. Ed Valiket of EV Engineering. Everything else I would rebuild myself. Rebuild season is a time of hope and optimism. All the parts you have gathered start to come together to form this thing that has only existed in your brain for years. Winter turned to spring and then summer. The B50 wasn’t ready. The engine was still in another state as was the alloy gas tank that I had sent out to have the dents removed. By August everything had arrived and the drive to complete the bike was in full swing. I took it out for its maiden voyage on August 2, 2018. The bike wasn’t finished but the only things left to do were more cosmetic than functional.
Restorations are never complete when all the parts are done, and the motorcycle is back together. Restorations are really complete after all the running issues have been cleared up and the tuning has been completed which usually takes some weeks and miles. My B50 showed some issues on its first run outside of my neighborhood. The gearbox was giving false neutrals and I couldn’t get it into 4th gear without it popping back out. I thought the gearbox might have some wearing in to do or maybe the clutch needed attention. The other problem was a flat rear tire about 20 miles from my house. The tube stem had been ripped out. I had decided against running a rim lock on the rear tire. My mistake. Clearly this bike needed some more attention. The dirt trails would have to wait. It was August already and I had other bikes to ride that didn’t give false neutrals. The late summer and fall would give way to winter soon and if I wanted to maximize my riding time left then I would take the Triumph or the Dunstall CB750. The B50 got put away until rebuild season started again.
It worked, kind of. I still would get a false neutral once in a while, but I think it was down to the shift lever not being in the ideal position and not getting a good purchase on the lever. The new old MCM Spark Arrestor sounded great, but it would pop and sometimes really POP on deceleration. Probably an exhaust leak. The bike ran great after about 15 minutes of me panicking that I would downshift rather than brake. There were no flat tires, it ran great below 2,000 rpm, and the rear rim is in one piece as far as I know. There are still some things to be done. When I got home there was a noticeable oil leak which is down to the frame being overfilled. I added oil after it wet sumped. My mistake. And the exhaust has to be sealed. I think the cursed bike might actually not be cursed anymore. I didn’t manage to actually get lost, but I rode some roads that I had never been on before. This bike needs further miles. Remember all restorations are only finished after they have been tuned and all the issues worked out. This bike took 4 years after its restoration before it was actually finished. It might not be, but it kind of feels like it for now. I might make Dick Mann proud yet and finally ride to one of those trails that don’t really exist in my part of the world (unless you trespass on county land). The Hammer may still live up to its name and thump once more.
Sinclair C5 - the Personal Electric Vehicle
The concept of 'personal electric mobility' has been around for almost 150 years. In fact, the very first patent for a motorcycle (1871) specified an electric motor, from an era when both motors and the batteries to power them had to be built by hand, and were hardly reliable. Give a read to our History of Electric Motorcycles article for some background. While the legacy of electric vehicles in mass transport and industrial use is a century of success (think electric buses, trollies, trains, forklifts, etc), the mass-production of personal electric vehicles has a far spottier and more problematic story. Only in the past ten years has the electric vehicle become truly popular for personal use, but that doesn't mean clever folks haven't tried.
The Sinclair C5 was assembled from major components by different contractors: the plastic body by Linpac, the chassis and gearbox by Lotus, a Phillips motor, Oldham lead-acid battery, etc. A deal was negotiated with a Hoover washing machine facility in Wales to assemble and test the C5, with production slated for 200,000 units/year. Before the January 1985 launch of the C5, 2500 had already been built to deal with anticipated demand.
The Sinclair C5 was launched at a lavish press reception at Alexandra Palace, featuring Stirling Moss. As it was cold, most of the C5s refused to run properly, and ran out of battery very quickly. Press testers taking the C5 out on the road were terrified when they encountered trucks, which could not see them and belched exhaust directly in their faces. There was no weather protection, so testers froze and got wet. In short, the launch was a disaster. And the bad news kept coming, with magazines and newspapers expressing concern about the lack of any safety equipment, the invisibility of the C5 to many drivers, and the lack of training/licensing/helmet requirement for young riders. The 250W electric motor was insufficient for any hill, and the battery ran flat between 6-12 miles, far below the 30-mile claimed range.
Samuel Aboagye - A Promising Update
We'll expand on this story soon, but much has happened since we installed Samuel Aboagye's Solar Scooter and Solar Taxi in our Electric Revolutionaries exhibit at the Petersen Automotive Museum. The Motor/Cycle Arts Foundation sent team members Dan Green and Greg Hatton to Accra, Ghana, to make a short documentary of Sam's world, which you can see here. Our team was invited to present the story our relationship with Sam at a design conference in Marrakesh, Morocco, by Safir Belali, who teaches at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. Two of our team were able to participate in person - Greg Hatton and Nadia Amer - and Paul d'Orléans participated by Zoom. We shared our film of Samuel, and discussed our developing relationship with him, and were then joined by Samuel himself by Zoom, who answered questions from the professional designers and students in attendance. It turned out to be quite a moving presentation, as Samuel has basically has nothing and lives in a very poor community, but created something amazing solely from his ingenuity and resourcefulness.
[Dan Green]
Albert Menasco: Pirate of the Sky
If you were asked to define a swashbuckling life, what would that include? How about motorcycle racing, wing-walking, car racing, working an international carnival circuit, piloting experimental planes, and manufacturing the winningest aero racing engines of the 1930s? There’s only one man with such a resumé: Albert Menasco. And yet, I’d never heard of him until Dr. Robin Tuluie (see our article 'Actually it IS Rocket Science') introduced me to the name via the 1928-ish aero-engine race car he’d built using a Menasco engine, but more on that anon. Curiosity about Menasco revealed he was a quintessentially adventurous American in the ‘Teens, a motor-showman when a cocktail of unbridled enthusiasm, innocence and technical know-how would typically end with you famous, dead, or famously dead. Menasco somehow walked the middle way, and ended as neither, while his legacy and impact continue to this day, nearly unheralded.
[This article originally appeared in The Automobile magazine, the July 2021 edition. Special thanks to the San Diego Air & Space Museum for permission to dig into the Albert Menasco archives, and reproduce many of the remarkable photos used here.]
Top 10 at the John Parham Estate Auction
September 6-9 at the National Motorcycle Museum in Anamosa, Iowa
From original-paint to original thinking, there's an amazing diversity of machinery available at the John Parham Estate Auction, hosted by Mecum. It was a tough decision to close the National Motorcycle Museum, but with the death of its primary benefactor a few years ago, it was always going to be a money loser, so the decision was purely practical. It's sad to lose such an amazing collection in one spot, but on the upside, it makes for an exciting opportunity for folks to find some unique motorcycles. You can bid online, but it's definitely preferable to show up and see the museum one last time, and catch the energy of the auction, which is always fun. There are hundreds of bikes and even more hundreds of lots of automobilia - posters, engines, photos, and a bunch of cool antique toys. Have a look at the Mecum John Parham Estate Auction page here. And now, my faves from the Museum:
2. 1911 Steco Engineering Co. Aerohydroplane
4. Indian Quarter Midget Racer
5. 1966 Harley-Davidson Electra Glide 'Willie's Latin Thing'
6. 1927 Brough Superior SS100 Pendine replica
7. 1956 Rumi Formichino Scooter
8. 'Dragon Bike' from The Wild Angels
Assistant Director Peter Bogdonavich watching. The Dragon Bike is iconic. [API press photo]
9. 1940 Indian Model 640 Sport Scout racer
Both Harley-Davidson and Indian were ready for the introduction of the Class C racing season. The Sport Scout, introduced in 1934, was a strong contender in the series for 20 years, particularly in the early 1950s with the Indian wrecking crew of Bobby Hill, Bill Tuman and Ernie Beckman, who shared several National Championship titles, and swapped the AMA No.1 plate over a four-year period.
The Indian Sport Scout used a 42-degree V-Twin sidevalve, 45ci (745 cc) motor, and was in production for nine years (1934 to 1942). Indian’s chief engineer and designer, Charles B. Franklin, responsible for the creation of the Scout (1919), Chief (1922) and Scout Pony (1932), roughed-out in sketch form the Sport Scout before his death aged 52, on October 19, 1932. Diverging from Scout’s long running cradled-framed and leaf-spring fork motorcycle (1920 through 1933) the first Sport Scout, similar to the Scout Pony, used a keystone rigid frame through 1940, then used a plunger rear suspension for 1941-42, with a girder fork used on all years. The two-piece frame consisted of a front downtube and rear fork bolted to the engine/transmission unit by front and rear mounting plates. Lack of a frame under the motor/transmission maximized ground clearance during banking and the girder fork offer more front-end travel, making the Sport Scout a good motorcycle for dirt track racing. Tuner alterations to this bike include a BTE twist grip throttle, a modified foot clutch, shortened hand shifter, a special foot-peg set up, a solo/pillion seat setup and a Splitdorf magneto in place of the original battery ignition. It's interesting to mention that Indian stopped producing this model in 1942, and all the wins in the 1950s were taken on Sport Scouts that were at least 10 years old! It's a legendary machine, and not easy to find today.
10. 1928 Husqvarna Model 180 V-twin
2 Million Miles with Velocettes
The Velocette Owners Club of North America is notorious among one-make motorcycle clubs for its cheek in actually riding their old motorcycles for long distances every year, just for the hell of it. Their annual Summer Rally has been a calendar fixture for 40 years now, with the first ride in BC Canada dubbed the 'submarine rally' because it rained so hard every single day. The 40th anniversary of that first ride was named the 2 Million Mile Rally, as an approximation of the total miles ridden for the participating Velocettes over that span. As a risky possible repeat of the first rally, this year's ride was organized on Vancouver Island, but was an example of how much the global climate has shifted, with the weather sunny and warm, the province in deep drought, and Canada's central forestlands on fire since May. Luckily the wind blows eastward from the Pacific coast, so while the Midwest and East Coast are reading Canada's smoke signals, and the air on Vancouver Island was clear.
The 'Lost' Indian Four
Lost in the shuffle: that's the only explanation for the lack of attention given the penultimate Indian four - dubbed the Model 44X - in the history books on Indian 'motocycles'. Much better known is the post-war 'Torque Four', introduced in 1946 (but never manufactured), which is identified as part of the effort to streamline the manufacture of Indians under new owner Ralph B. Rogers. As the Torque Four was kin to the Indian singles and parallel twins produced under Rogers' tenure (1945-53), it represented the ultimate expression of the modular manufacturing concept he championed. The Torque Four is known to have been primarily the work of Indian designer George 'Briggs' Weaver, designed when he worked with the Torque Corporation during WW2, after leaving Indian during the war. What's less known is that Weaver designed, alongside Indian owner E. Paul duPont, an earlier four, dubbed the 44X, starting in the late 1930s, that was intended to be produced along the same principals as the Torque Four and post-war Indian lightweight lineup: as a modular series of singles, twins, and fours that used common components for more inexpensive production. Thus, the original concept and prototypes for the modular Indian lineup was dreamed up by E. Paul duPont and his team in the 1930s, developed by Briggs Weaver, and ultimately produced under Rogers in the late 1940s.
"In the late 1930s E. Paul duPont, then President and Chairman of the Board of Indian Motocycle Co in Springfield MA (notice the spelling Motocycle) initiated a plan for a new line of motorcycles. The aim was to come out with a line of motorcycle which would simplify the manufacture of engines and frames. An illustration of the problem is that the 45 cubic inch Scout and the 74 cubit inch Chief models each used a pair of cylinders that were not alike, and were different for each engine and the valve gear was different for each cylinder, in that each engine used four different rocker arm forgings. The connecting rods were a fork and blade rod and different for each engine. The Indian four of course had totally different valve gear and cylinders and pistons and roads compared to the already mentioned twins. The frames, brakes etc. were also different from model to model.
Note: The Stephen duPont transcript and several of his photos were sourced via the Jerry Hatfield Archive, which is being integrated into The Vintagent Archive. Keep an eye out for more Indian history!
Sweet Savage DNA - A Father’s Day Story
By Catherine O'Connor
Angela Savage wishes she could turn back time. The posthumously born daughter of flat tracker turned Indy driver, David Earl “Swede” Savage, Jr. wore all black to this year’s Indianapolis 500. In the midst of stoked Memorial Day revelers cheering and screaming for their favorite Indy rivals, Angela did her best to cope, sitting in the stands with her 17- and 11-year-old sons. She often wears the Swiss-made Omega Speedmaster watch and her father’s wedding ring as an amulet to feel close to him.
“I kept staring at turn 4, knowing his spirit was there. I cried a lot, and just couldn’t stay for the whole race, just wishing I could have my dad back,” Savage said. Growing up she always felt lost and abandoned and so lonely. And Father’s Day won’t be easy.
Born three months after her mother witnessed her father’s fatal crash, Angela Savage spent decades suffering crippling addiction and mental health challenges. What the younger Savage learned was that she was dealing with inter-utero, psycho-injury, a type of inherited trauma that can be passed down from a pregnant mother to her child. Mourning a bewildering sense of longing for the father she never met, Angela spent years struggling to reconcile the history and meaning of his death and life, painfully detangling herself from the unexplained, trans-generational life stress surrounding her Savage legacy.
But with the help of a group of endearing fans and IMS, (Indianapolis Motor Speedway) she had a chance encounter with Ted Woerner. He is an author and impassioned Indy fan who had heard about his hero, Savage’s crash, on the transistor radio he smuggled into his sixth-grade classroom. Their support enabled Angela to find the courage to finally visit the track which took her father’s life. ”It was like soul surgery,” Angela has said of her visit to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, where the fatal tragedy occurred 50 years ago.
Together they collaborated to write Savage Angel: Death and Rebirth at the Indianapolis 500, a book that skillfully and candidly interweaves details of her life trauma and eventual healing, with revelations of a unique motorsports legacy. Among Savage’s memorabilia are news clips showing that Swede raced as an AMA Amateur in 1965 at the Springfield Mile. Revisiting the motorcycle track where he competed alongside contemporaries, Bart Markel, Dick Mann, Gary Nixon and Eddie Wirth, to watch her first motorcycle race a couple years ago, in Springfield, lifted Angela. “I was blown away at my first flat track race. I just love it!” Angela said.
Her imagination must run to the 18-year-old Swede, the blonde hunk, the son of a prosperous veterinarian, a carefree rebel, traveling the flat track circuit, in the mid 1960’s. From Ascot to Daytona and state fair tracks across the Midwest, in bar-banging combat, Savage competed in AMA’s Expert class finishing among the top 20 riders in the nation, with a total of 24 career AMA wins.
Angela, who now works for Woerner’s Miles Ahead company in Indianapolis, can step into the past in the Savage suite exhibit room that has been created there. Shelves hold her father’s early race artifacts, his tattered leathers, steel shoe and images of the photogenic, beloved native son of San Bernardino. Recognized early for his innate riding performance talent, the original letter Savage signed for a short term deal with Evel Knievel to perform in his Stunt Show of Stars at Ascot Park in 1967, is framed in glass. Pages of emergent race accomplishment, in a “race resume” typed in 1969 by a young David Savage Jr. is but one curated clue in the historic archive Woerner has meticulously pieced together.
A wall of Swede’s 70’s vintage auto racing suits, are a neatly hung team of empty fabric onesies that brave, Indy drivers wore before the evolution to today’s high-tech safety gear. On the wall, charred remains of his race car nose section with Swede’s race number 40, marred and scorched, steels a horribly devastating moment in time.
Woerner and Savage often meet motorsports fans who are intrigued by Savage’s story of evolution from two wheels to four, and the impact of his life ended too soon. The California native, her husband and family relocated in 2018 to live in Indianapolis, the city where Angela’s father died. Angela’s message of healing and survival simply flows out. “I’m proud that the Savage family is still here, 50 years later. I want to tell my story, and his story.”
Buoyant and open to talk, Angela Savage along with documentarian Ted Woerner, who continues researching the life and times of Swede Savage, will be on hand at the Illinois State Fairgrounds Springfield Mile on Sept 2-3. There, auto racing fans’ eyes will pop, when they see Woerner’s freshly painted dayglow red #40 STP Oil Treatment Special Eagle-Offenhauser replica of Swede Savage’s STP race car, a special premiere feature at this year’s Springfield Mile.
Please check out SAVAGE42.com for more info.
'Brooklands George' - Conrad Leach
The Vintagent presents Brooklands George, a 2008 painting by Conrad Leach, 50x60", acrylic on canvas. Commissioned by the late Dr. George Cohen ('Norton George'), and originally displayed at the Dunhill Drivers Club during the 2008 Goodwood Revival meeting. Being sold on behalf of Sarah Cohen. Price on request: contact us here.
The paintings of Conrad Leach are iconic, because for years he has explored the imagery that creates icons. 'Brooklands George' (2008), while depicting a particular man, motorcycle, and location, is also timeless, featuring the shape of a machine built for speed, an evocative locale, and a hunched-over racer pushing the limits of speed and danger. Leach's influences range from 20th Century movie posters and advertising, to art/historical references like Beggarstaff posters and Roy Lichtenstein's graphic blasts. His cool surface technique is contradicted by saturated colors and a strongly contrasting ground, plus the kinetic, magnetic appeal of his human and mechanical subjects.
Conrad Leach is best known for his exploration of heroic imagery, from British racing vehicles (motorcycles, cars, planes) to contemporary Japanese pop stars and Ukiyo-e woodcuts. He's not a nostalgist, but responds on canvas to people, machines, and events from the past and present that resonate with our culture. He explains , ‘So much is sexy from the interwar era! The Supermarine Schneider Trophy racer, Malcolm Campbell’s Bluebird, the Brough Superior ‘Works Scrapper’, are nearly forgotten today, but the aesthetics of the era are so pure and functional. This was pretty radical stuff back then, but my work has to be relevant now, as I’m not interested in recreating the past. My painting technique is contemporary, even Pop, and attempts to create resonance between a viewer today and images from that era. To take an enormous bespoke object like the Bluebird onto Daytona beach in Florida and attempt to go faster than any human, that required an incredible train of thought, and I’m trying to get into the heads of those people.”
'Joe Craig: Making Norton Famous'
If any single person deserves credit for Norton's extraordinary decades of racing dominance from 1930 through the mid-1950s, it must be Joe Craig. The de facto racing team manager for Norton under several owners, Craig at first successfully raced the factory product himself in the 1920s, then switched to the role of development engineer in 1930. He held that position (despite a break from the company during WW2) through 1955, when postwar company owners Associated Motor Cycles (AMC) decided exotic factory specials could no longer be supported financially, and focussed on selling factory catalogued racers like the Norton Manx, AJS 7R, and Matchless G50 models, all of which were produced simultaneously under their corporate ownership.
East River Racing in the 1970s
By Sandy Hackney
The story of East River Racing began in September 1969, all because I had been seen risking life and limb on a ’69 Yamaha YDS3 (250cc) on a series of curvy roads in Durham, NC that Summer. A mechanic at the local Yamaha shop said to me, “You should race.” Huh? But the seed was planted, and there was a AAMRR Labor Day race weekend coming up at VIR; it was several days long and featured one 5-hour race. After exploring this some, I approached a local roofing company, who fashioned a set of expansion chambers to TD1 specs and I was set! Top speed was increased to about 110mph; damned thrilling.
Soon we had a core group made of several colleagues from the Respiratory Therapy Department at NYU Medical Center; we were all in our early 20s and in love with motorcycles. We rented a storefront on E. 12th between 1st and 2nd Ave, and East River Racing was truly born. Our truck was purchased by me from a NC monk for $80. A great deal. We added a couple of fine women as tuners - and more. One tuner is married to this day to Bill.
RIDE 70s Spring Raid Invitational
[Editor's note: Vintagent Contributor Fabio Affuso recently founded a moto-touring company with seasoned petrolhead Pietro Casadio Pirazzoli, RIDE 70s, using classic (mostly) Italian bikes to explore classic Italian landscapes. For the inaugural tour of RIDE 70s, he chose Tuscany, and invited a dozen friends and journalists to test the bikes and his organizational skills. HIs Spring Raid Invitational last month coincided with my own tour of Italy on classic Italian bikes, otherwise this would be a first-hand ride report!]
To celebrate the beginning of our RIDE 70s touring season in Italy, we were thrilled to guide an eclectic group of friends on an unforgettable expedition, a motorcycle journey across the picturesque landscapes of Tuscany.
Continuing our journey reinvigorated, we arrived in the enchanting town of Montepulciano, renowned for its Renaissance architecture and exquisite wines. Here, we reveled in the rich flavors of Tuscan cuisine, savouring pecorino cheese, handmade pici pasta, and tender braised wild boar. The indulgence was accompanied by the velvety notes of Nobile di Montepulciano wine, adding a touch of elegance to our dining experience.
The Anamosa Broughs: a Superior Collection
It might have seemed the height of pretense to label a new motorcycle company ‘Superior’ in 1919, but George Brough had a vision of building the fastest, most elegant motorcycles in the world, and delivered. His father William built well-respected motorcycles in Nottingham from the 1890s, and commenced his own brand – Brough – that earned a reputation for high quality. Young George was the factory’s official competitor in road and off-road events, which he often won with panache.
During WW1, George Brough envisioned manufacturing an ultimate high-performance motorcycle, but his father refused the concept, so George set up his own factory nearby. He assembled the best racing components from engine, gearbox, forks, and wheel manufacturers for his first model, the Mk 1 of 1919. It used a J.A.P. racing OHV v-twin motor of 1000cc and a heavyweight Sturmey-Archer 3-speed gearbox, in a very robust frame with a long wheelbase, crowned with the world’s first round-nosed saddle fuel tank, resplendent in nickel plating, black paint, and gold pinstriping. A friend suggested he call it ‘Brough Superior’, as it so clearly was, but father William was not amused, presuming the family product was then relegated to ‘Brough Inferior’.
[Full disclosure: Mecum Auctions is a sponsor of The Vintagent]
A Chris Killip Retrospective
While photographer Chris Killip was known as a social documentarian, his upbringing on the Isle of Man meant it was inevitable he'd take a few extraordinary moto photos. A legend in photographic circles, and a professor of visual and environmental studies at Harvard from 1991-2017, Killip was born in Douglas, where his parents owned the Highlander Pub - perhaps you've had a pint there on a trip to Mona's Isle? Who knows what inspired the son of pubholders to take up a camera as a profession, but of course, a public house is a natural place to develop one's skills at social observation at a neutral distance: the parade of customers passing through are highlighted on a gimlet-lit stage, locals and tourists in a never-ending spectacle.
From the project 'In Flagrante' 1973-1985. [Chris Killip]
