The first motorcycles were hard things, that shook like hell over the rough cobbles and horse-shit roads of the late 19th and early 20th Century. Figuring out ways to absorb shocks and control a bike over bumps has been a challenge from the very early days of the industry. Spring forks were adopted first, as a bouncing front wheel is a lousy way to steer, and sprung rear wheels followed in an amazing variety of configurations, most of them surprisingly 'modern'. In the 'Teens, Merkels had monoshocks, Indians had leaf springs, Jeffersons had short links, and a dozen variations of all these appeared on bikes around the world.
The 1903 Thomas AutoBi, one of the earliest American manufacturers, with East Coast dealer Lincoln Holland Sr. The rear swingarm suspension uses an enclosed monoshock triangulated swingarm with the undamped spring unit behind the saddle, and a sliding-axle front fork design. [Wright]By the 1930s, two principal types of rear suspension were common; swingarms with attached springs using friction damping (Moto Guzzi), and plunger frames, usually undamped, or with attached Bentley&Draper style friction dampers for racing bikes (BMW, Norton). Both designs have issues with coil springs: they absorb the energy of an impact with a bump, but they also release it right back! Thus various types of 'damping' have been tried to control this tendency, but the earliest shocks tended to boing and caused a new kind of handling trouble! Leaf springs are self-damping, but have their limitations as well.
One approach to rear suspension on a 1935 Moto Guzzi Bicyclindrica GP racer; a triangulated rear swingarm with spring boxes horizontally laid beneath the motor, and André friction dampers below the saddle ['Moto Guzzi da Corsa', Colombo]The world changed in 1936, although it took a while for the industry to realize it, when Velocette built 3 new GP bikes with a swingarm rear suspension, and the world's first true shock absorber unite, or 'shocks'. The new chassis debuted in the 1936 in the Ulster GP, Isle of Man TT, and Continental GPs, and quickly cut lap times, and led to significant wins for Veloce, even with their relatively outdated single-cylinder motors, which competed against increasingly fast and sophisticated supercharged, multi-cylinder racers from Moto Guzzi, BMW, and Gilera.
Another solution; the 'plunger' frame, as used by BMW and Norton, with the rear axle held between two springs for compression and rebound suspension. [The MotorCycle, May 3 1936]Where did the idea for 'shocks' come from, who invented them, and who made them is a seldom-asked question, but Velocette historians Dennis Quinlan and Ivan Rhodes have done some digging, and come up with a conclusion. The Development Engineer at Veloce Ltd, parent company of Velocette motorcycles, was Harold Willis; an unsung genius of design (as well as description) whose work changed the course of the motorcycle industry. He loved a good nickname, and the terms 'knocker', 'double knocker', and 'electrified dirt' (for magnesium) are examples of his amusing shorthand. In 1928, Willis also invented the positive-stop foot-operated gearchange that nearly every motorcycle in the world uses today. Willis had a plane ('Clattering Kate', a deHavilland DH60 Moth) that he flew regularly to clear his head literally and figuratively - if he ever felt a cold coming on, up he'd go.
Harold Willis with his beloved biplane, 'Clattering Kate' ['Velocette: Technical Excellence Exemplified', Rhodes]According to Charles Udall (Chief Designer for Veloce in the 1930s), Harold Willis came up with the idea for motorcycle rear suspension units after observing the latest aircraft landing gear with oleo-pneumatic units (called Oleo landing gear) made by the Dowty Company of Gloucestershire. These were springless gas/air units that used a clever valving system to push oil into a pressurized chamber, and became progressively 'harder' as the oil compressed the air inside. Air is a perfect, progressive, frictionless spring medium as it's compressed; the 'Oleo legs', as they were called, function exactly like modern 'air shocks' and 'air forks' do today, as they're effectively the same design, updated.
The first Dowty Oleopneumatic shock absorber units fitted to a 1936 factory GP Velocette chassis, specially modified as an experiment. It worked! [The MotorCycle, May 3, 1936]Willis visited the Dowty company (with, perhaps, Udall and the son of Veloce founder Percy Goodman) to discuss making a miniature version of their Oleo shocks, suitable for a motorcycle, and they built, apparently, an initial 6 sets in 1936. These same shocks were sold as standard on the Velocette MkVIII KTT production racer from 1937-1950, but the first 3 chassis built to adapt to these units (stamped SF1, 2, and 3) were a little different from the production versions. After some sketches by, presumably, Willis and Udall, and probably Phil Irving too (who was employed by Veloce at the time), the triangulated, rigid rear frame section of a Velocette racing frame (the MkVII type) was cut away, and a tubular cross-member welded to the saddle tube upright. The ends of this cross-tube had a pair of steering head bearing cups (with loose balls!) welded on, and a pair of tapered legs fabricated for the swingarm, connected through the tube by a splined shaft that locked each leg in position. The end of the tapered legs held a casting for the rear axel, and a clevis fitting to hold the bottom of the Oleo unit. An upper, bolted-on frame member to hold the seat, upper shock mount, and rear render mounts, was fabricated, and apart from details making manufacture much easier, this is essentially how every swing-arm motorcycle made afterwards, all over the world and to this day, was laid out.
Three Velocette spring frames were built in 1936 by modifying the existing rigid racing Velocette frame; here the steering head cups are clearly seen as bearings for the swingarm [Quinlan]George Dowty, the inventor of Oleo-pneumatic landing gear for aircraft, was knighted for his services to the British aviation industry. He initially worked at pioneering British aircraft firm Avro, and moved by the mid-1920s to the Gloster Aircraft Company. In 1922, Dowty presented a paper to the Royal Aeronautical Society exploring the subject of oleo-pneumatic undercarriage design, and in 1926 delivered a second paper, “Aircraft Alighting and Arresting Mechanisms”, followed by articles (Feb.1929) in The Aeroplane and Aircraft Engineering. He was unable to convince the aircraft manufacturers to take up his on landing-gear suspension, so he struck out on his own, forming the Aircraft Components Company in Jan. 1931, from which the huge Dowty Organisation followed, which is still a major player in aviation.
Stanley Woods at the 1936 Isle of Man TT, aboard his 350cc DOHC 'dog kennel' racer with the new swingarm rear end, and the front Borrani aluminum rim he brought back as hand luggage from Italy! [Hockenheim Museum]Dowty was happy to supply the experimental motorcycle-sized Oleo shock absorbers in 1936 for Veloce, and the following year went into limited production for the rear units on the production Velocette MkVIII KTT. Following WW2, they used the same principles to build 'Oleomatic' front forks for motorcycles, as used on Velocettes in 1948, as well as on Scotts and Panthers. As the gas seals for the Oleomatic forks were prone to failure after tens of thousands of miles of hard use, all these factories designed hydraulically-damped telescopic 'spring' forks along the lines set down by BMW in 1935. This became the industry standard, but 'air forks' and 'air shocks' are technically superior, and became the standard for performance motorcycles from the 1970s onwards. All because of a brainwave by a rather eccentric genius in Birmingham named Harold Willis, and the willingness of an equally visionary George Dowty to try something new. Hats off to you, gents!
The 1949 Velocette MkVIII KTT production racer in the author's collection, using Dowty Oleomatic rear suspension units. Surely the KTT ranks among the most beautiful racing motorcycles ever built?
[Special thanks to Dennis Quinlan for his original article on this subject, and Pete Young for his further research into early rear suspension, and a posthumous thanks to Stephen Wright for his brilliant research into early American motorcycles; please find a copy of 'The American Motorcycle: 1869-1914' and be amazed and enlightened!]
Memorable races match two top rivals of comparable skill and equal valour, driven by the need to succeed, riding machines at the leading edge of performance, backed by well-drilled and determined teams. The Isle of Man Tourist Trophy provides the perfect setting to test man and machine, with challenges of the timed interval start, the mountain climb and weather, and the ordinary roads. My “Greatest TT race”, the Senior TT of 1935, brought all this together to provide one of the epic races of all time. But the story of this race really began in 1933.
Stanley Woods in the 1926 Isle of Man TT aboard a pushrod Norton Model 25 racer, the first Norton to use a recirculating oil system. Note the Webb girder forks, 8" Enfield brakes front and rear, 21" and 20" wheel rims, and the simple, two-rear-stay frame, as used on the flat-tank Model 18 from 1923. The 'saddle' tank is actually a pannier set, bolted together atop the old flat-tank frame. A very simple machine, but very fast, with excellent handling (I used to own one!)
Preparation
Stanley Woods, a Dubliner and rider of outstanding talent on any form of motorcycle, began his TT career in 1922 as a precocious 17-year old. Initially he combined riding with his work as a salesman for the sweet makers Mackintosh’s. In the following years Woods would provide boxes of toffees (from a business with his father) for the boy scouts that ran the leader board at the TT. He won his first (Junior) TT in 1923 on a Cotton; he moved to Norton in 1926 to win the Senior TT that year (at 21) and to begin a string wins for Norton including the Junior and Senior TTs in 1932 and 1933. By 1933 Norton had established such supremacy its winning was called “the Norton Habit” and the team began to allocate wins to particular riders in the team. This did not suit Woods who was the Norton team’s star. By the early 1930’s, motorcycling had become a professional sport and Woods, now at his peak, relied on wins and retainers to make his living: he decided to leave Norton. For the 1934 TT he was retained to ride the 500c twin Folke Mannerstedt designed light, powerful, but thirsty Husqvarna.
Stanley Woods in the 1934 Isle of Man TT riding the Husqvarna v-twin pushrod 500cc racer, which was very fast, but handled only moderately well.
Jimmie Guthrie was from Hawick in Scotland, where he ran a successful motor business with his brother Archie. A survivor of the horrific 1915 Quintinshill troop train rail crash near Gretna, he served in Gallipoli and Palestine, then as a dispatch rider at the Somme and Arras. Guthrie had come into national motorcycle racing in his late 20’s, competing in his first TT in 1923 (the year of Woods’ first win). Four years later he returned as a regular competitor; he finally got a works ride with the Norton Team in 1931. Guthrie was well aware that he was older that other competitors and he had a vigorous training programme to keep fit. Guthrie took over as the lead rider for Norton at the end of 1933 and immediately showed he was on top of his form. He made his mark winning the 1934 Junior and Senior TTs. The latter after a strong challenge to the Norton team from Stanley Woods. That challenge failed on the last lap with a spill at Ramsay Hairpin followed by the Husqvarna running of fuel 8 miles from the finish: the feared threat from foreign machines, ‘the foreign menace’, was at the doorstep.
A portrait of Jimmie Guthrie in 1935
By 1935, the Norton team was a well-oiled TT-winning machine with ‘the Fox’ Joe Craig (and his TT signal stage system) in charge. Its bike was the best in the business. Walter Moore designed a powerful ohc-single engine in 1926/7 for Norton (Moore used the Chater Lea system for reference; Stanley Woods said impishly Moore took the worst aspects from it). Though the engine was an immediate winner it was unreliable and was progressively redesigned and improved significantly from 1929 by Arthur Carroll and Joe Craig, to more closely resemble the Velocette system of 1925; Moore had 'copied the wrong one!' The 500c engine probably was developing 35-38 bhp by 1935 (sadly the year Arthur Carroll died in a crash while riding his fast ‘tweaked’ side-valve Norton). The TT Norton had a good handling (for the period), though it still used a rigid frame with girder forks. The whole package was refined with an emphasis on lightness. Velocette was still in its wilderness years: it had pioneered the ohc single successfully at the TT in the late 1920’s but had lost its way at the top level on frame design and brakes.
The Moto Guzzi Bicylindrica racer was one of the few OHC v-twins made before WW2 (well, they're rare post-War too!), and combined terrific power with excellent handling, with full suspension front and rear. Not the English Brampton forks (as used on some Brough Superiors), the oil tank atop the fuel tank, and the friction dampers for the rear suspension, between the rear carb and the rear hub [MotorCycling, June 3 1935]The 500cc challenge in 1935 came from Moto Guzzi and their 120-degree in-line-twin sohc-engined bike. We again return to 1933. While successful at 250cc in ‘Lightweight’ racing, Moto Guzzi were no longer competitive in the larger classes. In 1933 Carlo Guzzi (no doubt encouraged by his partner and racing enthusiast Giorgio Parodi) had the inspiration to mate two 250cc engines to create the ‘bicilindri’. The magazine ‘Motorcycling’ in 1935 describes the engine as having an even beat. A cutaway drawing from 1951 (the last year of the ‘bicilindri’) shows, in effect, two 250cc engines each with it own flywheels and crankpins joined through a central main bearing (with the crankpins set 120 degrees apart, hence the even beat). Carlo really had joined together two 250cc engines! The front cylinder remained horizontal with the rear cylinder laid back and with circumferential fins added. Importantly the bike had a spring rear frame using rear springs in compression and friction dampers that could be adjusted ‘on-the-run’ by a lever on the front left hand side; girder front forks were used. By 1935 the engine was reliable and able to produce 44/45 bhp at 7000rpm (in super-tuned form up to 50 bhp at 7500rpm was claimed). But like the Husqvarna, it was thirsty. Moto Guzzi were confident they had a bike that could win the TT, but required a rider with proven TT winning experience to have any chance of success. They found their man in Stanley Woods: it was rumoured he was allowed to state his own price and of course Stanley Woods had a point to make!
The business side of the Moto Guzzi Bicylindrica, with the shaft-drive for the camshafts visible, and a lot of plumbing to keep it all lubricated! The rather light swingarm pivot can be seen above the footrest - this is an adaptation of a rigid frame with a system very similar to the Bentley&Draper swingarm used by Brough Superior from 1928 (and Velocette for their 'Spring Heel Jack' racer of the same era) [MotorCycling June 6 1935]The final component in the equation was the TT circuit itself. For both the 1934 and 1935 races improvements had been made to the circuit to remove bottlenecks. It was now a ‘modern’ road-racing circuit allowing riders to run their bikes to the limit. MotorCycling magazine promoted the lead-up to the TT and its prospects. With the darkest period of the depression lifting, at least in some parts, there was much enthusiasm for the TT and promotion of travel to it. The 1935 TT races were also the backdrop to the (third) George Formby film ‘No Limit’ and his heroics on the ‘Shuttleworth Snap’.
Stanley Woods aboard the Moto Guzzi Bicyclindrica during an off hour.
In practice for the Senior TT, Norton preparation was developed to new levels. But in the background there were reports of high speeds from the Moto Guzzi including on the last day of practice an unofficial lap record. Then Stanley Woods won the Lightweight TT on a 250cc horizontal single Moto Guzzi, a first for a foreign bike: the ‘foreign menace’ had arrived.
The Race
Fog covered the Isle of Man on Friday June 21st the day of the Senior TT and the race was postponed to 11 am the next day. As Saturday dawned fog still covered the Island and many were concerned that the race could be cancelled. The start was put back half an hour to 11:30. With tension building the clock crept towards the new deadline. Finally the fog lifted enough for the race to start; all involved looked to the event with great expectations.
Jimmie Guthrie with Norton race manager Joe Craig, after Guthrie's win of the NorthWest 200 race in May of 1935 [MotorCycling, May 30 1935]With the tradition of Norton on his shoulders Jimmie Guthrie, carrying number 1 as last year’s winner, was first away and set off with fierce determination and pace no doubt intending to break the Guzzi or at least its rider’s spirit. Stanley Woods carrying number 30 started 14½ minutes later and set a steady pace. After the first lap Guthrie was first in 26 minutes and 52 seconds, his teammate Rush was second and Woods came by trailing by 28 seconds and third on corrected time. Norton must have been feeling confident, but was this part of a strategy by Woods? Perhaps a cautious lap to learn the conditions? Perhaps a top-heavy bike running with extra fuel? On the next lap the pace picked up. Jimmie Guthrie was riding the best race of his life so far and broke the lap record at 26 minutes and 31 seconds. But Woods had also picked up his pace and moved into second but still came through 47 seconds behind on corrected time. Now that Guthrie was pushed to ride at record pace, could it be maintained? Would his age at 38 tell over the length of this gruelling 7-lap 3-hour race?
Guthrie cracking on with his special factory Norton; the drilled-out engine plate bolts are clearly visible here, but most of the magic was inside the engine and gearbox! Note also the plug wrench poking out from his boot in case of a fouled spark plug! Note also the front rim - it's a black-painted alloy rim, the earliest use of an aluminum rim in the TT. Built by Borrani under Rudge license, both Norton and Velocette painted them black to fool each other! But of course, they were only fooling themselves.
The third lap was the one where teams were to take on fuel. Guthrie came into the pits after yet another lap record of 26 minutes and 28 seconds. The Norton team moved smoothly into well-practiced action and had him refuelled and out in 33 seconds by the reporter’s stopwatch. Almost 15 minutes later Woods came into the pits now 52 seconds behind and, to the surprise of onlookers, in a lightening stop was away in 31 seconds by the same watch. With such a short stop there was speculation as to whether the twin had enough fuel to make the next four laps at record pace? Especially given the Husqvarna experience the year before.
Jimmy Guthrie pushing off on the start line of the Senior TT on his Norton. #2 looks to be a factory NSU racer. Note the Boy Scouts manning the leader board, who kept track of the riders' places as the very long race progressed.
On the Fourth Lap, both Guthrie and Woods continued at near record pace. Motorcycling magazine shows pictures of both riders and their bikes coming down Bray Hill. The Norton has its front wheel in the air; the Moto Guzzi is firmly planted on the ground. It was said the sprung frame could be worth as much as 20 seconds a lap, would this tell? Woods closed the gap to 42 seconds.
On the fifth lap Woods reduced the lap record to 26 minutes and 26 seconds, closing the gap to 29 seconds. He had pulled back 13 seconds on just one lap; the challenge was on.
Stanley Woods at speed on the Moto Guzzi, with something to prove! Nothing to prove on the wheel rims; both are Borrani aluminum rims, seen for the first time at the TT on several makes.
We now come to end of the critical sixth lap. Guthrie’s Norton went through without stopping. The Moto Guzzi team busied themselves setting up for a fuel-stop and the grandstand crowd expected Woods and the thirsty Guzzi to stop for fuel. Joe Craig may have thought Norton had the race won. It is said he had sent signals to his station at Glen Helen for Guthrie, almost ⅔ of a lap ahead, to ease his pace perhaps fearing the record laps could affect the bike and the rider.
Another shot of the magnificent Moto Guzzi Bicylindrica
Stanley Woods and the Guzzi could be heard approaching the Grandstand. To the surprise of everyone but the Guzzi team, he shot through, on the tank, flat-out, now 26 seconds behind: man and machine on a mission. Could the Moto Guzzi pit-stop ploy have made a difference? Norton immediately rang through to Ramsay to signal Guthrie to speed up. It was now all up to Woods. As Mario Colombo (from a Guzzi perspective) puts it: “L’ultimo giro, il settimo, si svolge in un’atmosfera di tormento e di sofferenza, gli occhi al cronometro, l’orecchio teso” (“The seventh and last lap unfolded in an atmosphere of suffering and torment, with all eyes on the stopwatches and all ears alert”). Reports were coming through that Woods was running fast all around the circuit: the Moto Guzzi ‘bicilindrica’ was rising to the occasion. At the base of the mountain he had the gap down to 12 seconds, down the mountain he had the bike wound up to 125mph. At Creg-Ny-Baa the gap was 6 seconds. Guthrie had come through on his seventh and final lap at near-record pace – he knew Woods well enough maybe not to trust the signals. Colombo writes: “Guthrie arrived at the finish and silence fell like a tangible thing: everyone had their eyes fixed on the beginning of the final straight”. Not all it seems, the officials and the radio commentary, based on the times from the sixth lap, thought Guthrie had won. He was toasted and congratulated by the Governor of the Isle of Man. Motorcycling magazine has a photograph of the Guthrie and the bike surrounding by supporters as a smiling ‘winner’. An official was leading Guthrie to the microphone when, after 14½ minutes of suspense, with its characteristic roar, the red Guzzi with Woods “buried in the tank” flashed across the line. “A thousand stopwatches clicked and feverish calculations were made”. That official was stopped with the news that Woods had won by 4 seconds. He’d done it. Woods had ridden an outstanding last record lap (26minutes and 10 seconds, 86.53 mph). His race time was 3 hours 7 minutes and 10 seconds, an average speed of 84.68mph. The crowd understood the significance of the moment, setting aside any thoughts of the ‘foreign menace’, the grandstand rose to cheer the winning team and rider, “…spectators thronged around Guzzi, Parodi, Woods and the mechanics in a display of sporting spirit those present never forgot”.
Jimmie Guthrie cranking through Ramsey on the Norton.
Guthrie looked dazed by the abrupt change of fortune but took it in good grace reflecting the depth of his character and reserved manner (off a bike!): he was amongst the first to congratulate Woods. After the race Jimmie Guthrie said; "I went as quick as I could but Stanley went quicker. I am sorry but I did the best I could." They were friends as well as rivals. Stanley Woods said years later: “I turned on everything I had on the last lap. I over-revved and beat him by 4 seconds and put up the lap record by 3-4 mph. And that (beating Norton), I think, gave me more satisfaction and more joy, the fact that I had beaten Norton. Its what I had set out to do. It was very very satisfactory”. MotorCycling magazine carried a second photograph with Stanley Woods, and his trademark grin, as the true winner of my ‘Greatest TT’.
Stanley Woods immediately after the race, with the Moto Guzzi mechanics pinching each other for a job well done!
Was the difference in those pit stops? It is possible both riders covered the ground in the same time. What about the fuel in Wood’s tank? A reporter said there was an inch in the bottom almost enough for another lap; it seems that the Guzzi did have an extra-large tank for the TT, maybe it was very full on the first slow laps. MotorCycling magazine discussed whether the fake pit stop was sporting but accepted the tactic as legitimate (quaint considering team tactics these days). Perhaps for once the fox was just outfoxed?
Jimmie Guthrie after winning the 1931 Isle of Man Senior TT on another Norton. Note the Boy Scout looking admiringly at the hero! And the general griminess of the machine, which had exposed rocker arms and valve springs - a feature of all racing Norton singles through 1962!
What happened to these two great riders? Guthrie continued with Norton and turned the tables in the 1936 Senior TT (winning by 18 seconds over Woods now riding for Velocette). In 1937 Guthrie won the Junior but his bike broke down at ‘The Cutting’ in the Senior. He was killed later that year (at 40) while leading the German GP at the Sachsenring. Woods was slowed in that race (by broken fuel line) and saw a rider ahead too close to Guthrie. It was said the accident was a result of mechanical failure. Woods, interviewed in 1992, said he thought Guthrie had been forced off line and into the trees at the Noetzhold corner. Woods was the first on the scene and went with him to the hospital: “the surgeon came out and said that they'd revived him momentarily, but that he had died. You can imagine how I felt. We'd been friends, team-mates and rivals for ten years. I was shattered." The ‘Guthrie Memorial’ stands where he had stopped in his last TT; the ‘Guthrie Stone’ marks the accident spot at the Sachsenring. Woods won the Junior TT for Velocette in 1938 and 1939; also with Velocette he was a close second to Norton in the Senior TTs of ’36,’37 and ’38 and just missed third by 6 seconds behind Freddie Frith (Norton) when the BMW supercharged bikes took first and second in 1939. Woods did not return to racing after 1945 but did test rides (including on the Guzzi V8 in ’56) and demonstration rides at the TTs into his 80’s. It took Mike Hailwood to beat his ten TT wins. Stanley Woods died in 1993 aged 90, still regarded by many as the greatest rider of all.
An evocative photo of a New Imperial single-cylider Junior TT racer [MotorCycling, June 6 1935]
Three inauspicious cardboard boxes stuffed in a suitcase, and hidden in a Mexico City closet for over 70 years was revealed as a treasure trove of photography in 2010. 'The Mexican Suitcase', as it was called, refers to three boxes containing organized 35mm film rolls that were smuggled out of France at the beginning of WW2, likely by the Mexican ambassador. Within the boxes was 126 rolls of film (about 4000 photos) from three of the most important photojournalists to cover the Spanish Civil War; Robert Capa, Gerda Taro, and David 'Chim' Seymour. These three young and idealistic photographers entered Spain in 1935/6 to document the terrible struggle between the elected Leftist government, and the forces of General Francisco Franco, who was backed by a coalition of monarchists, capitalists, the Catholic church, and Fascists.
Hoping to sway international opinion through their photography, Capa, Taro (Capa's lover), and Chim took dramatic photos which changed the course of photography, if not the war. With the mantra 'if the photo isn't interesting, you're not close enough to the battle', these three were intimately involved with the Republican soldiers fighting against the Fascist-backed rebellion. The three photographers weren't the only foreigners helping the Republicans via media accounts; luminaries such as Ernest Hemingway, Paul Robeson, Pablo Neruda, and George Orwell (who actually took up arms, and wrote 'Homage to Catalonia' about his experiences in the war) felt the urgency of fighting the European tide of Fascism which arose in the 1930s in Italy and Germany.
A 1935 Harley-Davidson VL with Bosch headlamp, and a very worried partisan fighter, keeping an eye out for Heinkel bombers 'loaned' by Germany to Franco's forces [Gerda Taro]The Republican soldier riding the motorcycle was photographed by Gerda Taro (the nom de plume of Gerta Pohrylle of Germany), who was hiding in the forest during an aerial attack by German Heinkel He51s during the battle of Navacerrada Pass, between Madrid and Segovia, early June 1937. This very battle is the setting for Ernest Hemingway's 'For Whom the Bell Tolls', in which a journalist/Hemingway stand-in, Robert Jordan, is an American who travels to Spain to fight fascism. About 2800 Americans (the 'Abraham Lincoln Brigade') did so, although I doubt any brought their motorcycles, as there was an official US embargo on providing any material aid to the Spanish, and some of the Americans were prosecuted after returning to the US.
Ernest Hemingway in Spain, photographed by Robert Capa
The Harley Davidson looks to be a 'VLD' model of 1932-'36, their 74cubic inch sidevalve roadster, hardly suited to the kind of off-road work used in a military campaign... but of course, private motorcycles were pressed into service during war in Spain, and shortly after, the rest of Europe. The Harley has a German Bosch headlamp, which may have been a convenient replacement for the original item, after damage. No other modifications appear to have been made to the bike; Spain had no time to make specialist war equipment or even paint military machines drab or camouflage. In his leather jacket and boots, plus beret and goggles, the rider could be any of us on his Harley, out for a spin in the woods. But the look of anxiety on his face, keeping his hands on the 'bars, means our rider is ready to hightail it at the first sign of an incoming plane.
A second photo of the Harley-Davidson rider [Gerda Taro]Gerda Taro was initially linked professionally to Robert Capa, with her photos being released under a Taro&Capa byline, but she struck out on her own after refusing Capa's marriage proposal in Spain. Her photos of the bombing of Valencia, and her reportage from Brunete, were her most celebrated work, but she was killed in an automobile/tank accident during the Battle of Brunete, shortly after the photos in the Mexican Suitcase were taken - she was 27 years old. She was the first female photojournalist to cover a war, and the first to die in the process.
Gerda Taro and Robert Capa in Spain [Chim]Robert Capa survived his time in Spain, and went on to photograph WW2, embedded with American troops, and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Dwight Eisenhower. He founded the Magnum Photo agency in Paris in 1947, with Henri Cartier-Bresson, William Vandivert, David Seymour, and George Rodger, and became a celebrated and successful photographer for magazines around the world. Although he swore off war photography after WW2, he was lured by the French war in Indochina (Vietnam), and secured a job reporting there for Time-Life magazines. He was killed after stepping on a land mine in 1954; he was 40 years old.
A Gerda Taro photograph of Spanish children playing with a bombed-out motorcycle in 1937
David 'Chim' Seymour (born Dawyd Szymin in Poland) was sent to Spain on assignment by Regards magazine in 1935, and remained covering the war for 4 years, before escaping with Republican refugees to Mexico aboard the SS Sinaia in 1939. He entered the USA that year, and joined the US Army after Germany invaded Poland, his birthplace, in 1939. He was a photographer for the US military, and was naturalized as a US Citizen in 1942, the same year his parents were killed in a Nazi concentration camp in Poland. After the war, he photographed the plight of poor children around the world for Unicef, and founded Magnum Photos with Robert Capa in 1947, becoming president of the group when Capa was killed in 1954. He was killed by machine-gun fire in Egypt while covering the Suez Crisis in 1956 - he was 44 years old.
Contact sheets from the Mexican Suitcase, showing Spanish refugees on the move [Robert Capa?]
Carl Neracher was born to make the Ner-A-Car; it was his name, after all! That double pun - his motorcycle was both 'nearly a car' and a mis-spelling of his name - was auspicious wordplay, for while his 1918 design was only built for seven years (from 1921-28), it sold very well, with a combined 16,500 units built in both US and British factories. The Ner-A-Car remains the most successful hub-center steered motorcycle ever built, far eclipsing the sales of similarly constructed machines from the 1905 Zenith Bi-Car (not many built!) to the Bimota Tesi of 2008 (417 produced). Carl Neracher designed his radical hub-center steered motorcycle in 1918, right after WW1, and it was designed from the start to feature a car-type chassis and fully enclosed bodywork that protected the rider from road grit. It steered with the same mechanism as an automobile, and offered much the same protection, so it was indeed 'Ner-A-Car', as it was sold in Britian; in the US, it was sold as the 'Neracar'.
The designer Carl Neracher himself aboard a 1922 Neracar [via Bruce Lindsay, published in TMIINYS - see 'Sources']
The Design
Carl Neracher (1882-1962) first emerged on the motor vehicle scene as a sales rep for the Smith Motor Wheel Co, that produced an auxiliary motor attachment (fixed on a third wheel) for bicycles. He was next the Chief Engineer for the Cleveland Motorcycle Mf'r Co, reportedly designing their distinctive lightweight two-stroke single, with a cross-ways (transverse) mounted engine, that necessitated a 90deg bevel-drive to complete the transmission with a chain. The little Cleveland had some sales success, and was used by the US Army as an on-base courier machine during WW1. The Cleveland's 221cc transverse two-stroke single-cylinder motor would reappear in the Ner-A-Car a few years later.
The 1919 Cleveland Model B, still in military drag, but as designed by Car Neracher in 1915 [Unknown]Carl Neracher didn't invent the Neracar in a vacuum: hub-center steering had been in production since at least 1904, in Britain with Tooley's Patent Bi-Car, which the Zenith company licensed and sold at the Bi-Car from 1905. The Bi-Car used a low-slung tubular chassis with its hub-center steering, but in the US, the Militaire of 1911 used a C-section sheet steel frame very similar to the Ner-A-Car, which held the front wheel between extended chassis arms.
Carl Neracher's 1918 prototype; note the simplified bodywork, solid disc wheels, and headlamp blended into the front fender, but also the fundamental similarity to the production machine. [via Bruce Lindsay, published in TMIINYS]Strangely, neither of these machines was referenced in a Patent plate affixed to the Neracar chassis in the US; it credits patents granted to John J. Chapin of the Detroit Bi-Car Co. of 1911. According to a 1911 edition of The Bicycling World, the Bi-Car was "an attempt to construct a two-wheel vehicle embracing many desirable features of the automobile." Which principally meant protection from road muck for the rider, and stability on the road, in an era when motorcycles handled terribly, with very high centers of gravity, and zero understanding of using rake/trail adjustments in combination with a suitable wheelbase and good weight distribution to achieve stability. Compared to any other machine on the road in 1911, a hub-center steered motorcycle must have been a revelation, as they're stable to the point of being safe to ride hands-off.
The 'Midget BiCar' as seen in 1908. The design originated in Reading, England, in 1905, produced by JT Brown. The rights to the design were purchased by the Walton Motor Co of Long Island, NY, in 1908. The frame was built of channel steel girders, with light steel pressings covering the chassis. It seems likely this is the patent referred to on the Ner-A-Car build plate? ['American Motorcycles: 1868-1914', Wright]
Production
In the immediate aftermath of WW1, aircraft factories like Sopwith, Bleriot, BMW, and Sheffield Simplex found themselves without orders, turning to motorcycles to keep their factories occupied. Motorcycles offered similar requirements for technical sophistication in manufacture, and offered a degree of panache/danger that seemed a natural fit for an aircraft firm. Sheffield-Simplex manager H.H. Powell was coaxed by J. Allan Smith (Carl Neracher's business partner) to visit the USA and assess their new design in early 1919. Sheffield-Simplex's rival Sopwith Aviation had already committed to production of the flat-twin ABC motorcycle by 1919 (designed by Granville Bradshaw and the equal in radicality to the Neracher's design), which may have encouraged Powell to take out a license to produce Neracher's design in Britain.
The American Ner-A-Car factory in New York in 1922 [Motorcycle Illustrated, April 13, 1922]In late 1919, the Inter Continental Engineering Company was formed in London, with Board members including many Sheffield Simplex executives, plus J.Allan Smith and Carl Neracher, and H.H. Powell himself. Sheffield Simplex set up a factory for motorcycle production in Tinsley, near Sheffield, with a second assembly plant at Finningley, near Doncaster. The Ner-A-Car, as it was called from its 1921 press announcements, was slightly altered from Neracher's blueprints, and the introductory engine was a Sheffield Simplex two-stroke single of 221cc.
The 1922 British Ner-A-Car brochure [author's collection]In the US, the Ner-A-Car Corporation was formed in late 1921 with financial backing secured domestically, and a factory set up at 196 S. Geddes Street in Syracuse. NY. The first appearance of the American 'Neracar' was at the Chicago National Motorcycle, Bicycle and Accessories Show in late 1921.
Positive Reviews
In 1922, Mrs GM Janson became well known for riding her Ner-A-Car in various observed trials, on-road and off-road alike. "It behooves me to bestow a word of well-earned praise on the Ner-A-Car." [The MotorCycle, Dec 1921]
In 1921, Gwenda Janson makes an observed 1,000-mile ride to gain an ACU Certificate, and she gained a second Certificate in December that year for a non-stop ride of 300 miles. With its full enclosure, easy starting, and very stable ride, the Ner-A-Car was heavily marketed to women riders, and their advertising and brochures make an emphatic appeal to ladies, who had only very recently gained the right to vote in both the UK (1918) and the USA (1920). It was an era when motorcycle factories in the UK and Europe made direct appeals to women riders in brochures and advertising, and built 'Ladies' Models' - similar to Ladies' Bicycles - to accommodate their clothing styles, before women wearing trousers became commonplace. In that sense, Ner-A-Car catered to a feminist revolution, supporting women's identity as independently mobile individuals, whose competence mastering a motorized vehicle was unquestioned. This my seem normal today (except in Saudi Arabia), but the early 1920s was still the Victorian era, when women's social roles were extremely restricted, as were their property rights, and of course their right to vote.
Erwin 'Cannonball' Baker at the embarkation point (New York City) of yet another of his grand cross-country adventures, in November 1922, that took 27 days. Was he subsidized by the factory? [Unknown]In November of 1922, 'Cannonball' Baker rode a Neracar across the USA, traveling from New York to Los Angeles, a trip of 3364.2 miles, in 27 days, 5 hours, 28 minutes, using 45 gallons of gasoline and 5 5/8 gallons of oil, at a cost of $15.70. He averaged 19.41mph over the horrific unpaved 'roads' of the day, and averaged 74.77mpg. Baker had a few things to say about the Neracar, and was quoted in a 1960s interview, "I have ridden a lot of fine handling motorcycles in my day, but I NEVER RODE ANYTHING that would come so near to steering itself as a Neracar. A popular demonstration of this Neracar by dealers and salesmen who sold it was to stand up on the footboards, ride it over rough roads, with hands behind their backs. I have pictures of Neracar riders standing in the saddle, other kneeling on the saddle with their hands locked in handcuffs." The word on the street, in the press, and in the ads proclaimed the Neracar as the most stable motorcycle ever built.
The 1922 catalog caters explicitly to lady riders [author's collection]Press response was very positive among reviewers. In the Spring of 1922 Motorcycling and Bicycling featured a road test of a Neracar by LE Fowler, who was impressed by the bike's easy handling, and how clean the bike remained over muddy roads. After familiarizing himself with the machine on a trip from Syracuse to Auburn NY, he rode the Neracar standing on the footboards, with no hands.
Evolution
The 1922 British Ner-A-Car - note the relatively light front mudguard for this first-year model, which would expand dramatically the next year for better rider protection [author's collection]
By 1923, the English Ner-A-Car Model B got a larger motor (now 285cc), which gave a little more power, and the carburetor was moved to a more convenient location. The next year the Model C offered a Blackburne sidevalve engine of 350cc, which abandoned Neracher's original friction-drive system (that gave a kind of 'automatic transmisson') in favor of a conventional clutch/gearbox/chain drive. In 1925, Ner-A-Car upped the ante even further, offering a 350cc OHV Blackburne engine for the Model C. As the front hub was unchanged, there was no front brake, and the dual rear-wheel brakes of the Ner-A-Car would have been sorely tested by an 80mph motorcycle, although the chassis was quite capable of handling the speed. A further model was offered with rear springing and a car-type seat (shades of the Wilkinson), but by 1927, British production was finished, after 6500 machines were built.
By 1923, the British Ner-A-Car gained a deeper front mudguard. On the British version, electric lighting remained an option for several years, whereas it was standard on the American version. [Hockenheim Museum Collection]The American Neracar started out with a 221cc motor, which was increased to 255cc in 1924, and the original chassis configuration with friction drive was retained throughout the run of 10,000 machines. Over time the engine got better cooling fins, larger springs for the front suspension, a one-piece crankcase for better gas (and oil) sealing, and the carburetor was relocated to the left side of the engine, providing better access to the carb, and helping the intake mixture stay cooler. Options like balloon tires and carriers were available, and a second rear brake was added as required in most markets.
A Blackburne-engined model, with sidevalve 350cc motor and standard clutch/gearbox [Hockenheim Museum Collection]Both Ner-A-Car factories struggled as the '20s progressed and motorcycles became more competent, and many more small machines became available. The Ner-A-Car was a bright idea that had had its day, and without significant further development to keep up with the times (which might look like the Majestic?), sales faded. Production figures, while the highest for any hub-center motorcycle in history, were still far less than the factories were capable of producing, and expected to produce.
The late British model with car-type seating and a windscreen, plus the Blackburne 350cc sidevalve motor, and rear suspension. [Hockenheim Museum Collection]Radical or 'better' ideas have rarely been wildly popular in motorcycling, although most factories have tried one or two in their history - Wankel motors, hub-center bikes, fully enclosured bodywork, feet-forward riding positions, etc. None have proved to be big sellers, not even something as mundane as a 4-cylinder motorcycle, which the American industry proudly produced from 1909 onwards, with no profitability for any 4-cylinder manufacturer (Henderson, Indian, Ace, Cleveland, Militaire, Pierce, etc). It took the Ariel Square 4 (1931), and then the Honda CB750(1968), to prove a Four could be profitably sold.
A Test Ride
Although I'd seen quite a few Ner-A-Cars in museums and at motorcycle shows, I'd never seen one actually ridden until I was presented with a test machine, at the Vintage Revival Montlhéry event of 2013. The original-paint, oily rag machine was the property of Jon Dudley, who'd purchased it while searching for 'something unusual'. He certainly got it, although of course the clergymen and nurses who were the Ner-A-Car's primary customers in the UK didn't mind, and appreciated not getting their clothes filthy during a ride to work. That function would be classified as 'scooter' today, and in some ways the Ner-A-Car fits the definition, barring its exceptional handling.
The Jon Dudley 1923 Ner-A-Car loaned for our test [Jon Dudley]Pushing the bike around with a dead engine doesn't inspire confidence, with a wiggly feel transmitted between the front wheel and handlebars, which had the earlier, simpler linkages, which were replaced with ball joints on later models. But no matter, once the carb is tickled, one steps on a starter pedal mounted just behind the left side footboard, in the manner of an early BMW. With only 221cc, it's an easy start with a decent spark from the flywheel magneto, hidden within the very housing that drives the friction wheel and hence the rear wheel - true design economy. An easy press down and the motor is soon pop-popping away underneath that bodywork, while the exposed cylinder top heats up. Fuel mix is controlled by a lever throttle on the right handlebar (with an air lever for starting), and on the left 'bar is a twistgrip (funny they didn't use one for the throttle!) which dis/engages the flywheel friction drive. There isn't actually a clutch, but the twistgrip disengages the friction wheel from the flywheel that drives it.
Our road test subject; a 1923 Ner-A-Car as built by the Sheffield-Simplex Company, in 'oily rag' condition [Jon Dudley]With no gears and no clutch plates, engaging the drive is more akin to a lever-pull automatic transmission, starting with the long 'shift' lever in low, and pushing through the five notches on the lever gate to 'high gear', at which point you're north of 30mph. Ner-A-Car didn't like top speed quotes, and the Board actively sought to keep top speeds DOWN to reduce intimidation for new riders, but the two-stroke version of the Ner-A-Car is good for 35mph, which can apparently be maintained ad nauseum.
The author on his first acquaintance with the test subject 1923 Ner-A-Car, at the 2013 Vintage Revival Montlhéry [Francois-Marie Dumas]Such was my experience anyway, as I burbled onto the steeply-banked historic autodrome, and pulled the lever all the way to the 'bar, and the speed lever all the way forward. A muted two-stroke howl and a stately pace soon led to a realization that my hands were no longer required on the 'bars, and so I commenced to take photos of all the other riders passing me by, as I hugged the inside of the course. Even through the chicanes set up to bring riders off the banking and slow them down, the Ner-A-Car needed no assistance, only a shift in weight to arc through the curves, and so I carried on that way...for 3 full laps of the circuit!
With the hands free from the burden of steering, photography could be indulged with ease [Francois-Marie Dumas]There's no rear suspension, so Montlhéry's notoriously bumpy concrete surface was felt through the sprung leather saddle, and although the front end did bounce gently over the worst of it, the plot never wavered from straight ahead. Such is my experience with every hub-center steered motorcycle I've ridden - absolute stability, at the expense of agility. The Ner-A-Car, being light, relatively small, and underpowered, never felt sluggish in steering or stubbornly unwilling to change direction, but was easy-peasy to ride around the paddock and even turn in fairly tight circles. The Ner-A-Car is a bike to inspire confidence in any rider, especially novices, with its stability and ease of use. The Ner-A-Car was a noble attempt to provide a machine that fills the niche of the scooter, combining weather protection, ease of use, and a feet-forward riding position. It would take another 25 years before the scooter would be perfected by Piaggio and Innocenti, but for fans of unique engineering, the Ner-A-Car is an intriguing proposition.
A publicity shot in 1923: an early instance of 'bathing suit ladies' being used to sell motorcycles. In truth, Harley-Davidson and Excelsior had inaugurated this tactic back in the 'Teens. Ner-A-Car's advertising showed far more sensibly clad women actually riding their machines [unknown]Ladies in cloche hats in active revolt! Aboard an easy-to-manage Ner-A-Car. From the 1922 catalog [author's collection]Sources:
The Motorcycle Industry in New York State [referred to as TMIINYS above], 1999, Geoffrey Stein, NY State Museum, Albany. This is a remarkable book, and the only one of its type about American motorcycle production. In Europe, there are dozens of such books, such as Bernard Salvat's '600 Marques Motocyclettes de Paris et la Seine' (you read that right; 600 mf'rs in the Paris area alone!). France and Germany are the leaders in 'local pride' publications, which are an invaluable source of information. TMIINYS is essential reading; while many of the 146 NY manufacturers have scant information, other brands, like Ner-A-Car, Emblem, Curtiss, etc, have information found nowhere else. Kudos to Geoffrey Stein for his excellent book, which can be purchased here.
The MotorCycle magazine, 1921-28 editions
MotorCycling magazine, 1921 - 28 editions
Motorcycling and Bicycling magazine, 1922-24. A very difficult-to-find publication, and essential for early American motorcycle research.
The Complete Illustrated Encyclopedia of American Motorcycling, 1999, Tod Rafferty. Courage Books, Philadelphia. A very useful shorthand guide to 78 American motorcycle manufacturers, with great color photos. Available here.
Paul d'Orléans is the founder of TheVintagent.com. He is an author, photographer, filmmaker, museum curator, event organizer, and public speaker. Check out his Author Page, Instagram, and Facebook.
If anyone was ever born to be a photographer, it was Rondal Partridge, whose name you've likely never heard, but you likely know his mother, the legendary photographer Imogen Cunningham. Partridge's father was the printmaker Roi George , and their family friends included the likes of Dorothea Lange and Ansel Adams. When Rondal was 4 years old, he began spending significant time with Lange and her husband, the painter Maynard Dixon, and began assisting his mother in her darkroom from age 5. He hit the road at 16 with Dorothea Lange when she was hired by the Resettlement Administration, a Federal agency created to study rural poverty as part of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. In 1934/5, in the depths of the Depression, Lange made her career with these legendary photographs, and was paid $4/day by the agency. As her assistant/driver, Rondal was paid $1/day, and often camped while Lange slept in motels.
"Breaking the starting tape." A 1930s Norton climbing the hill - probably purchased in San Francisco from dealer Al Fergoda. It's remarkable to think what this area looks like today - the heart of Silicon Valley! [National Archive]From 1937-39, Rondal worked as an assistant to Ansel Adams in Yosemite National Park, and was in charge of Adams' 'automatic darkroom' that produced prints for sale to tourists. In the Spring of 1940, Partridge was commissioned by the National Youth Administration (NYA) (another New Deal Federal agency) to study youth culture and youth unemployment in California. Partridge traveled from Berkeley to Los Angeles, photographing high school students and other young people, and his work reflects his time studying under Dorothea Lange, with its poignant social concern, and some of her artistry.
"Roadside repair. On the way to the hill climb, this motorcycle party stopped by the roadside while one of the motorcycles was repaired. The girls were pillion riders." In 1940, many State highways were still dirt - the road sign behind them might say '1' or even '101'! The bikes are all Harley-Davidsons and Indians, in stock trim. [National Archive]That Spring, he happened upon a motorcycle hillclimb event in Santa Clara, CA, which is now the heart of Silicon Valley, but then was simply another agricultural valley in a state known for its many fertile regions (many of which have been similarly paved over). Today the Santa Clara valley is teeming with suburban housing developments and the campuses of the tech industry, although a few notable wineries dot the surrounding hills, especially in the southern part of the valley.
"This young motorcycle enthusiast is a contestant in the meet." [National Archive]Partridge followed his NYA commission with a stint at the Black Star photographic service, and during WW2 he served as a photographer for the US Navy. Postwar, Partridge worked as a freelance photographer, writing and lecturing on photography and film for universities. He returned to photograph the Yosemite Valley in the 1960s, notably contrasting the development and automotive traffic against Adams' natural splendor, in a famous series published as 'Pave It and Paint It Green', which was also made into a film.
"This contestant watches another attempt the climb. He wears a sweater which bears his motorcycle's trade name." [National Archive]This chance series of photos capture an amazing and long-lost era of California history and amateur sporting competition. Hill Climbing was an incredibly popular professional sport in the late 1920s, as the 'Big 3' battled it out for supremacy in 'vertical drag racing', but the Depression put a lid on motorsports, which led the AMA to create Class C racing in 1934, which specified only catalogued racing machines were eligible for sanctioned racing events. This killed the era of highly developed factory specials (OHV, alcohol-burning v-twins from H-D, Indian, and Excelsior), but popularized motorcycle racing to a much broader audience, like as this photo series demonstrates. It was Everyman racing, on every sort of machine, and looks like tremendous fun.
"His first hill climb. The fellow is fixing the gearshift for him, while the other is explaining how to take the bumps. The man with the goggles is wearing a shirt from a local motorcycle club." The bike is of course an Indian 101 Scout. Style notes: cuffed Levi's, engineer's boots, motorcycle logo sweaters, club tees, and pre-WW2 aviator shades. A few squares in suits haunt the background - probably dealers. [National Archives]"An apprehensive onlooker. This woman was a motorcycle enthusiast and was among a group which came by way of motorcycle to the hill climb." [National Archive]"At the start of the course. The going gets even rougher and steeper further on. The crowd in the background is composed almost entirely of young fellows. At the bottom of the hill can be seen the parking area. Besides the automobiles, approximately 200 motorcyclists had come to this Sunday event." The machine is a Harley-Davidson WRTT, a competition machine with a front brake for TT courses. [National Archives]"About 18 years old, and one of the most daring motorcycle riders at the meet. He wears his own name on his sweater, and wears a leather helmet under his crash helmet. Helmets are made of steel or a composition with Balsa wood lining." [National Archives]
Bernard Testemale is best known as a professional surf photographer, based in southern France, having grown up in Soustons and surfing from an early age. He began his photo career in the dark(room) ages, shooting with film, and shifted to digital photography, as everyone did, for a stretch of 10 years, using medium and large-format cameras. He also did interesting work with large-format Polaroid film, sadly only available as expired stock nowadays, and in 2013 he stepped through the looking glass into the world of Wet Plate. He studied with a chemistry specialist, Jacques Cousin, who instructed him on some of the dark arts of the wet plate/collodion process, and also dug into books from the 1880s, when the process was at its peak of perfection, by Desire Van Monckhoven, A. Liébert, etc.
The supercharged 1930 BMW land speed racer ridden by Ernst Henne, that magically appeared at the 2014 Wheels+Waves 'ArtRide' exhibition, courtesy the BMW Museum in Munich [Bernard Testemale]"There's a ton of good information in the old books", he explains, and is lucky enough to read these texts in his native language! Photography was invented in France, or at least the first successful, permanent photo-images, first from the work of the wonderfully named Nicephore Niépce, who laid the foundations for photography by exposing polished silver plates fogged with iodine and bromine, and developed with mercury vapor. This dangerous process is called Daguerreotype, after Niépce's student/business partner, Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre, perfected the process and popularized it worldwide.
Chopper rider Bruno Allart [Bernard Testemale]"It took me a almost a year - full time - to learn from my mistakes, and practice the process practice step by step. I was dedicated to the process, and I haven't stopped since …" His work in the wet plate/collodion medium is outstanding, and Bernard can be seen around the world these days, traveling to surf hotspots, which tend to be motorcycle hotspots too! So today he indulges both passions, for boards and wheels, with his mighty Deardorff 8x10" camera, at events like Wheels+Waves.
Lustrous, with the sought-after 'Bokeh' created by spherical abberations in an old lens, blurring any out-of-focus areas, and making even chopper fishtails look like Art Nouveau accents [Bernard Testemale]Bernard is having an exhibition in Paris of his wet plate/collodion photography, 'Art of Ride' at Galerie Hegoa, 16, rue de Beaune, in the 7th Arrondissement. The exhibition is open from Jan 26th - March 18 2018. Here's the gallery's press release on the exhibition:
The word ‘Ride’ or ‘Rider’ sums up the spirit of freedom that drives his work. Entirely created in collodion - a complex photographic process dating to the mid-19th century - and embedded onto metal plates (tintypes or ferrotypes) or glass (ambrotypes), these infinitely nuanced black and white images trigger an immediate flashback and unleash an emotional electricity as unique as it is unexpected. To create timeless pieces of great intensity with only an engine or a face is a challenge and a passion, existing somewhere at the crossroads of painting, sculpture and photography. Working with collodion requires a mountain of equipment, a keen understanding of chemistry and the mastery of countless technical factors that can destroy an image. Each photograph requires as much time and patience on the part of the photographer as the subject. Of these hours of laborious work, the photographer has no guarantee of success, but the little imperfections and the unpredictability of the final print are the charm of these unique and timeless artworks. “This is a sort of return to the past,” explains Testemale, “Collodion takes us back to the origins of photography.”
'Sultans of Sprint' [Bernard Testemale]Paul Simonon of the Clash [Bernard Testemale]A Gnome-Rhone Model X Art Deco flat twin [Bernard Testemale]Paul d'Orléans aboard the supercharged BMW [Bernard Testemale]'Pouring a plate' - the collodion (charged with iodine and salts) is poured on black glass to create an ambrotype, Bernard's preferred medium. Once the collodion becomes tacky (10 seconds or so), the plate is dunked into a silver nitrate bath for 90 seconds, at which point it is light-sensitive film, as silver particles embed the tacky collodion surface. The plate is pulled out in a darkroom, put into a plate holder (familiar to any large-format photographer), and exposed in a camera. The charged collodion has an ASA of about 1, so exposures are long, and lenses 'hot'! [Arto Saari]Bernard Testemale with his trusty 8x10: Deardorff camera [Arto Saari]
Paul d'Orléans is the founder of TheVintagent.com. He is an author, photographer, filmmaker, museum curator, event organizer, and public speaker. Check out his Author Page, Instagram, and Facebook.
The Big 3. For a time, they were the last men standing in the American motorcycle industry: Harley-Davidson, Indian, and Excelsior-Henderson. They fought hard on the dirt tracks, race tracks, hill climbs, and sales floors, and in their 1920s heyday, the competition between the Big 3 made for the most exciting racing anyone had ever seen, between the fastest and most advanced racing bikes in the world. Sales floor competition made each company improve their products dramatically, and by the late 1920s it was Indian and Excelsior-Henderson who dominated the 45cu” (750cc) market with the Scout and Super X models. Their big models (the Indian Chief and 4, and the Henderson 4) were admired the world over, and were in many ways the most attractive and technically interesting motorcycles built in the USA. But larger forces were at work in the marketplace, far beyond any company’s control, that determined the fate of the Big 3.
A factory racing Excelsior v-twin, with a very special OHC v-twin motor based on the Cyclone engine; a few were built, but the Big Valve IoE (F-head) Excelsior motor proved just as fast and a lot more reliable than the poorly lubricated OHC design...[Mecum]Harley-Davidson, Indian, and Excelsior-Henderson all nearly succumbed to the Great Depression. Their sales figures after October 29, 1929 were dismal, and instead of selling tens of thousands of motorcycles towards the end of 1929, they sold bikes by the tens and hundreds, while unsold stock languished in distribution warehouses. Drastic action was necessary; Harley-Davidson found cash in Japan, selling their old tooling and leftover parts supply to make Rikuo motorcycles under license, a deal arranged by their Japanese importer Alfred R. Child. It’s still little known that the ‘Dabbitoson Harley Motorcycle Co. Japan’ was the secret savior of the Screaming Eagle. As for Indian, E. Paul DuPont decided he’d rather double down and buy a majority stake in the company than see his family’s six-figure investment go down the drain (resulting in their most profitable period ever, 1930-1945).
A fleet of Excelsior-Henderson 4-cylinders for this police force. At the time, a 'four' was the fastest thing on wheels.
Excelsior-Henderson was owned by Ignaz Schwinn, whose mighty two-wheeled empire in Chicago earned most of its profit from bicycles. Schwinn correctly foresaw a major downturn in motorcycle sales for 1930, and decided to pull the plug on his big bikes, and focus on the ones without motors, which were likely to continue selling when jobs were scarce. And he was right; Schwinn bicycles outlived Indian, and thrived through the 1960s and ‘70s, but never again produced motorcycles. But the Excelsior-Henderson name has quietly survived, waiting for the right combination of capital and inspiration to roar back to life.
Ignaz Schwinn
The motorcycle industry began slowly in the USA, at the dawn of the 20th Century, but soon exploded into life, becoming a veritable Springtime of manufacturers sprouting up from the ingenuity and pluck of our native country. Hundreds of small factories emerged between 1900 and 1920, as the formula for making a motorcycle – adding a motor to a bicycle – was intuitively easy to replicate. Bicycles were at the peak of their popularity, with manufacturers like Schwinn produced hundreds of thousands per year, inventing ‘vertical integration’ by incorporating every aspect of building, advertising, selling, racing, sponsoring, and repairing under their umbrella, and becoming very rich in the process.
Ignaz Schwinn was an American success story. Born in 1860 near Baden, Germany, his family was mildly prosperous as manufacturers of organs and pianos, but his father died when he was 11, and the second eldest of 7 children. After a primary and vocational school education, he scoured northern Germany for work, repairing bicycles for cash. He found a job as a machinist at the Kleyer bicycle works, and burned the midnight oil on a small drawing board in his room, designing his own ‘safety’ bicycle, which had recently been invented by Stanley in England. Heinrich Kleyer approved of these drawings, and gradually Schwinn rose to the post of factory manager and designer for Kleyer’s ‘Adler’ bicycles (the factory later grew famous making typewriters and motorcycles).
An early Excelsior single-cylinder machine with belt drive, c.1910, with the Keystone cops.
In 1891 Schwinn left Germany to seek his fortune in Chicago, the center of American bicycle manufacture. He quickly found work at the Hill Cycle Manufacturing Co, makers of the ‘Fowler’ bicycle, where once again he rose to the job of factory manager and designer. Schwinn was also involved in the launch of Hill’s related International Manufacturing Co, which produced the ‘America’ bicycle. Schwinn designed International’s bicycles, selected the machinery and tools for manufacture, and hired the employees to make them. Within a year he was supervising 237 workers, and oversaw a move to a larger factory building with 60,000sq’ of space.
The frame-building room of the giant Schwinn factory [Mecum] Schwinn had made a great success of International Manufacturing, but he wasn’t happy with the management of the company, and quit in 1894. During that year, he made plans to begin his own bicycle manufacturing business, keeping an eye out for a good location, and someone who could provide financial backing. He found a kindred spirit in another German immigrant, Adolf Arnold, who owned the Arnold Brothers meat packing plant, and was president of the Haymarket Produce Bank. After Schwinn’s successful management of 3 large bicycle manufacturing firms, during a worldwide boom in the bicycle industry, the idea of him starting his own company must have seemed a sure bet to Arnold. Hillclimbing before the sport was invented! This 1918 photo shows a US Military trial during WW1, demonstrating the prowess of the Excelsior v-tiwn [National Archive]
Arnold, Schwinn & Co. was founded in 1895, with Arnold’s investment of $75,000. The company carried on doing business under that name through 1967, although when Arnold retired in 1908, Schwinn purchased his stake in the company. That year they built 50,000 bicycles, a number that would double in 3 years. Schwinn became a very large company, and even fielded a racing team in Europe to promote their brand. With so much success, Ignaz’ son Frank – an avid motorcyclist - encouraged his father to invest in the burgeoning motorcycle industry.
1917: a military test of an Excelsior sidecar outfit through wet territory [National Archive][/caption]Schwinn’s engineers designed a motorcycle in 1910, with a parallel-twin cylinder engine, a crankcase incorporating an integral clutch, and a shaft final drive. It was a very advanced design, and at least one prototype was built, but Schwinn decided it prudent to buy an existing motorcycle brand rather than develop a new one. Dozens of small and large companies made motorcycles in the USA in 1910, and most of them struggled to make ends meet in a highly competitive market. Ignaz Schwinn didn’t have to look far for a successful motorcycle manufacturer looking to sell; he found the perfect fit right in Chicago.
The Excelsior Supply Company
The Excelsior Supply Company was formed in 1876 by George T. Robie, initially for the distribution of sewing machine parts. By the early 1890s, Excelsior branched into the booming bicycle business as well, selling parts and new ‘safety’ bicycles built by other brands. By 1904 they added automobile parts to their list of distributed supplies. George was content with distribution, but his son Frederick aspired to be a manufacturer, and prevailed on his father to embark on motorcycle production. The Bicycling World and Motorcycle Review noted in 1906, “The Excelsior Company is the largest and best known bicycle supply house in the West, and has the means and equipment and acquaintance to cut a very large figure in the motorcycle business.”
The Big X appears; an early Excelsior v-twin as produced by Schwinn [Mecum]The Excelsior Motor and Manufacturing Co was formed as a subsidiary of the Excelsior Supply Co in 1907, with Frederick Robie as President. Their first motorcycle was called the Triumph(!) Model B, using a Thor engine (designed by Indian and built under license by the Aurora Automatic Machine Co, just outside Chicago), with Excelsior’s own chassis. The Triumph was a stopgap to enter the market quickly; during the 1908 model year a new machine was introduced, designed by Excelsior’s George Meiser, called the Excelsior Auto-Cycle Model A. By 1909, business was booming, and Frederick Robie hired Frank Lloyd Wright to build him a new home on Woodlawn Ave in Chicago!
The modern, reinforced concrete Excelsior-Henderson factory owned by Schwinn [Mecum]Unfortunately, in late 1909 George T. Robie died of appendicitis, and young Frederick (29) was left to run both his motorcycle business and the far larger Supply Co, as well as settle his father’s personal debts. The Excelsior Motorcycle Co was booming, and could not keep up with demand, so expanded both their manufacturing premises and their product line. Extensive product lines taxed their resources, and the company was spread thin. Excelsior developed a new V-twin motor for 1910 possessing a beautiful profile, which went into full production in 1911, but the combined weight of managing both the Supply and Motorcycle companies was too much for Frederick. While the Excelsior Motorcycle Co was tremendously successful, the combination of his father’s debts and lackluster performance from the Supply Co. made Excelsior ripe for a takeover.
Excelsior Under Schwinn: 1912-17
A transfer of ownership contract between Ignaz Schwinn and his former rival, the Excelsior Supply Co and Excelsior Motor and Mfg Co, was signed on Nov 14, 1911. All the assets of these companies went to Schwinn, including the factory and office equipment, motors, motorcycles, bicycles, whole or in process; all parts and stock; the goodwill and rights to brand names; all patents; and the right to manufacture and sell under the Excelsior name. Ignaz Scwhinn personally signed a check for $500,000 on Feb 1, 1912; with the mighty Schwinn name behind it, Excelsior now had the capital it needed to thrive. A new factory was a first priority, and the newly formed Excelsior Motor, Mfg & Supply Co built a new, 200,000sq’ factory in Chicago, the largest motorcycle plant in the world. The new big red ‘X’ logo appeared on Excelsior fuel tanks that year.
A 'Teens Excelsior V-twin with period sidecar, and the family [Mecum]Schwinn knew racing success was the best advertising, and Excelsior built special racing machines and hired professional riders to fly their flag, like Jake DeRosier, Charles Balke, Lee Humiston, and Don Johns. Excelsior board track racers were highly successful, and in 1912 became the first motorcycle to exceed and average of 100mph during a race, when Lee Humiston flew over the boards at Playa Del Rey in Los Angeles. In 1914 Excelsior introduced the 7-S.C. racing v-twin with a ‘short-coupled’ frame, specifically for the board tracks and dirt ovals of the day, to compete against Indian’s 8-valve racer, introduced in 1911. Regardless the Indian’s theoretical superiority, the Excelsior v-twin proved a worthy adversary, setting many speed records. In late 1915 Carl Goudy won a 300-mile race at Chicago’s famous Speedway Park Board Track, averaging over 85 m.p.h. Advertisements for ‘the Big X’ reminded buyers that Excelsior was ‘still the only motor that has ever attained a speed of 100 miles per hour under FAM sanction and recognition.’
More police-spec Excelsior v-twins with the 'braced fork' for heavy sidecar duty [Mecum]The first ‘Schwinn’ Excelsiors appeared in 1915, with new, sweeping lines that presaged the streamline era of the 1920s and ‘30s. The frame top tube curved downward at the rear, creating a lower seating position and allowing the fuel tank to taper at the back, while the front fender had a curved ‘bell’ at the bottom, giving the whole machine a masculine grace. Excelsior’s new ‘big valve’ engine proved faster than its rivals on road and track, and they introduced a Lightweight model with 221cc motor for new riders. Despite difficult economic conditions during WW1, Excelsior flourished, and Schwinn looked to expand his product line to include four cylinders. By 1917 the Pierce Motorcycle Co was long gone, and only Henderson built 4-cylinder motorcycle in the USA.
The Henderson Motorcycle Company
William Henderson should have been the inheritor of the Winton automobile factory, as the grandson of Winton’s founder and the son of the Thomas Henderson, Vice-President of Winton. Young William dreamed of two wheels though, and sketched dozens of drawings for a new four-cylinder motorcycle, which he ran by his engineer father for approval. Years of back-and-forth ended with a blueprint for a complete 4-cylinder motorcycle in 1909, detailed to the last nut and bolt, which his father could not criticize. His father advised him to quit the idea, as he knew the difficulties of manufacturing and selling a vehicle, but chose an unusual parental strategy, giving William enough money to build a prototype in hopes the difficult process of building a motorcycle from scratch would deter his son. It took over a year to for Tom to turn his blueprints into casting patterns for frame lugs, crankcases, and cylinder heads, but by 1911 the prototype was complete, and it worked very well. The first Henderson motorcycle was a unique long-chassis inline 4-cylinder machine, with single-speed direct belt drive, and built-in seating for two on its long chassis.
Machining facilities in the Excelsior-Henderson factory. [Mecum]Production by the new Henderson Motorcycle Co began in 1912. William was joined in forming a business by his brother Thomas, and with their father’s help, they found $175,000 of capitalization to begin production. After setting up a factory in Detroit, the first production Henderson motorcycle emerged in January 1912. The engine was a four-cylinder 57cu” (934cc) F-head with a single-speed chain drive and clutch, which was started by a folding hand crank – shades of Winton practice. Beside the 4-cylinder motor, the most distinctive feature was that very long chassis with built-on passenger seating, with a short leading-link front fork, and a lovely ‘torpedo’ fuel/oil tank, which was used for one year only. The Henderson was a lovely machine, beautifully built, and expensive at $325.
The new Henderson was an immediate international news item, as Charles Stearns Clancy set forth on a new Henderson in October 1912, intending to becoming the first motorcyclist to circle the globe. Clancy made money as he traveled by selling stories to the press; thus, everyone within reach of a newspaper knew about the Henderson motorcycle, a tremendous global PR coup. By 1915, Henderson gained a 2-speed rear hub, and by Spring a much shorter wheelbase was available as an option, at 58” instead of the original 65”, in an effort to bring the Henderson more in line with other manufacturers’ dimensions.
Early Excelsior v-twins lined up outside the Salt Lake City dealership [Mecum]In 1916, Roy Artley rode a Henderson with sidecar 706 miles in 24 hours, for a new world record, adding 122 miles to the old record, and on the other end of the performance scale, E.L. Hals of Modesto managed 104.2 miles on a gallon of gas with his ’16 Henderson. Alan Bedell used a ’17 Henderson to lop 4 days off ‘Cannonball’ Baker’s fastest cross-country ride, making the LA-NY trip in 7days, 16hours, and 15minutes. Police departments and gentleman riders appreciated the quiet quality of the smooth 4-cylinder, although behind the scenes, the factory was struggling mightily with problems of inflation brought on by WW1.
The Henderson Four of 1912, as ridden around the world for the first time by Charles Stearns Clancy [Mecum]The 1917 model range (the Model G), announced in Sept. 1916, had a 3-speed gearbox, the ‘short’ frame, a proper kickstarter, stronger forks, and a new induction tract, which fed the cylinders more efficiently, and generated more power. Full electric lighting was offered, and even Henry Ford bought himself a Henderson! But the company had yet to turn a profit, and as honorable men, William and Thomas Henderson decided to sell the company. The Henderson brother had been manufacturing their own design of motorcycle for six years, and their 4-cylinder machine was globally acclaimed as a superb design. The Henderson men were still relatively young – Tom was 46, and William just 36 – and would continue to be involved with the motorcycle industry for years to come.
Henderson Under Schwinn: 1917
In 1917, Ignaz Schwinn looked to expand his motorcycle business, and thought a 4-cylinder lineup would complement his line of singles and v-twins nicely. It wasn’t known until the 1990s (and is still little-known today) that under Schwinn’s direction, Excelsior drew up plans for a 4-cylinder motorcycle. Plans dated March 1917 designated it the Model O, which featured a sidevalve engine (rather than Henderson’s ‘pocket valve’ IoE motor), 3 speed gearbox, and a shaft final drive – a mix of Pierce and Henderson’s best ideas. But in a repeat of his successful 1911 tactics, Schwinn surmised it would easier to start production of a four using an established design. There was only US company making ‘fours’ in 1917; the Henderson Motorcycle Co of Detroit.
Three wheels are better in the snow! Disc wheel covers were a popular accessory in the 1920s, as on this Excelsior-Henderson Four outfit. [Mecum]Although the Henderson brothers built the ‘Deusenberg of Motorcycles’, they’d yet to turn a profit. The company had several suitors, but on Oct 1, 1917, Thomas Henderson (president of Henderson Motorcycle Co), gave a financial statement to Ignaz Schwinn. It showed assets of $284,693.39, and liabilities of $288,091.71. The proposed sale of the Henderson Motorcycle Co. included 200 shares of Excelsior stock for Tom, and a position as general sales manager at $10,000/yr for 5 years. Schwinn merged his two brands as Excelsior-Henderson, and began making changes in earnest.
Excelsior-Henderson
1917 was an exceptional year for the newly integrated Excelsior-Henderson brands. Wells Bennett, a specialist in cross-country endurance racing, rode a Henderson 4 to lop 4 hours off ‘Cannonball’ Baker’s LA-NY record, once again proving the remarkable reliability of Henderson’s design. The Excelsior Lightweight was dropped from the line, to focus attention on further developing the Henderson 4, so the Excelsior-Henderson model line now consisted of a big v-twin and a four.
The 1930 Excelsior Super X 45ci F-head v-twin [Mecum]The heat in American racing was truly turned up when Harley-Davidson officially entered the fray, fielding a team of professional riders for the first time. They took a leaf from Indian’s technical book and introduced their own 8-valve racer, and the intense competition between factories created the first Golden Age of American motorcycle racing. Excelsior had an excellent design, which required little development to be very fast, but the factory’s attention after 1917 was on the Henderson, the only four-cylinder motorcycle produced in the USA between 1911-21. World War 1 and the ensuing inflation of wages and materials cost shook out most motorcycle manufacturers, leaving the Big 3 to duke it out: Excelsior-Henderson, Indian, and Harley-Davidson.
The motorcycle as leisure object, and lure for the opposite sex, is an old invention. [Mecum]Schwinn knew Excelsior needed a boost in racing, and while the Henderson was excellent for long-distance events, it was no dirt-track/board-track racer. Excelsior developed an OHC v-twin design in 1919, based closely on the Cyclone design, and built 6 engines for the 1920 season. But changes to the racing rules (to limit speeds and increase safety) spelled the end of the Board Track era. Hill climbing was on the ascendant – the practice of ‘vertical drag racing’ up freakish hills across the country – and Excelsior Big Valve racers proved very much suited for the practice. Long-distance racing and hillclimbs were Excelsior-Henderson’s biggest source of advertising copy in the post-WW1 period, as well as international racing, with wins in South Africa, Denmark, and France.
A factory Excelsior OHV hillclimber [Mecum]Short-track racing with smaller 500cc (30.50cu”) motors was gaining popularity, and Excelsior adapted its Model M racing v-twin motor into a single, and took records on tracks across the USA. But the sport of Hill climbing really attracted the crowds, growing enormously popular as the decade progressed. 30,000 spectators watched the Capistrano Hill Climb in San Francisco in 1922, where Wells Bennett’s Excelsior bested local favorite Dudley Perkins’ H-D. The following year, 40,000 people watched as Ed Ryan on a very special, long-wheelbase 80cu” Excelsior Model M racer won the Open class at Capistrano, besting the factory-sponsored efforts of Indian and H-D. The era of the ‘slant artist’ had begun.
'Big Bertha', one of Excelsior's secret weapons in the Hillclimb wars of the late 1920s [Mecum]Hendersons gained a new sidevalve motor, based on Schwinn’s original Model O design of 1916, and all models had 3-speed gearboxes. The finish and quality of construction of the Hendersons earned the name ‘Deusenberg of Motorcycles’, and they continued to win long-distance events before the sanctioning body of racing – the M&ATA Competition Committee – stopped certifying cross-country record runs as ‘outlaw events’.
Excelsior made a strategic move in 1925, and introduced the new Super X as a 45cu” (750cc) v-twin into a vacant gap in the American marketplace. Indian produced the 600cc Scout model, which was popular, but adding 150cc made the Super X faster than the Scout, and nearly as fast at the 61cu” H-Ds and Indians. The Super X was light, handled very well with a double-cradle loop frame, and had a good turn of speed. It was easily tuned for racing too, and changed the American motorcycle marketplace for decades to come. Suddenly the 45cu” class was popular with riders, and while it was easy for Indian to add engine capacity to the Scout, Harley-Davidson needed a totally new design to compete, which didn’t appear for another 4 years (the Model D).
When Hillclimbing was everything in the USA, and Excelsior was on top. [Mecum]In 1929, the Excelsior-Henderson line was transformed with the new Streamline series. Rounded teardrop tanks and lower riding positions gave a thoroughly modernized appearance, and performance of the Henderson 4 was greatly improved with input of former H-D staff Joe Petrali and Arthur Constantine, who’d joined Excelsior-Henderson on the design team. The Henderson KJ model had 31hp, and was capable of 100mph, satisfying the many police departments using 4-cylinder pursuit motorcycles. One the competition front, Joe Petrali had won the 1928 Hillclimb Championship on a Super X, but competition was heating up with Indian and H-D developing very special racers. In response, Petrali and Constantine built a series of experimental racers, including an OHV version of the Super X (designed with Andrew Koslow), that developed 50hp on alcohol. In the Unlimited class, they built several ‘Big Bertha’ racers using 61cu” motors and IoE cylinder heads. Petrali won 31 competitions in a row with his Big Bertha, and won the Championship again in 1929, and in 1930, Gene Rhyne took the Championship for Excelsior once again.
But the economic crash of October 1929 was devastating to all industries in the USA. The effects were immediate, and motorcycle sales fell drastically. As mentioned, Harley-Davidson scraped through the early 1930s with an infusion of cash from Japan, and Indian survived via a takeover by the DuPont family. Ignaz and his son Frank Schwinn were canny businessman, and predicted the Great Depression, as it became known, could last many years. It was decided to pare back manufacturing to suit the times, and so they assembled the key Excelsior-Henderson personnel in March 1931 to announce, “Gentlemen, today we stop.”
1993 – The Excelsior-Henderson Revival
In the earluy 1990s, motorcycles were booming in the USA, especially the heavyweight cruiser market. There had been only one major motorcycle producer since 1955 (Harley-Davidson) and it seemd to Daniel Hanlon the time was ripe for competition. He secured the name and rights to produce another great American motorcycle brand, Excelsior-Henderson. The British firm Weslake Engineering had developed a sophisticated DOHC four-valve fuel-injected v-twin motor, which had been race- and road-tested extensively; it was technically far in advance of the pushrod OHV v-twin H-D produced, as well as being far more powerful. Excelsior-Henderson secured the rights to produce this engine, and hired Weslake to develop it for the needs of a big American cruiser.
The Excelsior-Henderson revival machine, c.2000. Big and brutish and meant to last.
Hanlon’s intention was to build a ‘100-year bike’ of tremendous durability and built quality. His team designed a chassis to echo the original Super X, using a ‘springer’ fork of modern design, and by 1996 the new Super X prototypes were displayed and ridden at the enormous Sturgis Rally. That year a new factory site was chosen in Belle Plain, Minnesota, and more factory prototypes were presented at Daytona Bike Week and again at Sturgis by 1997. The new engines proved ‘bulletproof’ and employees of the company took great pride in the Super X, which finally began production in December 1998. The first 30 machines were ‘demonstrators’, again sent to large motorcycle events around the US, where test rides were offered, to near universal acclaim for the Excelsior-Henderson’s acceleration, handling, and braking capabilities. It was a Super Cruiser, and found an immediate and passionate cadre of buyers. Nearly 2000 machines were built, but the Dot-Com bubble bursting in 2000 created fear in the investment and banking markets, and Excelsior-Henderson could not secure a new round of funding to continue production, let alone expand the product line. To the great disappointment of a growing legion of fans, Excelsior-Henderson stopped production in 2000.
That Excelsior-Henderson built motorcycles in these numbers, and with such success, speaks volumes about the enthusiasm in the American motorcycle market for heritage brands. Polaris recently invested in exactly this direction, dropping its long-established Victory production in favor of the new Indian line…and is reaping the rewards, with sales of the new machine already outstripping the Victory line. Now there’s a historic opportunity to bring back the Big 3, a tremendously exciting prospect.
Mecum auctions is selling the brand and all intellectual property during their huge Las Vegas sale, on Saturday Jan 27th [follow this link]. I predicted in my most recent Cycle World column ('There Goes My Hero') that the brand will likely go to an Indian mega-brand like Mahindra, TVR, or Hero, as they've been on a buying spree of defunct motorcycle names in the past few years, like BSA, Jawa, and Peugeot. Will Excelsior-Henderson be made in India, or the USA, or both? It will be a very interesting auction in any case, and we'll follow the story!
Sources for this research include:
'American Excelsior: the History of Excelsior, Super X, and Henderson Motorcycles, by Thomas Bund and Robert Turek (American-X Archive, 2016). The only book currently in print on the whole history of the Excelsior-Henderson brand.
'Henderson: Those Elegant Machines', by Richard Henry Schultz (1994, Pine Hill Press). Still the best (and only!) Henderson book, from a dedicated enthusiast of the marque. It was reprinted a while back, but copies are scarce - try a book search like bookfinder.com
'Schwinn Bicycles', Jay Pridmore and Jim Hurd (MBI, 1996). Great history on the early years of Schwinn bicycles, with a few pages devoted to motorcycle and auto production.
'50 Years of Schwinn-Built Bicycles' (Arnold, Schwinn + Co, 1945). An in-house publication with a great story of Ignaz Schwinn's early years, and the development of the bicycle as we know it.
'No Hands: the Rise and Fall of the Schwinn Bicycle Company,' Judith Crown (Henry Holt + Co, 1996). An orientation on the bicycle industry and the history of Schwinn from a business perspective, including the disastrous mis-handling of the brand in the 1980s.
And too many periodicals from 1895-2017 to list...
Dirt; it’s how Americans race. That was the story in 1961 anyway, when Daytona still referred to a beach. Honda wanted to crack the American market, and that meant building dirt bikes; they’d dominated global GP racing, but were mostly absent on the rough stuff. The machine they developed to spearhead an off-road push was the CL 72 Scrambler, which used the sophisticated OHC twin-cylinder motor of the CB 72 Hawk, installed in a new full-cradle frame with a bash plate and high ground clearance, high-level exhausts, minimal fenders, and a small fuel tank. To modern eyes, the Honda CL 72 Scrambler looks more enduro or street scrambler, as it was fully road legal with lights and all, but pure motocross machines were rare in 1962 – most scramblers were roadsters with their lights removed.
Sand is perhaps the most difficult terrain for a motorcycle, but the Triumphs weight was an advantage over newer, lighter machines.
American Honda’s lightbulb moment to launch the CL 72 was a record run over the wide-open desert of Baja, Mexico. While plenty of SoCal racing took place in California’s Mojave desert, very little happened south of Tijuana, and an audacious 1000-mile endurance test could be conducted out of the public eye. Legendary desert racer Bud Ekins was tapped, but his contract with Triumph meant Honda was a no-go, so he passed the opportunity to his equally talented younger brother Dave, who teamed with LA Honda dealer Bill Robertson Jr. No official record existed on the run from Tijuana to La Paz, so the bikes only needed to finish the 963-mile ride, and send telegrams from each end to confirm their time. That didn’t mean the prospect was easy; with no gas stations from Ensenada to La Paz (851 miles), and few villages, the riders would need to be supplied en route. The going had only a few miles of pavement, and long stretches were untracked sand through desert wilderness.
The easy part - a lousy dirt road is the best road you'll find in the Mexican 1000
The riders’ route was scouted by air, then food, gasoline, and support were provided the same way. John McLaughlin, former Catalina GP winner (on Velocettes) piloted a Cessna 160 with Cycle World founder Joe Parkhurst and photographer Don Miller as passengers. A larger Cessna 140, piloted by Walt Fulton, carried the food and fuel for the riders, along with Bill Robertson Sr. The bikes needed 9 refills, and landable spots were chosen for riders to meet the planes. Come ride day, Ekins and Robertson sent their telegrams from Tijuana at midnight, and headed south on Highway 1. There were hardships and lots of crashes; they got strung up on barbed wire fences while sun-blinded, Ekins fell 13 times in one night, and they were lost and rode in circles for 6 hours. Robertson’s Honda holed a piston 130 miles from La Paz after crushing his air cleaner in a crash, and grit entered the motor, but he carried on with one cylinder, catching up to Ekins 2 hours after he’d clocked a 39hour, 49minute elapsed time. The point had been proven, and the publicity for Honda was certainly worthwhile, as they sold 89,000 CL 72s from 1962-68.
Baja buggies from vintage to new compete side by side with motorcycles
Not long after Honda’s ride, Bruce Meyers took his prototype Meyers Manx VW dune buggy along the same route, and lopped 5 hours off Ekins’ time – those hours spent lost at night no doubt. Thus was born a car/bike rivalry, which sparked the idea for a proper race, and Ed Pearlman founded the National Off-Road Racing Association (NORRA), which ran the first Mexican 1000 race in 1967. Motorcycles, cars, and trucks ran the same route, using a rally format, with mandatory checkpoints in the multi-day event. The Mexican 1000 was run for 6 years, before the Oil Crisis of ‘73 dampened everyone’s spirits; NORRA was disbanded, and there was no race that year. But nobody had asked Mexico’s opinion on the matter; the attention focused on the nearly vacant Baja peninsula was too good to let lapse, so they promptly announced their own Baja 1000 race over the same course. They contracted Mickey Thompson of Southern California Off-Road Enterprises (SCORE) for organization, who hired Sal Fish (of Hot Rod magazine) to created SCORE International to organize the Baja 1000, which it has done since 1974.
Historic Era entry Mark Post's highly modifed 1992 Ford F-150 racer
The rising interest in vintage dirt racing in recent years spurred Ed Pearlman’s son Mike to revive NORRA, and bring back the original Mexican 1000, with its multi-day rally format. Started in 2009, the race originally catered to pre-1998 motorcycles, cars, and trucks; now there are classes for modern vehicles as well, in case your 800hp trophy truck needs exercise between professional Baja bashes. Running superfast modern desert tools alongside vintage motorcycles and cars is daunting, but also part of the fun, at least according to Julian Heppekausen. He recently rode his 1966 Triumph T120 desert sled, ‘Terry’, to victory in the Vintage Triumph Thumper class, becoming the first rider ever to win, and one of only 3 to complete a 1000-mile Baja race on a Triumph.
Hayden Roberts ('65 Triumph TR6) chats with Julian Heppekausen ('66 Triumph T120)
You might know Julian Heppekausen as CEO of the Deus store in Venice, CA, or for his exploits on Terry the Triumph in the Barstow-Las Vegas off-road race, which he’s finished 4 times. He credits this success to the quality of Terry’s original construction by motorcycle industry icon Terry Prat, for whom the bike is named. Prat was the European MX correspondent for several magazines in the 1970s, then a manager at Cycle News from 1979 – 2011. The ’66 Triumph T120 desert sled was his last build, which he raced in the Barstow-Las Vegas Rally in 2011 (it’s not a race; that’s not allowed in the tortoise sanctuary – but everyone knows who finished first). Heppekausen bought the bike in 2012, and carried on competing across the Mojave desert every year since, finishing the ‘hard’ route twice. The means riding with new KTMs and Honda 450s, and his Triumph is the only 1960s bike to finish the Rally in a very long time. “They really don’t have a class for such an old bike – they call 1980s twin-shock motocrossers vintage!’
Julian's lucky number! An arcane mix of family numerology, which apparently works
Keeping a 50-year old Triumph from grenading mid-desert exposes Heppekausen as a sensitive hooligan; “You need to know your bike really well. There’s a harmonic hum at certain rpms, where it seems like the motor will go forever, and in a long race you have to bring it back to that pace when you can. I continually pat the tank and thank Terry for not breaking!” Some vintage riders are scared of breakdowns on gentle street rides, but the old saw ‘the more you ride them, the better they get’ seems to apply here. Julian shipped Terry the Triumph to Europe in 2014, competing at events in Germany and England; it’s also been filmed wheelying in front of the Eiffel Tower under Dimitri Coste. After successes in Vegas-Barstow, he decided to try the revived NORRA Mexican 1000, along with several friends on their own vintage Triumph dirt bikes, although Terry the Triumph was the only finisher.
Viet Nguyen's 1969 Triumph T100 at dawn, ready for the day's stage on his 500cc twin
That’s perfectly understandable – all the bikes were at least 50 years old, and 1000 miles of desert racing is insanely demanding. Julian notes, “Modern trophy trucks with special tube-frame chassis and high-HP motors run 36” of suspension; they can run over a basketball and not feel it. I can’t do that on a Triumph with 3” of travel, and when the road is full of rocks, I could hit a baseball and be thrown off. Near the end of the race was a 15-mile stretch of rocky downhill, which was mentally challenging after 1000 miles, especially with trophy trucks passing at 140mph! I have to go to work on Monday, so kept way left to preserve myself.” While running with $200k, 600hp specialized desert trucks is hairy scary, it has benefits too, “Robbie Gordon passed me around a corner, driving like I’ve never seen a car driven. I was doing 60mph, and he was doing 110mph – I don’t know how he got around! And I was the only one watching – it’s the best view of the race, from the saddle.”
Classic rally roll-charts keep the riders from getting lost...too often
While Julian races Terry the Triumph far and wide, it isn’t actually his machine; when purchased from Terry Prat, he immediately gifted the Triumph to his son Henry, as a legacy. Henry isn’t big enough to ride a Triumph yet, but he likes to remind his dad whose bike it is, “My wife and kids met me at the finish in La Paz, and Henry told me to clean the bike! I said let’s leave it dirty a little bit yet. Terry’s had some real adventures, including wheelies in front of the Eiffel Tower. The best people have worked on it, and it’s been in many hands, but you know, we build these bikes for ourselves, and they eventually end up with someone else. That’s why I gave it to Henry - for the future.” And the future will remember that Terry was the first Triumph to win (let alone finish) a 1000-mile Baja race, an epic accomplishment in any decade - our hearty congratulations to Julian Heppekausen and all who helped make his win possible.
Julian abandons the roll-chart for an impromptu mileage-based warning system for sand washes and potholesMark Stahl's Legend category '78 Ford F-100 pickupJulian finishes a stage, alone againJohn Crain's beautiful 1953 Rickman-Triumph pre-unit racer, the most exotic Triumph in the raceNate Hudson's 1969 Triumph T100 after a day in the desertHayden Roberts exits Tijuana on his 1965 Triumph TR6
Von Dutch. Artist, Custom Culture demigod, legendary misanthrope, tee shirt brand. Kenny Howard was many things - in his lifetime and beyond - but regardless his troubled personal legacy, he deserves credit as a keystone in the development of the American custom motorcycle. Howard's wacky custom Indians and Triumphs of the mid-1940s were like nothing else, and pushed custom motorcycles away from purely performance-oriented modifications, and into the realm of Style, creating a movement that would ultimately find its expression in the chopper, and beyond.
Kenneth Howard (aka Von Dutch) in 1946, with his Indian Scout in its first modified iteration, with his Howard 'H' chrome tank, hi-rise bars, and upswept exhaust. He shortly painted the tank with flames, among the very first vehicles so decorated. [Photo from the terrific biography 'The Art of Von Dutch' by Kahan/Nason/Quattrocchi/Smith, 2006]Howard was also a pioneer of the cultural controversy we see today in the #metoo movement; his hatred of just about everyone, especially people of color, made many retailers drop the Von Dutch brand in 2004, after artist Robert Williams revealed Dutch's dark side in OC Magazine. Kenneth Howard is a perfect example of our conundrum around important figures with distasteful personal views, which is especially problematic as we make legends and heroes out of actual human beings; Von Dutch the myth versus Kenny Howard the man. The myth sells a lot of tee shirts, the man was a compulsive outsider artist, and was pivotal in launching an enormous aesthetic movement. Having studied the Western canon of art and architectural history extensively, I can assure you Von Dutch was not alone in having terrible politics.
A lovely drawing of an Opposed-Piston four-stroke engine in a self-contained unit. The O.P. engine was invented in 1882! [Bonhams]At the big Las Vegas vintage motorcycle auctions this month, Bonhams will sell 14 of Kenneth Howard's drawings, 11 of which feature 'alternative' engine configurations - one of his well-known penchants, along with surreal, dystopian imagery, and drawings of guns (an example of each is also included in the sale). The art is apparently from a single collection, and it's difficult to speculate on the sale price of these works; Von Dutch-painted motorcycles have sold for as much as $276,000, although his paintings and drawings fetch a small percentage of that. Bonhams' estimates range from $400-$750 for each drawing, which seems calculated to draw interest from ordinary hopefuls. But you never know how it will go at an auction! Have a look at the Bonhams catalog here.
A notional streamliner, along the pattern of 1930s BMW/Gilera land speed racersA redesign of the Triumph twin-cylinder engine with a DOHC conversion; the notes say 'drawn freehand by Von Dutch, 1951'A streamlined Triumph with an air intake at the back, presumably for a supercharger.'500 alloy single engine design, Von Dutch 1952'
At the dawn of the 20th Century, Florida’s beaches were a prime spot for top-speed runs. Daytona/Ormond beach is 23 miles long and spans over 500 feet wide at low tide, with an ideal spectator vantage provided by the bordering grass-covered dunes. A shallow taper into the sea makes the sand flat and smooth and plenty hard from retreating tides. A perfect natural race track, provided free by Neptune, rebuilt daily, with no speed restrictions.
Daytona beach in the late 1900s, before the roar of cars and motorcycles setting speed records and racing
Between 1903 and 1935, Daytona was the premier Speed Record surface in the U.S., and in 1907 Glenn Curtiss stuffed his prototype V8 airplane-engine into an elaborated bicycle frame, clocking a blistering 136.8mph in one direction – the bike disintegrating on the return run down the Ormond half of the beach. The clubhouse/timing hut used for record attempts sat just over the boundary line on the ‘other half’ of the beach (there being no physical boundary), and ‘Daytona’ became notorious - probably good, as there’s no ring to a Ferrari ‘Ormond’. By 1935, record-breakers sought even saltier terrain in Utah, but only after Malcolm Campbell had seen 330mph in his ‘Bluebird’ car, passing through a 40’ wide arch under a public pier! The limitless expanse of a dry lake looked like a safer bet at such speeds.
The Indian factory team at Daytona beach in 1909, on a record-setting expedition that proved successful. LtoR: Walter Goerke, Oscar Hedstrom (with a 1.5L Peugeot v-twin he was testing), Robert Stubbs, and AG Chappie. [from 'The Iron Redskin' by Harry Sucher]While unofficial bike match-ups had scored the beach for decades, the inaugural Daytona 200-mile motorcycle race was held Janaury 24th 1937, after Volusia County lobbied hard to the Southern Motorcycle Dealer’s Association, overseers of bike racing in the South. 15,000 spectators showed up, fulfilling the promise of lucre for the City Fathers. The town set up a 3.2 Mile ‘track’, consisting of parallel 1.5 mile stretches of State Highway A1A and the beach, with sandy U-turns at either end. Like King Ozymandias, the organizers hadn’t negotiated properly with the tides, and by the end of the race, riders had a choice of adding saltwater to the already abrasive sand covering their machines, or risking the softer/drier beach closer to the dunes.
Years before the inaugural beach races, Ormonde/Daytona beach was used for speed records. This Indian did 112mph in 1907 [TheVintagent Achive]An Indian won that inaugural year, with Ed Kretz aboard a Sport Scout fishtailing sand into the goggles of his rivals, averaging 77mph. Two months later, Joe Petrali took a top speed run on his streamlined Harley Davidson, averaging 136.183mph; a harbinger of many years of Harley beach strength; they won 10 of the 19 races held on the sand, while the Indian camp tallied 3 beach wins.
Ed Kretz after winning the 1937 Daytona Beach Classis on his Indian Sport Scout [Archives of the Indian Motocycle Co.]The SMDA wised up in 1938, and the ‘200’ began at half-tide, giving a full 6 hours of wide beach - the race lasted 3 hours, for the winners at least. Hence forth, race start times from 1937 to 1960 were determined by Mother Nature. A Harley won in ‘38, with Ben Campanale aboard. The abrasive sand took its yearly toll on machines and riders – spills and mechanical failures regularly decimated the pack. By 1940, only 15 out of 70 racers finished the full 200 miles.
Variety on the beach! The 1941 Daytona Beach Classic, with a 1940 Triumph Tiger 100 and a 1938 BMW R51RS (ridden by Joe Thomas), a Harley-Davidson WR, and a Norton International![Bonhams]In 1941, while Europe was in flames, Billy Matthews took his Norton Model 30 to victory, the first of 5 wins for the Black and Silver, despite having valve gear exposed to a 3-hour sandblast. Harley and Indian rivals had fully enclosed valves, although theirs were popping happily beside the combustion chamber, due to quirks in the Class ‘C’ rule book, which allowed 750cc sidevalvers to compete with 500cc OHVs from Europe. A situation brilliant H-D tuners used to their advantage, bringing this humble engine configuration to its finest expression anywhere in the world with their KRTT, ultimately good for 135mph… ‘Flathead’ indeed!
The post-War threat! A pair of Norton Manx racers coating their exposed chains (and valves) with sand...
The ‘200’ was discontinued between ’42 and ’46 so racers could try their luck with guns, but the next year 176 riders indulged their pent-up Need for Speed, and Johnny Spieglehoff took the honors on his Sport Scout in front of 16,000 fans. The races became part of Bike Week, a two-wheeled invasion of Volusia County, which grew increasingly fun and ugly and crowded over the years.
A slew of Harley-Davidson KRs sliding around one of two bends in the oval track
By 1949, the British Invasion scared the pants off H-D and Indian, as a Triumph Grand Prix (ridden by Jack Horn) led most of the race, and when it broke (as they usually did), Nortons swept the board, and won the next two years to boot. Harley responded by replacing their old ‘WR’ racer with the new ‘KR’, and kicked butt in ’53. Indian responded by buying the import rights for Nortons…
The 1960 Daytona, with a BSA Daytona Gold Star pitted against a Harley-Davidson KR
Amazingly BSA became the next great threat in ’54, pulling it all together for a sweep that year, using specially-built machines based on their ‘A7’ model. Daytona had become the premier motorcycle advertising venue in the States, and every major manufacturer wanted a piece, even BMW and Moto Guzzi, who were forced by the Class ‘C’ rules to field their prosaic roadsters instead of their Works GP bikes.
The post-War Daytona races, showing clearly how perilous the track could be when facing a changing tide...
Race averages hit 95mph in the 50s, and the KR Harley became unbeatable in ’55 and for the duration of Sand Racing. American tuners extracted amazing power and reliability out of the sidevalve top-end, and used their 50% engine capacity advantage to the hilt. But Real Estate calls the shots in Florida, and development along the beautiful beaches meant motorcycles would shortly be unwelcome. Luckily Bill France had already built a giant banked track just out of town, which started a whole new era at Daytona, but sand racing was finished by 1960.
While the Italian motorcycle market after WW2 was dominated by practical, small-capacity machines, they were built by Italians, for whom competition is a cultural imperative. While the tales of success by small manufacturers in Grand Prix and the Giro d'Italia are the stuff of legend, the fierce competition in the scooter market is less well known. The two major scooter manufacturers, Piaggio (Vespa) and Innocenti (Lambretta), were fierce rivals fighting over a global market, and racing was one way to prove superiority. So was record breaking, and both factories indulged in a bit of long-distance and top speed record attempts, besting each other with ever more special and streamlined racers bearing only the barest resemblance to their scooters.
Front view of D'Ascanio's first streamliner for long-distance attempts at Montlhéry
Piaggio is a very old company, founded in 1884 to produce railway carriages, and by the 1920s was building aircraft as well. By the late 1930s their planes are world record holders for speed, and they naturally supplied the Italian Air Force with planes during WW2. Their factory in Pontedara was bombed flat, but the urgent need for personal transport convinced Enrico Piaggio to develop a two-wheeler for the masses, to commence production immediately. Their first prototype was nicknamed 'Donald Duck' for its awkward shape, so Piaggio turned to aeronautical engineer Corradino D'Ascanio for help.
The Vespa team at Montlhéry in April 1950
D'Ascanio hated motorcycles, finding their engines 'a tangle of exposed parts', but he'd already made sketches for a pressed-steel chassis scooter, which he fine-tuned in just a few days for Piaggio. D'Ascanio's scooter would be easy to drive for both men and women, could carry a passenger, and didn't get its rider's clothes dirty. The first prototype was made within weeks of the final sketches, and manufacture began in April 1946. Piaggio dove in feet-first on production, with a commitment to build 2500 machines before they'd taken a single order.
At speed on the Montlhéry autodrome
D'Ascanio's design relied heavily on aircraft practice, which was no surprise; he had already built the world's first functional human-operated helicopter, the DAT 3, in 1930. The MP6 prototype scooter of 1946, with its smooth, pressed-steel chassis, aerodynamic and enclosed shape, plus the front wheel support recognizable to any pilot in the day, was clearly related to D'Ascanio's flying macines. Enrico Piaggio's gamble paid off, as they'd sold 150,000 within 4 years, and over 15 Million to date.
The diminutive size of the 1951 streamliner is evident, as is the torpedo shape
That didn't mean the Vespa had an easy time; their arch rival Lambretta competed in the same events and on the sales floor, and were always finding ways to top the Vespa in competitions. In April 1949, for example, a specially built Lambretta with streamlined fairing took a slew of long-distance records at the Montlhéry speed bowl, in many mileage/time brackets up to 8 hours, for the 125cc class. Piaggio responded with a specialized racer only loosely based on their scooter, also designed by Corradino D'Ascanio. The engine was clearly visible at the side of the machine, which looked like the pre-War Gilera Rondine record-breaker, or a slightly gawky wingless aircraft, than a strictly modern streamliner. On April 6, 1950, it did the trick, taking a string of records, including those for 500 and 1000kms, taking 10% off the Lambretta's time. Its average speed for 3 hours was 78.11mph, and after 9 hours it averaged 76.76mph. Six months later, a new Lambretta racer took those same records at 82mph...
The streamlined helmet was an essential part of the design for the second Piaggio land speeder, and gives a comic-heroic feel to the crew setup outside Rome
In 1951, a totally new racer was rolled out onto the Rome-Ostia Autostrada, between kilometers 10 and 11, to take the 125cc land speed record. This new machine was long, low, and shaped like a rocket, which completely enclosed the rider, barring his streamlined helmet! The engine was far from standard, too, with a twin-crankshaft, opposed-piston two stroke, with a common cylinder. The pistons moved towards each other, and at the top of their stroke formed a combustion chamber with their piston tops; it produced 19.5hp @9500rpm. While an unusual engine design for a motorcycle, it was common enough as a nautical engine using two-stroke diesel power. The engine used two carburetors and two spark plugs, and was water-cooled, and was held by an single rail aluminum frame, but the motor was placed beside the streamliner's rear wheel to give some family resemblance to the Vespa roadster. It recorded a two-way average of 103.26mph.
At speed (103mph) on the Rome-Ostia autostrada, at 103mph in 1951
In 1958, a third Piaggio streamliner with full enclosure - a real wingless airplane - was tested on the Autostrada, but I can find no information about this attempt, just a few evocative photos. Factory battles for Land Speed Record supremacy faded out by the 1960s, after a Golden Age of 30 years' effort on the international stage, that produced some of the most intriguing, no-holds-barred motorcycle designs of all time.
Another view of the 1951 Piaggio full streamliner at speed, showing the requirement of a streamlined helmet! Also, the location of the motor beside the rear wheel, to reassure the public this machine has a Vespa connectionThe 1958 fully-enclosed streamlinerLooking very much like the 1930s DKW streamliners, on a smaller scale, this last Vespa bodywork is fully enclosed, with clever hatches for the rider's legs. Not the cramped riding conditions, and the diminutive size of the machine!The 1958 streamliner about to take off on the Rome-Ostia highway. Not the nonchalant bicyclists on the road...and that the engine is fully enclosed now, but still by the rear wheel
These photos were published in a terrific book, 'The Flying Machines of Corradino D'Ascanio', by Alberto Bassi and Marco Mulazzani (1999, Electa - Elemond Editori Associati, Milan Giorgetti), published for the exhibition of the same name in 1999 at the Spazio Giorgetti in Milan. The photographs are from the State Archives of Pescara, the Archive Services for Abruzzo and Molise, Pescara, and the Walter Vitturi-Technifoto, Venice.
Corradino D'Ascanio's original Piaggio racing design, built for record-breaking at Monthléry, and clearly influened by his aviation design experience over the previous 35 years. The machine is entirely hand-built, with its retro-futuristic shapes erotically organic, before the streamlined 'torpedo' shape - with is much smaller frontal area - was found to be much more suitable for top speed runs.
Paul d'Orléans is the founder of TheVintagent.com. He is an author, photographer, filmmaker, museum curator, event organizer, and public speaker. Check out his Author Page, Instagram, and Facebook.
Bonneville. Tiger 100. SS100. TT Replica. Clubman. Sport. Super Sport. Sportster. Rapid. Rapide. Vitesse. Superswift. Sprint. Speed Twin. Quick. Quickly. Gold Star. Shooting Star. Comet. Meteor. Rocket. Super Rocket. Atlas. Bullet. Jet. Lightning. Black Lightning. Cyclone. Hurricane. Manx. Manxman. Manx Grand Prix. Daytona. Brooklands. Silverstone. LeMans. Ulster. Thruxton. Bol d’Or. Montjuich. Arrow. Blue Arrow. Golden Arrow. F1. F3. Mach 3. Falcon. Hawk. Nighthawk. Super Hawk. Thunderbird. Flying Squirrel. Capriolo. Greyhound. Tiger. Cheetah. Panther. Lion. Crocodile. Red Hunter. Dominator. Commando.
Well, you can't just call it the 'Really Fast'...better to Frenchify the name...'Rapide'! [Vintagent Archive]It was Adam’s first job before the Fall -naming the animals- and he set a precedent, using distinct words for each beast, and not a numbering system. Without the pressure of God looking over their shoulders, motorcycle designers have often failed at Adam’s task, relying on a factory code to identify their work, and we are left with a century of Model 4s, TA3s, CB200s, and other, utterly forgettable ‘names’. Granted, the TR6 and GSXR earned their fame with a series of numbers and letters, which proves even nonsense syllables can gain the status of a proper name, just as with mantras used for meditation, which are sometimes intentionally meaningless - its their repetition which counts…and advertisers feel the same way. Keep repeating the sound, until you buy one.
Full points to the Collier brothers for coming up with 'Matchless'. Followed up in the 1950s with the 'Clubman' models, which didn't imply a charitable society, but the potential for racetrack fun. [Vintagent Archive]Motorcycle manufacturers figured out early that a memorable name carried a punch, and if a good name was matched by a good product, you’d scored a hit. This insured the health of the company, and continued employment of the designer giving names, no small matter in the lethal business of selling bikes. Automobile companies have whole departments conducting tests in rooms with one-way mirrors, measuring reactions of citizens to car names (they didn’t ask my opinion of Impreza, Aspire, or Celebrity…), but motorcycle companies rarely have that kind of budget, for testing or even advertising on a mass scale. Barring the Japanese boom years of the 1960s/70s, the general public has been spared interrupting their favorite TV soap opera with images of bikers having good, clean, dangerous fun.
Not just a Number
Here’s a parable on the value of a good name over a number. Valentine Page, Triumph’s head designer in the early 1930s, built a very well-engineered vertical twin Triumph 650cc, but you’ve never heard of it, because while beautifully made, he lacked the imagination to give it a name, opting instead for a designation; the ‘Model 6/1’. Plus, it was ugly. And Triumph nearly went bankrupt. Two years later (1936), an upstart megalomaniac named Edward Turner was hired away from Ariel to revive Triumph’s sagging sales. He tarted up Val Page’s bikes, and drew up cheaper, simpler, and lighter machines, which nonetheless were fast and fun. And he gave them names; Tiger 70, 80, 90, and the Speed Twin. Valentine Page’s vertical twin was solid and well-engineered, but that didn’t matter; it lacked a flashy paint job and shapely tinware, and wasn’t called a Tiger. Metaphorically, while Val Page was concerned with ‘rocking couples’, Edward Turner was screwing a mistress on his desk.
Johnny Allen and company, at Bonneville, with the proto-Bonneville, a Triumph 6T with a twin-carb head [Hockenheim Museum Archive]It was that kind of world in the 1920s and 30s; Turner had effectively discovered the Language of Speed, and backed it up with just enough competent engineering to make the names stick, forever. He knew it, too; his principal draftsman Jack Wickes (the man assigned to refine Turner’s sketches, who some feel deserves as much credit as ET for Triumph’s designs) recalled in much later interviews; ‘I told E.T. the steering head angle on the Speed Twin was wrong, and the bike would handle much better if we steepened the forks. His response was ‘the lines are right – moving the wheel closer to the engine would ruin the looks’. This may have been the reason why Turner, after he took over the helm of Triumph as Director, refused to support a factory racing department or even an official racing team until the mid 1960s (after he'd retired). He’d seen enough snapped crankshafts, broken cylinder barrel flanges, and cracked frames when his Tigers were ridden hard at Brooklands just before WW2, and wasn’t of the opinion that ‘racing improves the breed’. At least, not the brood he sired… While visiting America in the 1950s, Turner spectated at the Big Bear Enduro, and was treated to the death of a Triumph rider when his frame broke in two. Then Triumph introduced a stronger frame. The Triumph strategy was to let dealers play the racing game, and improve the models via their feedback; racing on the cheap.
The SS100 Brough Superior; if George Brough hadn't delivered on his promises, he'd have looked the fool, but he did what he claimed, and doggedly pursued the 'world's fastest' title for nearly 20 years [Vintagent Archive]After WW2, more Speed Twins, Thunderbirds, and Tigers gave way to a marvelous stroke of inspiration, when a laconic Texan named Johnny Allen stuffed a twin-carb Triumph 6T motor into a fiberglass cigar, launching that missile over a dry salt lake in Utah at 214mph in 1956. A lightbulb in Edward Turner’s head clicked, and the ‘Bonneville’ was born, which drew the ire of GM's lawyers (who introduced their own Bonnie in ’57 – called the ‘Parisienne’ in Canada…WTF), and birthed a legend. And what a name; Bonneville is still the hallowed chapel of Speed, every red-blooded biker on earth wants to visit the most inhospitable place imaginable; absolutely nothing lives there, the landscape is pure salt, there aren’t even flies out there in the middle of pure white nothingness. But, there’s also nothing in the way; just point and shoot.
If you're going to harness the wind, you might as well go all the way, and make it a Cyclone. And they were fast, until they broke. [Vintagent Archive]Motorcycles with place names are typically associated with races; if you won at a track, nothing stopped you slapping a sticker of Le Mans, Daytona, the Manx, or Silverstone on your oil tank. Sometimes there was duplication, as with the ‘Thruxton’; nowadays, you can buy a new Triumph with that name, but nobody remembers the bleak, ex-military airfield in southern England on which hay bales outlined a circuit, and long-distance races were held in the 1960s. Velocette did well there, and named their last production racer after the track; their Thruxton is rightly revered as, perhaps, the ultimate production café racer of the 1960s. But that was the 500cc class; at the same time, Triumph was winning in the under-700cc class, and they put out a racer too – the ‘Thruxton’ (they made ~60) from which your brand new Triumph has stolen its name. Why do re-heats of a good name always turn out fatter and slower than the original?
The original BSA M24 'Gold Star', named for the little brass medal given competitors at Brooklands who'd managed a 100mph lap during a race. Coveted thing, that medal. [Vintagent Archive]The curious neuro-mechanism pumping a chemical cocktail to our bloodstream as a word-response has long been understood by political speechwriters and product hawkers, since the power of speech first developed. A potential customer may never have seen a race at LeMans, but the word acts like a mantra of Speed and excitement; repeated often enough (like Goebbel’s lie which becomes true), that mantra has a fixed association. LeMans = Speed! This is the power of advertising (and other forms of progaganda), but the roots of our response are Very Old. Goebbels didn’t invent advertising, not even advertisers invented the mesmerizing attraction of a good name or catchy line. Going back to Adam, words are the very thing which separates us from animals, and language has replaced inborn instinct. Animals don’t need to be told what to do, they are born knowing, are hard wired to be themselves, and survive. Humans need language and repeated demonstration in their years-long struggle to become self-sufficient. These instructions for life are hidden in stories passed down for thousands of years; the accumulation of these stories is called culture. As our very survival has long depended on story/instruction, we are vulnerable by our very nature to the lures of advertsing copy. Its how we’re built - we respond to stories. The simplest form of a story is a single word; a name so packed with associations and ‘subtext’ that you’ve said a mouthful in one or two syllables. LeMans. Bonneville. Tiger. Guide that association with a little visual imagery in advertising, and you’ve created a brand.
Riding the Rocket. The use of women as drapery on motorcycles is a post-War phenomenon; believe it or not, women were actually catered to as riders in the first half of the 20th Century! [Vintagent Archive]Triumph’s Turner didn’t invent the sexy motorcycle tag, we have to jog further back in time, to the first motorcycle race tracks of 1907 being used to fire the buying public’s imagination. By 1912, ‘TT Replicas’ appeared in motorcycle catalogs, promising speed beyond imagining to the average Joe. These were utterly impractical machines, typically without suspension or gears or a clutch, but a determined rider could use them on public roads for maximum bragging points. In 1914 Norton created the ‘Brooklands Special’ for racing, and by gosh, the next year they offered the ‘Brooklands Road Special’, proving that moto-poseurs have been good business for a century.
Can't resist adding another 'TT' Model...as I have exactly this Sunbeam! Such a thing of beauty; light and fleet and fit as a greyhound. [Vintagent Archive]The first true master of advertising copy - the catchy phrase, the sexy moniker - was George Brough. A born sloganeer and braggart, his company claimed ‘Superiority’, and his models, like ‘Super Sports 80’ (SS80) and ‘SS100’, promised speed in their very names. In 1925, 100mph –guaranteed- from a production bike was radical, and flaunting the top speed in the bike’s name would be imitated for decades, especially by Triumph, whose bikes grew faster on your tongue, from the Tiger 70 in 1935 all the way to the T160 three-cylinder in 1975. Nowadays, motorcycles are so illegally fast, top speeds are whispered behind hands.
Animals are faster than people
Tigers, Cheetahs, and Hawks - the terrifying creatures of our distant past, the ones which snapped the necks of slow runners in our first million years of upright bipedalism, hold a special place in our hearts. With several hundred thousand years of Fear lodged in our genetic memory, every culture treats predators with a godlike respect. We envy their strength and violence, and are awestruck by their exquisite, functional beauty. The only surprise regarding predators and the motorcycle industry is how long it took to make the associative leap from four legs to two wheels.
The 'Scout' became the 'Daytona Scout' when tweaked for racing at the famous Florida beach. You could also buy 'Bonneville' cams for your Chief... [AMA Museum]Then again, until the 1920s (that’s 30 years into the development of a proper motorcycle industry), motorcycles were basically crap. The lure of Speed was clear from the first wobbling miles of powered riding, but the pursuit of speed’s pleasures was often frustrating. When bikes became reliably fast, didn’t catch fire, skid uncontrollably, and handle like drunken camels, they changed radically in appearance as well. Bikes built before the mid-1920s looked like picket fences stuck with a mailbox and a pineapple. The slow progress to move engines lower (and drop the center of gravity) coincided with smaller wheels, shorter frames, and heavier proportions of components. The best designers of the 1920s, men like George Brough and Max Fritz, were able to gracefully integrate these tendencies to shrink motorcycles into compact and powerful tools.
The Velocette 'Thruxton'...well named, a strange mashup of 'thrust' and 'sex' and 'ton'...which is perfect. This is my green Thruxton, nicknamed 'Courgette', which I've owned for nearly 25 years, and was my sole transport at one point... [Vintagent Archive]The evolution of a completely new motorcycle aesthetic in the mid-1920s brought a gradual evolution of a new metaphor; the two-wheeled animal. Whether the new motorcycle shapes were a case of Biomimicry (using nature’s solutions to inform design), or an inevitable response to the natural forces a motorcycle must overcome (friction, gravity, wind, inertia), the result was a machine we humans could relate to viscerally. With a clear ‘skeleton’ and musculature of engine and gearbox, the best-designed motorcycles had a harmony of form and grace of line which triggers something very old in our brains; we respond to these shapes with much the same feelings evoked while watching a tiger strut or a falcon shriek through the sky. We feel awe at the beauty and implied power of the beast / motorcycle, a combination of feminine grace and masculine power.
Lots of British companies sold 'Isle of Man TT' models, or simply 'TT Replicas', or in the case of Norton, simply the 'Manx'. [Vintagent Archive]Lose that masculine/feminine balance, and you’re left with the also-rans of the moto world, the forgotten models, which only anoraks like me care about. Why bother with the ugly Tina scooter when you could fill your dreams with a Tiger 100? Why remember the spindly Sunbeam Model 5 Light Tourist, when the ‘TT’ 90 was a perfect object? Who gives a shit about the Brough Superior '680 Sidevalve' when George Brough could have retired in 1925 after penning the 'SS100', and be remembered forever?
Tiger Tiger! Burning bright! The 1951 Bol d'Or with a beautifully race-kitted Triumph Tiger 100R, with the factory race kit installed (megaphone exhaust, TT carb, rearsets, dropped 'bars, etc. Note the extra lights for this 24-hour race, but the empty generator hole in the front engine plates. [Hockenheim Museum Archive]We remember the ‘animal’ bikes when the pairing is successful, the Tigers and Capriolos and Hawks, but a good name doesn’t guarantee success. The Tigress scooter was a dismal failure, as was the Harley XLCR ('Excelsior!'); the motorcycle Hall of Fame has a basement stacked with rusting also-rans, and for every Thruxton, a dozen forgotten models languish in the shadows. Even the cosmic power of the Word has its limits.
[This article originally appeared in French Café Racer magazine, in their second 'Speed' special issue]
Ehinger Kraftrad’s remarkable ‘Speedster’; history through a hi-tech lens.
While stylistic exuberance can shroud its origins, racing has always been the #1 starting point of most custom bike styles – Class C racing begat the bob-job, dragsters led to the chopper, GP the café racer, and dirt racing the tracker and scrambler styles. Uwe Ehinger of Germany’s Ehinger Kraftrad isn’t a typical custom builder, and takes his inspiration from the far corners of racing; hillclimbing, ice racing, and now speedway. Speedway is the toughest genre of all to riff on, and few builders have successfully adopted what’s cool about these hyper-specific machines. Speedway bikes are absolutely minimal, and little about them has changed from their perfected golden era post-1930. A modern Rotax-powered racer could be set beside a 1930 Rudge-Whitworth or Harley-Davidson Peashooter, and one could justifiably wonder if any progress has been made in the sport? Then again, part of its enduring popularity is exactly this simplicity and tradition, which keeps the price of entry for spectators and riders very low.
Traditional custom builders usually shun small bikes, and speedway racers are tiny, with ultralight rigid frames, single-cylinder engines, no gearbox, and flimsy forks. They’re delicate and fit only for a single purpose, so translating their visual cues to a roadworthy motorcycle, especially with a big-capacity V-twin, often looks like a fat man in a tutu. But two builds debuted this year have successfully captured the spirit of speedway; the single-cylinder ‘#7’ by Jeremy Cupp, and the Ehinger Kraftrad ‘Speedster’. Uwe Ehinger explains, “Jeremy and I both built speedway bikes – we discussed how two people can have the same idea at the same time. His machine is much more like a real speedway bike, and mine is more a mix from everything.” Still, it was Ehinger’s bike that took and award -‘Best Sidevalve’ - at Born Free 7.
You’re reading that correctly – the BF7 organizers stretched their category a bit to fit the Ehinger Kraftrad machine, which as you can see has an OHV engine. But the crankcases are sourced from a ’37 Harley-Davidson UL, with modified Knucklehead top ends grafted on. Uwe Ehinger considers the engine the heart of his creations, and chose the UL motor for its four cams hidden within that shapely timing chest. To anyone savvy with H-D history, the 4-cam motor is what the factory raced from the ‘Teens till today, and was first offered on a road bike in 1928, with the JDH. Four cams give better valve control, meaning higher revs and more HP, but in this case, the UL’s lifters don’t exactly line up with the pushrod positions for a Knucklehead. While H-D are reputed to never unnecessarily change anything, the truth is there’s little interchangeability of motor components between different models. For example, putting aluminum XR1000 cylinders and heads on an XL Sportster bottom end might seem a logical job, until you wear two footprints in front of a milling machine to make them fit. Same story with the Ehinger Knuck conversion – the tale is told by the pushrods, which sit at unnaturally wonky angles. Uwe doesn’t mind – that sort of thing is a calling card to the cognoscenti, who recognize the work involved to make it functional.
Part of that work was making new rocker arms to accommodate the odd pushrod angle, and therein lies a tale; one might picture a gifted mechanic sketching out the necessary design on a graph paper or even a CAD program, but Ehinger’s process goes far deeper than that. “Ehinger Kraftrad custom bikes are only 1% of my business; I do a lot of other work for the film industry and design consultancy. I’ve digitalized all Harley parts from 1903 to the present; that’s over 62,000 parts 3d modeled, and with this I can do 3d simulations of a running engine complete with stress analyses, just like the car industry. When I build an engine like the Speedster, it’s already been worked out in 3d, with all the angles, ideas, and materials required, before I even start. In the end I’m 90-95% certain the design will work well. When I first started digitizing in 2002, everyone thought I was crazy, but now with a 5-axis milling machine I can build a whole bike out of aluminum. I used to create animation for films, and also studied particle physics and engineering, and I’ve worked with Audi and Porsche, etc. The bikes were more a hobby until 2008 when I turned 50, and decided to move away from working with the big industries, and bring this technology to custom bikes.”
Ehinger Kraftrad customs might appear traditional, but how they’re designed and built is clearly not. Uwe Ehinger is digging through the past with a high tech toolkit, and while you might have only recently heard of him, he’s built choppers since 1977. He also spent ten years (’79 to ’89) unearthing vintage bikes from South America at a time they were more likely to be scrapped than restored, as documented in his book ‘Rusty Diamonds’. His love of vintage machinery is clear, and evidenced in the ‘Speedster’ even in his choice of rocker gear for the OHV heads; rather than use the aluminum covers of the Knucklehead, he’s kept the cast iron rocker supports exposed, showing off his aluminum rocker arms. The impression is no longer H-D, but J.A.P., looking more like a late ‘20s Brough Superior KTOR racing engine, which powered many a World Speed Record machine in the day.
A shorter throw on the wayback machine explains the oil tank–cum-banana seat, a wholly unique creation harkening back to everyone’s Schwinn Stingray. Hidden under the metalflake vinyl padding, the oil tank is transformed into a psychedelic golden caterpillar. The oil filler sits at the seat nose, while the plumbing exits at the rear, and yes of course the seat is going to get warm, but the bike lives in Germany, not the Mojave desert, so it might remain a tolerable ride. That cater-padding extends atop the minimal fuel tank, which mimics a popular chop-job on Harley Peashooter tanks in the ‘30s, an example of which is famously housed in Jeff Decker’s basement. The headlamp is a chopper trope from the 1960s - a VW Beetle backup light.
Those unusual brakes are Beringers, originally developed for Cessna aircraft. Hardcore moto-historians like Uwe grok the connection between planes and bikes, especially as early motorcycles poached advances in aviation. We must thank Velocette’s Harold Willis for his the swingarm/shock absorber idea, inspired by the Oleomatic landing gear on his beloved Tiger Moth. OHV and OHC cylinder heads were adopted on aircraft a decade before they came into general use on bikes, although racers like George Dance grafted aero heads onto his sidevalve Sunbeams in the late ‘Teens. “The inboard brakes from Beringer are a nice idea – they’re originally from small airplanes. It’s hard to tell the story of motorcycling without the aircraft industry, but you need a lot of knowledge for an understanding of it. I felt it was over the top to try and discuss this at Born Free – nobody is really interested there.” Ah, but we are, Uwe!
Ehinger prefers to keep the steering geometry of his machines to the factory standard, and no longer builds raked choppers; “I use standard because it’s more reliable – its really about the bike functioning on the street, because it’s all about the road in the end, not the show. It’s nice to have a good-looking bike but it’s all bout the street. To have a non-riding bike is stupid.” He adds, “It’s not an original idea to put the OHV top end of the sidevalve lowers - Koslow did this in the ‘30s. My idea is to make the mix 100% H-D, but surpass what H-D did. For example I’ve used the ‘70s Sportster bottom with a Shovelhead top end for drag racing, it’s not a new idea but different in the way I did it. In bikes everything has been done before – today everyone is talking about 8-valve motors, and those ideas are a hundred years old.”
Ehinger’s ‘mix of everything’ method includes, as he puts it, ‘a bit of a California beach cruiser vibe’, although the mechanical details are too gnarly for a cruise. Wild handlebar risers attach to clip-ons, creating an aggro roadster stance atop the narrowed springer forks. The horn of the black Schebler carb is no bong song; it’s a racer’s trumpet, and the faired metal number plates integrated with the hyper-abbreviated rear fender (with a classic H-D kicktail) all suggesting competition. That dramatic rear-wheel disc cover is a speedway convention, being a convenient spot for team colors or sponsor logos on racers with no other sheet metal. The disc is the first thing one sees on the Speedster, and its arresting signature; the black/gold/white pattern was actually borrowed from a hypnotherapy book. Gaze deeply on the wheel…relax…you will like the Ehinger Kraftrad Speedster…and will open your eyes feeling alert and refreshed.
This article orginally appeared in Cycle World: subscribe here to the world's largest-circulation motorcycle magazine!
There's been a recent shift in Fine Art photography with African subject matter; instead of being wholly photos OF Africa by outside professionals, photographers FROM Africa have finally gotten their due. The most famous of these is Malick Sidibé, who worked in Mali from the 1960s onwards, documenting street life and capturing the fashions and moods of Mali in his portrait studio (Studio Malick). Included in his many portraits are a few props from his subject's lives, which often meant small motorcycles and mopeds, with sharp-suited young men or whole families draped over their hard-earned mounts.
A portrait of a BMW R26 rider, with a shadowy self-portrait!
Congolese photographer Jean Depara (1928-97) had his first full retrospective at Maison Revue Noir in Paris, in 2012. Depara's ouevre is similar to Sidibé, although his 'Jean Whiskey Depara' photo studio shots were less interesting than photographs of the world he preferred to inhabit; the happening nightclubs and bars of Leopoldville (later, Kinshasa). Depara bought a camera (an Adox 6cmx6cm) in 1950 to document his wedding, but he became enthralled with image-making, and the interaction of photographer and subject.
Three 'sapeurs' in snazzy outfits with their mopeds. A Congolese Rat Pack!
Leopoldville was named after nightmare King Leopold II of Belgium (his mother Louise Marie d'Orléans may be a distant relation of mine), who used the famous explorer Henry Stanley (the inspiration for Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness', and Coppola's 'Apocalypse Now') to lay claim to the Congo as his private property, brutalizing and killing millions of Congolese in the process of extracting valuable rubber. The Democratic Republic of Congo gained independence in 1960, and in 1966 Leopoldville was renamed Kinshasa, after a local tribe who inhabited the area when Stanley established his settlement in 1881, as part of the Africanization process common in formerly colonized countries after liberation. [Only Brazzaville retains the name of a European founder - for more on that, read my article from Men's File #4.]
Cowboy style...the gent on the right could have been captured in Brooklyn today!
Depara was in the thick of a cultural explosion in the mid-60s, as the country experienced an exhilarating wave of energy after independence. Kinshasa was musically the heart of Africa in the 60s, and Depara spent much of his time around the hot bands and night clubs, where his talents were noted by the famous musician Franco (Francois Makiadi Luambo), who needed an official photographer. This suited Depara, who by this time had honed his technique with the camera as an image-maker, and as a tool for seduction of women!
Jean Depara captured an era of curious integration of American culture as well, as local sapeurs (sharp dressers) sometimes wore cowboy outfits - the 'Bills' - and these make an interesting contrast with the work of Swiss photographer Karlheinz Weinberger and his 'Halbstarke'. Mods and cowboys, women in (or out of) gorgeous dresses, Vespas and mopeds, Depara gives us a glimpse of a very hip world we in 'the rest of the world' didn't have a clue existed.
Looking like a Karlheinz Weinberger photo, and showing the influence of Americana worldwide
In the mid-1970s, as revolutions, coups, and communist takeovers swept Africa, Depara was offered a secure position as official photographer of the Congolese parliament, which he held until retirement in 1989. Uninterested in color photography, and due to the declining profitability of his genre, Depara hung up his camera afterwards, and lived a comfortable existence with his 'villa and a convertible'. His work was published outside Congo only after his death in 1996, and is now appreciated by a global audience.
A self-portrait of Jean Depara with his trusty Adox 2.25" cameraThe origin of the amazing Congolese electric guitar sound - Congotronix!
We publish a lot of Road Tests of rare German machinery in The Vintagent for one very good reason: rides on amazing machines have been offered by a long-time supporter, the Motor-Sport-Museum at the Hockenheim race track. This is a favorite of our host, a 1929 BMW R16 with 750cc ohv engine, the top of the BMW range in the Vintage era, with a pressed-steel frame and leaf-sprung forks, three-speed gearbox with hand shift, and a rear brake which squeezes the drive shaft. And according to our host, the R16 'starts easily and rides with never a problem'. With such a warm recommendation, would it be possible not to love this machine? In common with all the Hockenheim motorcycles loaned out for Road Tests, this BMW has been fettled to the highest standards by a demanding owner, who expects motorcycles to run as they did when new, and in fact, rides them as if they were. No pussyfooting around, he winds it on to see what they'll do and how they'll perform.
Definitely not a tractor! The BMW R16 is a sports-tourer of the first order. [Paul d'Orléans]In other words, no points lost for full-throttle work by a journalist, as long as I don't throw the plot in a ditch; that would be simply poor form, and likely end my access to some of the most interesting motorcycles on the planet! So, a hot ride, with conscious care, is the order of the day. No GPS required either, I'd be following the owner in his 1952 Hotchkiss Gregoire 2-door coupe, with an aluminum body and flat-four 2.3liter engine. Never heard of it? Don't worry, this example is probably unique, one of 7 made with a Chapron body that year, fast and lovely.
The road test BMW R16 with it's stable-mate, a super rare Hotchkiss Gregoire with Chapron body. [Paul d'Orléans]Starting the beast was simple as with all BMWs; flood the carbs a little, knock back the ignition timing, wind the choke closed, and kick it over; the magneto is strong and the bike starts instantly, surprisingly loud in fact, not mechanically (although there is a whir from the gear-driven timing chest), but from the exhaust - definitely not your brother's BMW, it's rorty with a flat bark from the twin fishtails at the back. It doesn't take long for the engine to warm up and the choke to become redundant, and the bike has a roll-on center stand with no fiddly rear stand to look after.
A motorcycle full of visual appeal! The leading-link forks would be replaced in 1935 with the R17 model, which was otherwise identical barring technical improvements. [Paul d'Orleans]So, when it's revving freely, roll it off the stand, hand-shift on the right from neutral to 1st with a very slight clunk, and move on out. The hillsides in this area are green as jealousy from weeks of spring rain; today is the first with full sun, and motorcyclist sprout like daisies everywhere. The power band of the BMW is soft with plenty of torque, and winding the motor out in first and second definitely gets one to 60mph briskly - this isn't a measly 500cc ohv, the extra 50% capacity makes a clear difference in rideability in modern conditions. The owner has "become a bit of a snob, as the 750cc has spoiled me for the smaller capacity BMWs" No points lost there either.
Overall, a very pleasing assemblage of lines and volumes, with the ovoid valve covers echoed by the fuel tank and the graceful arc of the pressed-steel frame. [Paul d'Orléans]Shifting through the 'box takes a bit of practice to match revs to road speed, and double-declutching helps when downshifting to retard speed. The front brake is quite good, but the heel-operated cardan shaft brake at the back is anemic. I got the hang of upshifting soon enough, but both up and down gear changes required a full beat longer than I'm used to...patience, grasshopper. My host says "keep it in third (top) gear, it's all you need", which is true, but the bike lugs a bit at a village pace, and I like the challenge of rowing through the gears. Besides, acceleration out of second gear is very satisfying! Gearbox noise in the intermediates isn't noticeable, perhaps because of the rorty exhaust, or maybe because this bike has been sorted completely. It has the quietest vintage BMW gearbox I've experience; the 1928 BMW R63 I formerly owned whined so badly I was convinced it would explode...
The stack! In typical 1930 fashion, the magneto is not integrated into the design of the motor, but is a bought-in accessory. It would take BMW a few more years to sort that out. Also not the twin-slide carburetor, for a finer air/fuel mix control. And the oil filler cap on the valve cover - no direct oiling of the valves yet. [Paul d'Orléans]As for power, some full-throttle top gear work going slightly uphill yielded 145kph on the speedo, which corrected means 138kph actual, which is near enough 85mph. More is possible in the right conditions, so let's say best case scenario 90mph, which is really going some on an 80 year old machine. The handling was impeccable, and even at 80mph the bike felt rock solid. It's spoiled by the smooth German roads, and I might have a different opinion of the undamped leaf-sprung front forks over lousy Cali roads. But cranked over and on the gas, the bike went where it was told with absolutely no drama. Shifting left/right/left on some fast s-turns revealed a hint of flywheel torque reaction on right-handers, which meant a barely perceptible push to crank it over on that side. But the wide handlebars made for graceful changes of lean, and an ergonomic riding position to boot.
The view from the saddle: all the controls fall easily to hand, with only the heavy Bosch horn looking like an afterthought. [Paul d'Orleans]Aesthetically, these late Vintage BMWs are Art Deco perfection, with their modernist industrial steel chassis mated to an engine with clear aero heritage. The hand-painted pinstriping over basic black emphasizes the line and curves, echoing engine-cover ovals and frame-press indents. They hadn't yet sorted out integrating the ancillaries like magneto/generator/carb, which sit atop the smooth engine lines and remind one that this is in fact a 'machine with other mechanical bits bolted on which do important things'. In German, that's one word.
If I were in the market for a totally rideable prewar bike, a BMW R16 would be at the top of my list. I could have ridden all day without fatigue or worry about mechanical disaster, at a rapid if not racing clip. It's the very definition of a sport-tourer, meant to be hustled along through beautiful countryside, just like I did on the test day. Perfect.
Point the wheels down the road and twist the grip. Let's see how she rolls! [Paul d'Orléans]
Paul d'Orléans is the founder of TheVintagent.com. He is an author, photographer, filmmaker, museum curator, event organizer, and public speaker. Check out his Author Page, Instagram, and Facebook.
"Yes, but what's it like to ride?" Every time we've seen the handiwork of eccentric constructor Friedl Münch, we can't help but be impressed by the sheer scale of the Mammuts which bear his name. While every single one of his limited-production motorcycles is unique, they have a remarkable consistency of build quality and use of trademark components, notably the NSU four-cylinder car engine from their Prinz or 1200TTS models, from which all parts radiate.
The open road beckons! How will she perform? So much legend to live up to... [Paul d'Orléans]
Münch began his career in the late 1940s as an independent tuner and inveterate modifier of motorcycles. His first notable work was on a Horex in 1948, which had such good performance the factory offered him a job in their competition department. He had no desire to work for someone else, and refused their offer, but later relented due to financial difficulties, a consistent theme in his business life.
After Horex went bankrupt in 1960, Münch bought their tooling, and made spares and built Horex specials (such as the tasty cafe racer above). In the quest for more speed, he created a 'relatively' light racing motorcycle using the NSU ohc four-cylinder engine, weighing in at around 480lbs total, and giving good performance. The frame was based on a Norton Featherbed, as were all his subsequent chassis. The first proper 'Mammut' (Mammoth) was built in 1966, with 996cc and 55hp, which gave good performance for the day at 115mph or so. It used a very large (250mm) magnesium front drum brake which Munch had originally developed for racing Nortons. The new machine was a sensation for its speed and impressive scale, and Munch pursued the idea of series production.
Friedl Münch's first production bike, with a Horex motor and his own chassis - note the huge magnesium wheels that would reappear on the Mammut. [Paul d'Orléans]By 1968, the capacity was increased to 1177cc with 88hp with the '1200 TTS' model, the state of tune reflecting the NSU car of the same name. Münch created the cast magnesium rear wheel with flat spokes which became a trademark of all later Mammuts, as even with robust 5mm spokes for his original wire wheels, the threads tended to strip on the spoke nipples. As well, the seat/mudguard unit, headlamp bucket, and chainguard were cast in magnesium, for lighter weight. Petrol tank and side panels were hand-hammered aluminum, and the single headlamp Sports models were joined by dual-headlamp Touring machines. Despite all the magnesium, the bike weighed in at a mammoth 295kg (650lbs); not far out of line with 70s/80s sports machines from Japan actually, but in 1970 sports bikes were still typically under 500lbs.
The man himself, Freidl Münch with an early version of the Mammut. [Private Collection]The early 1200 TTS models used twin Weber DCOE carbs, but by 1973 fuel injection and 1278cc were available in the TTS-E, giving a full 100hp, with true Superbike performance. American publisher and controversial motorcycle enterpreneur Floyd Clymer invested in Münch with an intention of large-scale production for the US market, but died before the project was fully underway, a tale of woe shared by his links with Velocette, Indian, Royal Enfield, Italjet, etc.
The scale of the Mammut revealed: our Road Tester is 6' tall, and the Mammut looks no larger than a Honda CB750 here. Where's the scare? [Paul d'Orléans]Münch, always struggling financially and casting about for backers, eventually sold his own name in association with his motorcycles to businessman Heinz Henke, who intended to series produce 'Münch' bikes (only a few were built, perhaps only 4). Friedl maintained 'Mammut', and shortly began producing models under this name in limited numbers for collectors. Every machine from the first was bespoke around a similar core, although the state of tune, shape of tanks, seat, mudguards, handlebars, headlamps, color, etc, were all optional. Each machine was hand-built by Friedl Münch and his employees, and his legend grew for his unique and mighty machines. Less than 500 were ultimately built.
Double trouble: a 1970 Münch catalog. [Private Collection]So, what is it like to ride? Our Road Test machine is a 1970 model with 1177cc engine, set up in Sport mode with the large single headlamp and twin 40mm Weber DCOE carbs. These would have been hot stuff on any sports car of the day, so why not a 4-cylinder motorcycle? The instruments and switchgear are as per Honda, while turn signals and lamps are Bosch. The big engine starts up with a button, revving slowly and lumpily, and takes a little while to warm up as there's a lot of aluminum and steel lurking under that big red tank. The exhaust is subdued with Lafranconi-pattern silencers made in Frankfurt keeping things quiet. A rorty cafe racer this is not.
Our host warns to keep the revs up when moving off, as first gear is tall and the clutch doesn't fully engage until the end of its reach. Regardless, we almost stall the bike as of course he's right; give it some welly and slowly engage the clutch - the engine, clutch, and gearbox are robust and can handle such abuse.
Splendor in the grass. The Mammut felt much lighter on the road than its bulk suggests. [Paul d'Orléans]With a reputation for awesome power, we feared the TTS would leap out of hand with revs in first gear, but the engine isn't especially torquey despite the large capacity, and doesn't produce much power at all below 2000rpm. In fact, when moving out or riding slowly, dropping below this figure meant hesitation and incipient jerkiness - just keep things on the boil and all will be well.
On the open road, the engine seemed happiest above 3000rpm, and hit a sweet spot between 4000-4500revs, at which point the machine is hustling along at 80mph in top gear, with a quiet motor and soft induction hiss from the Webers. But, redline is a long way away yet on the Nippon Denso tach, and winding the throttle back produced a total change in character. From smooth and quiet tourer, Mr Hyde emerged, and while it wasn't arm-pulling, the satisfying surge of power combined with a sonic wail to remind us that there was indeed a tuned motor between our legs. Sounding for all the world like an early '70s race car in Rally Sport mode, the carbs loudly sucked air while the mufflers gave a harsh rasp, the rev needle swung around past 5000, and the speedo was well into the illegal zone. There was no point in revving past 5500rpm, as the bike didn't seem to spin quite so freely anymore, and the handlebars began to buzz slightly.
The seat of the Münch is a one-piece aluminum casting that incorporates the taillight housing and fender. The rear wheel is a massive multi-spoke design from Münch himself. [Paul d'Orléans]Southern German country lanes wind between forest and hills, affording a great chance to assess the handling of this tall machine. True to its Norton frame heritage, the Mammut tracked straight and true and secure on all corners, with no drama or fuss. The high center of gravity and weight disappeared once in motion, and it felt completely secure and familiar banking around corners. Changing direction on short 'S' bends was easy and required no effort, the Mammut proving silky smooth when transitioning from left to right. The wheelbase is short for such a large machine (giving rise to a cobby appearance with the large tanks and double-headlamp variants), and above 80mph, a slight weave set in; nothing dramatic, just noticeable, and it didn't get worse, nor disappear in a straight line. When banked over at the slightest angle, any such uncertainty disappeared.
Braking with the extra-large Münch drums was very good for such a heavy bike (all-up weight with rider and fuel in this case being 820lbs!), and while not in double-disc territory, they hauled up the Mammut quickly. This was especially welcome as the engine provided almost no compression braking, seeming to have very little flywheel effect in general, from idle onward...of course, Münch used a much lighter flywheel than the NSU car. The suspension wasn't really noticeable, which is itself a high complement; the front forks are Rickman items, and hold the road very well without being Italian-stiff. The riding position was very comfortable, more sport-touring mode than uncompromising boy racer, as of course, most Mammut owners were middle-aged connoiseurs, able to afford a handmade Superbike.
The massive front brake casting of the Mammut is legendary; nothing lightweight or fragile about this machine! [Paul d'Orléans]The advent of inexpensive Japanese 4-cylinder machines only a few years after the introduction of the Mammut meant that sales were based on bespoke build quality, excellent handling, exclusivity, and charisma in spades - all of which the mass-produced motorcycles lacked. The Japanese 4s did have power though, and to keep ahead, Munch regularly tuned his engines to higher outputs, eventually turbocharging the fuel-injected motor with the 'Titan' model. We'd love to try one of them!
The heart of it all; the big NSU 1200TTS engine, with dual Weber side-draft carbs. [Paul d'Orléans]
Paul d'Orléans is the founder of TheVintagent.com. He is an author, photographer, filmmaker, museum curator, event organizer, and public speaker. Check out his Author Page, Instagram, and Facebook.
He made his way from a local newspaper writer and sports photographer, to a stylistic pioneer of action photography, to the most famous and well-paid fashion and celebrity photographer in the world. And yet, only dedicated photography fans remember Martin Munkacsi, who died in 1963 in poverty, 30 years after he escaped Nazi Germany via a $100,000 annual contract from Harper's Bazaar. How he came to be forgotten, and lost the career that made him famous, has never been satisfactorily explained. On his death, his negatives were lost, and his ex-wife found his apartment nearly empty, barring a half-eaten tin of spaghetti, the fork still in the can.
'100 Kilometers Per Hour', shot at the Hungarian TT in 1927, of a rider on an Ariel Red Hunter
Munkacsi's career got a boost from a murder; he witnessed a street fight, camera in hand, and the published photos helped convict the killer. This new use for photography made him famous, although he'd already made a name for himself in Hungary, shooting motorcycle races (like the Hungarian TT) and car races, boxing matches, and other sporting events. He claimed, “My trick consists of discarding all tricks," and his work emphasized plein-air naturalness throughout his career, even in 1930s fashion photography, which was notoriously static before he began shooting models outdoors with natural light. It was how he learned to shoot, after all, using a 4x5" Graflex camera at sporting events, where strong natural light was required. His trick, though he denied it, was an innate genius for composition, with his best photos - even spontaneously shot - looking perfectly structured, with a balance of light and dark, but full of energy and motion. As one critic put it, 'his work should come with a soundtrack.'
Munkacsi's first published photos in Berlin, of a rider fording a stream
After the 'murder photo' spread his name in 1928, Munkacsi was called to Europe's thriving capitol, Berlin, to work for the Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung (Berlin Illustrated Times). His first published photo was a motorcycle splashing through water, and while he was ever attracted to machines in motion, his big paycheck came from the fashion world, where he un-crossed the legs of proper ladies, and photographed them running through nature in beautiful clothes, which nobody had ever done. He followed the muse of the latest type of image-making, the snapshot, saying "All great photographs today are snapshots." What would he think of the ubiquitous iPhone selfie?
The photograph that so influenced Henri Cartier-Bresson, 'Three boys at Lake Tangnyika'
His fashion work for Die Dame (The Lady) made him internationally famous, and allowed him to travel globally, capturing people in Turkey, Sicily, Egypt, London, and Liberia, sending back amazing photo stories for the Zeitung. These photos were profoundly influential to a younger generation of photographers, and Henri Cartier-Bresson, on seeing the photograph 'Three Boys at Lake Tanganyika', said "For me this photograph was the spark that ignited my enthusiasm. I suddenly realized that, by capturing the moment, photography was able to achieve eternity. It is the only photograph to have influenced me. This picture has such intensity, such joie de vivre, such a sense of wonder that it continues to fascinate me to this day."
Munkacsi was commissioned by Time magazine in 1934 to photograph Nazi propagandist filmmaker and Hitler protégé Leni Reifenstahl for the magazine's cover. He mocked her typical heroic camera angles with a posed, static shot while skiing in a bathing suit.
On March 21, 1933, Munkacsi photographed 'the Day of Potsdam', when German President Paul von Hindenburg relinquished power to Adolf Hitler. The following year, the Jewish-owned Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung was nationalized, and published only photos of soldiers henceforth. Munkacsi was himself Jewish, born Márton Mermelstein, and his father had changed the family name to avoid the anti-Semitism prevalent in all of Europe at the time. But a name change wasn't shield enough from the Nazis, and Munkacsi left for New York City in 1934, where he landed that job at Harper's Bazaar. His outdoor shoots transformed fashion photography in the USA, and soon led to a thriving celebrity portrait career, using the same style of impromptu yet brilliantly choreographed photos capturing movie stars in their home (or fantasy) worlds. His shots of Katherine Hepburn, Joan Crawford, Louis Armstrong, and Fred Astaire are legendary, and sometimes definitive; the typical glamour shots of movie stars of the day are hazy and static, but Munkacsi brought their energy to the page.
Katherine Hepburn looking very Amelia Aerhart with a plane
For whatever reason, several museums and universities declined the offer of his archives in the early 1960s, and on Munkacsi's death in 1963, his life's work was considered lost. Amazingly though, his archive turned up on eBay. That's where the chief curator of New York's International Center for Photography, Brian Wallis, spotted it for sale for $1Million (it's always a Million Dollars!), and the collection was right across the river, in Connecticut. A personal visit, some fundraising, and 300lbs of cardboard boxes filled with glass negatives later, and thousands of Munkacsi's photographs are in the collection of ICP, who held an exhibition of the work in 2007, as 'Munkacsi's Lost Archive'. It was the first push towards a revival of his reputation, which had nearly vanished into obscurity; his work deserves a better fate.
Another shot of the Hungarian TT in 1927A swimwear fashion photo from the 1930s, shot at an unsual - and unusually provocative - angleMunkacsi shot Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera at their home in Mexico CityDirt roads make wonderful effects on camera; an early auto race in HungaryAnother fashion shot, with a bicycle, typically out of doorsHorse racing in Egypt in the late 1920sMunkacsi was the first photographer to include nudity in the pages of a fashion magazineAnother shot of the Hungarian TT in 1927A Madrid street scene in 1930
Paul d'Orléans is the founder of TheVintagent.com. He is an author, photographer, filmmaker, museum curator, event organizer, and public speaker. Check out his Author Page, Instagram, and Facebook.
Glenn H. Curtiss is best known as the founder of American aviation, but he also played an important role in the technical development of American motorcycle design. It was motorcycles, as well, that led to Curtiss' involvement with airplanes and dirigibles, as his v-twin motors proved extremely reliable by the standards of the day, using ball bearings throughout, instead of poorly lubricated plain bushings common with main and big-end bearings at the time.
Glenn H Curtiss in his prime, ca.1908
Curtiss discovered 'the need for speed' as a young Western Union telegram delivery boy in the 1890s, where a quick delivery of a message often meant a good tip, and the boss typically give more lucrative/important clients to the fastest cyclist. Curtiss graduated from informal sprint challenges with other bicyclists, to become a full-fledged track racer, and was soon a well-known champion on around Hammondsport, NY. His aptitude with mathematics, engineering, and tinkering was evident from a young age, and soon he began manufacturing bicycles under the 'Hercules' name. In 1899 Curtiss built his first motorcycle, after purchasing an E.R. Thomas engine - sold as the Auto-Bi - a 1hp single-cylinder AiV motor (no intake camshaft, just suction to bring in the fuel mix). This first machine became known as the 'Happy Hooligan', but the engine was too weak for his taste, so he ordered the most powerful engine kit from Auto-Bi (3hp), which was an improvement...when it ran.
A 1908 advertisement for the Curtiss 'Double Cylinder' motorcycle
Curtiss felt he could do better, and had engine castings made to his own design in 1901. By the spring of 1902 he was marketing his own motorcycle, also called the Hercules, a single-cylinder machine which was sold at his 3 bicycle shops, in Hammondsport, Bath, and Corning. The engines were robust but light, and Curtiss pioneered the use of ball bearings throughout the engine, which reduced internal friction (compared to shafts running direct in poorly lubricated castings); he claimed his motors produced the most power of any motorcycle available, and proved it on the race track, gaining the nickname 'Hell Rider' Curtiss.
A single-cylinder Curtiss motorcycle in 1909, with solid front forks, rigid rear frame, simple 'can' exhaust, and direct belt drive with no clutch. Curtiss never truly developed his motorcycle line, and abandoned it altogether by 1911
In 1903, Curtiss himself set his first Land Speed Record at 64mph for one mile. He also won an endurance race from New York to Cambridge, Maryland, beating out the products of much larger factories, like Indian. E.H. Corson of the Hendee Mfg Co (manufacturers of Indian) visited Curtiss in Hammondsport in July 1904, was somewhat shocked to find the legendary Curtiss motorcycle was built in a very small shop on Curtiss' property, with the help of family members and friends. Curtiss production was quite small (and some estimate only a dozen or so survive today), but his impact on the industry was enormous. By 1904, Curtiss built a racing motorcycle of 5hp, and began to make the rounds of competitions, winning frequently. He journeyed to Daytona that year to participate in the open speed trials on Ormond/Daytona beach, breaking all the 2- to 10-mile records in the process, and averaging 67.41mph for the 10-mile record.
Curtiss aboard a special racing version of his 'Double Cylinder' model in 1905; note the dual torpedo tanks!
By 1905, the 'Hercules' name was forcibly dropped, as another company was found to own the brand, and henceforth his machines were simply called 'Curtiss'. The range included 2.5hp and 3.5hp singles, and a 5ph twin, all with direct belt drive. His engines gained renown for their strength, reliability, and speed; qualities in rare supply in 1905! His reliable engines attracted 'Captain' Tom Baldwin, a circus performer turned daredevil, who travelled to county fairs all over the US in a hot air balloon. Baldwin wanted a good motor to power a dirigible, which he built at his workshops in San Francisco. Baldwin's 'California Arrow' became a regular sight in the Bay Area, and Baldwin entered a competition in St. Louis in 1904, with a prize of $100,000 - a phenomenal sum - offered to an aviator who could successfully fly to 2,000 feet, make a 3.5 mile loop, and land at the take-off point. Baldwin's machine was the only airship capable of making the course, and the response from the huge crowd was tumultuous. Seeing that controlled flight was indeed possible, demand for Baldwin's dirigibles grew exponentially. Baldwin returned to San Francisco after an extensive tour with his flying machines, and continued building dirigibles until the 1906 San Francisco earthquake leveled his factory.
The incredible Curtiss V-8 record-breaker with prototype dirigible motor, currently on display in the Smithsonian Institution
Captain Tom Baldwin, having established a successful relationship with Curtiss, then moved to Hammondsport to begin business together, and explore heavier-than-air flight. This marked the beginning of the Curtiss aviation story, and soon the end of the Curtiss motorcycle story, as the company began to focus on building better motors for dirigibles and airplanes. Alexander Graham Bell was suitably impressed with Curtiss, considered him "the greatest motor expert in the country," and invited in 1907 Curtiss to join his Aerial Experiment Association (AEA), with the aim of building a functional airplane. Curtiss was the primary designer of the 'June Bug', the AEA's 3rd aircraft, which used wing-warping to lift, turn, and descend, and was entirely successful, becoming the first officially observed flight in history on July 4th, 1908, winning the Scientific American trophy and $2500 in the process. The Wright brothers may have catapulted a motorized kite into the air before Curtiss flew, but flew he did, in front of the world.
The California Arrow in 1904, the first truly successful powered aircraft in America, capable of flying thousands of feet high, and propelling itself wherever it was directed, weather permitting. It used a Curtiss v-twin engine in the framework below the oiled silk gas bag. The entire contraption weighed a mere 520lbs, and took 8000cu' of hydrogen to fill the 52' long bag.
But his greatest motorcycle feat was yet to come; in a final bid to quench his speed lust, Curtiss built a spindly motorcycle frame around an experimental V-8 dirigible motor in 1906, and travelled again to Ormond Beach Florida for a bit of sand racing. After the end of 'normal' speed runs with production bikes, Curtiss brought out his Behemoth with 40hp, and scorched through a 1-mile trap at an average speed of 136.3mph - the fastest speed of any powered human to date. His 'return' run was marred by the disintegration of the direct shaft-and-bevel drive used at the rear wheel (and should one be surprised, with an exposed u-joint, 40hp, and a sand bath?), and the rear wheel locked at speed while the drive shaft flailed away at the rider... but Curtiss' considerable track experience came to the fore, and he was able to haul the beast down without further drama. Curtiss had some hairy moments, but never crashed his motorcycles or his airplanes, which ranks as unique among his peers.
Curtiss aboard the V-8 at a photo op before the speed run. An incredible machine then as now!
While Curtiss' record was unofficial, it spoke volumes about the man's bravery, riding skill, and technical abilities. As aviation took more of his interest by 1908, and demand for his services as an airplane designer increased, Curtiss turned his attention away from motorcycles, and handed over the running of the business to friends and family members. Development of his remarkable motorcycles stopped when their creator turned away, and the company was wound down by 1911. Curtiss turned his full attention to wings, becoming the first man to design and fly a proper airplane, capable of taking off under its own power and maneuvering back to its starting point. He traveled the world demonstrating his machine's abilities, which were unequalled in the day, and went on to invent the seaplane, and became the first licensed aircraft manufacturer in 1909. During WW1, Curtiss Aviation produced planes for the US Military, like the Curtiss JN-4 'Jenny', and the company expanded for what was a bright future. In 1920, Curtiss sold his stock in Curtiss Aviation for $32Million, a simply enormous sum in those days, and pursued other projects from his home in Florida. He died of complications from appendicitis in 1930.
An amazing 3-cylinder Curtiss motorcycle, no doubt patterned on the Anzani motor powering his rival Bleriot's monoplane in France. [From the cover of Stephen Wright's amazing 'The American Motorcycle']A single cylinder Curtiss in 1909
Hillclimbing before the sport was invented! This 1918 photo shows a US Military trial during WW1, demonstrating the prowess of the Excelsior v-tiwn [National Archive]
