It isn’t an everyday occurrence, finding yourself in a time capsule house in France, looking at a 1940 Triumph Tiger 100, sat parked in a hallway since the 1980s. Prewar T100s are rare — they were rare when new — and given the onset of WW2, 1940 models are very rare indeed. Most were exported to the United States, but a few went elsewhere. This machine in the hallway was ordered new by a Frenchman, who collected it from a Triumph dealer in the northern French town of Amiens, in November 1939.
The 1938 Triumph brochure announcing the Tiger 100 model
Historians among you will doubtless wonder what kind of nonsense you are reading, given that the British War Department requisitioned all stocks from the largest motorcycle factories, shortly after the declaration of war with Germany - September 3rd 1939. Triumph motorcycles were not exempt... except for the firm’s 500cc parallel twins. They were considered too exotic and high-performance for the armed forces, and no mechanics had yet been trained to work on anything but sidevalve singles. Not only did the military not want the Speed Twins and Tiger 100s, but Triumph was authorised to continue producing and exporting them despite the war, and the governmental interdiction on civilian vehicle production announced in May 1940. Thus in the United States, the late summer and autumn 1940 issues of Motorcyclist magazine carried Triumph advertisements bearing Managing Director Edward Turner’s signature under the following, somewhat Churchillian announcement.
Edward Turner's message to American riders...buy our product!
“At a time when the British Empire is faced with the greatest menace in its long history, we send our greetings to our American friends and fellow motorcycling enthusiasts. The Triumph Company, as in the last war, is almost exclusively engaged in the manufacture of motorcycles for the British Army. We shall. however. be permitted to send to the U.S.A., and Canada, supplies of our twin-cylinder types which have made so many friends amongst sporting American riders. By this means we hope to continue out contribution to private motorcycling — the finest of all open air sports.”
A 1939 magazine cover ad for the Tiger 100 Triumph, with the light from Edward Turner's mind shining on his remarkable creation
By Summer 1940, of course, the Germans were installed in Paris and all along the coast facing Britain, having invaded France and other countries that May. But in November 1939, when ‘our’ Tiger 100 arrived in Amiens, Britain, France and Germany were still engaged in what Germans nicknamed the Sitzkrieg, and the British called ‘The Phoney War’. Lines of communication and trade between Britain and France remained open. Triumph owner Jack Sangster was a powerful businessman, and persuaded his pals in government on the fiscal benefits of permitting his firm to carry on exporting its successful 500cc twins to the all-important US marketplace, where Turner had bolstered Triumph’s presence since 1937. That Triumph was awarded the prestigious Maude’s Trophy in November 1939 surely helped Sangster’s argument.
The Maudes Trophy
In late February 1939, Auto Cycle Union (ACU) officials were invited to choose a random Tiger 100 from any Triumph dealer they wished, and a Speed Twin from any other Triumph dealer. The selected T100 and 5T were registered for the road by the Triumph works as EDU 223 and EDU 224 respectively (EDU being a Coventry registration prefix). To run in the motors, Triumph employees rode the two twins from the factory in Coventry to John O’Groats on the northernmost tip of Britain – around 580 miles. Followed by ACU observers, the Triumphs were then ridden from John O’Groats to Land’s End - Britain’s southernmost point.
The Maudes Trophy team at Brooklands, before the high-speed tests - the Tiger 100 on the left and Speed Twin on the right.
The weather conditions in the Scottish Highlands were atrocious, but the riders pressed on with reduced speed, and on reaching Land’s End, they rode to Brooklands. There two experienced Brooklands Boys took the handlebars, and rode the Triumphs at high speed around that banked autodrome for six hours. The Tiger 100 and Speed Twin were then ridden back to the works in Coventry, and stripped for inspection under ACU observation. Negligible wear was found in the motors. The road route of over 1,800 miles was covered at an average speed of 42 mph. At Brooklands, the T100 averaged 78.5 mph with a best lap of 88.46 mph and the Speed Twin was not much slower at an average of 75.02 mph and a best lap of 84.41 mph. Apart from two flat tires and one of the machines falling over whilst parked on its stand, the riders encountered no problems, and Triumph was awarded the coveted Maudes Trophy in November 1939.
The Motor Cycle magazine's road test of the 1938 Tiger 100
Triumph’s new Tiger 100 model was first tested by the British monthly Motor Cycling a year before (November 1938), and had reached 98 mph in full road trim, which was very fast; in those years, a family sedan might blow a gasket or worse if driven at 60 mph for any distance. The Tiger 100 cost £80 (plus £2 10s for the speedo), and would easily exceed 100 mph on open pipes. When Triumph introduced the so-called ‘cocktail shaker’ silencers for the 1939 season, riders could remove the quickly-detachable end caps and baffles, transforming the silencers into open megaphones. Every Tiger 100 built in Coventry (ie, before the factory was bombed during WW2, and rebuilt in Meriden, near Birmingham) came with a dynamometer test certificate, and differed from its Speed Twin brother only with 8:1 compression pistons, polished inlet tracts, and a 1/16” larger carb – enough for a claimed 8hp increase! By comparison, BSA’s 500cc M24 Gold Star single cost £82 exclusive of extras like pillion footrests and the speedometer and might hit 95 mph downhill with the wind behind it. The competition and racing versions were faster but cost more. A Vincent H.R.D. Comet cost £86 plus extras and was good for 90 mph with a jockey-sized rider aboard. To borrow the catchphrase of a motorcycle dealer I knew in London decades ago, who had started racing in the 1930s, the Tiger 100 was “a lot of bike for the money, son!”
The Picardy Tiger
But back to our Picardy Tiger 100, the King of Route 29. The story is third-hand, the main players no longer around, but it’s a good tale and worth telling, and probably true (or as true as such stories can be). My friend Laurent Mimart, or ‘Mimo’ to those who know him as France’s go-to man for pre-unit Triumphs, mentioned a 1939 Tiger 100 he’d heard of in Saint-Quentin, on the Somme river in Picardy. Yeah, we’ve all heard those stories, but we had nothing else going that day so we drove from Paris. The house was a 1950s time warp, and was full of Triumph motorcycles and spares dating from the 1920s to the 1950s. It took us a couple of hours to dig a 1926 sidevalve and its parts out of the earthen floor of the dungeon-like cellar with our bare hands. There was a rare and genuine 1953 US market 6T Blackbird parked in the hallway, its cylinder head in a crate in a bedroom serving as a workshop. The Tiger 100 sat behind the Blackbird, its striking but non-original green-and-black finish typical of an older French enthusiast’s fondness for personalising his motorbikes. Mimo and I didn’t care about the green paint, being riders rather than collectors; what grabbed our attention was the engine number prefix: 40-T100.
Let’s call the Triumph’s owner 'Gaston Blanchard'. He had died and his brother needed to clear the house out, but he didn’t want to sell Gaston’s motorbikes to any Tom, Dick or Harry. They had to go to people of whom his brother would have approved. As we sat drinking coffee in the dusty old house, Gaston’s brother told us the story of the Tigre Cent as he recalled it. In 1966, or maybe it was 1965, the nineteen year-old Blanchard, a keen scrambles fan like many Frenchmen at the time, was looking for an old motorbike to use as a field hack. Someone put him in touch with a Monsieur Morin, a retired railway signalman who lived near Amiens, some eighty kilometres to the west of Saint-Quentin along the Route Nationale 29, a post-Napoleonic highway that runs almost as straight as a Roman road between the two towns.
Blanchard rode there with his brother. Morin did indeed have an old motorbike that he hadn’t used in more than a dozen years since the lights had stopped working because the dynamo was foutu (f*cked). It was a fast machine, though, a Tigre Cent that he had owned “since the war”. It was the fastest motorcycle on the RN29 for a time, except for a very loud motorbike that had overtaken him one night at high speed and pulled away into the gloom. Knowing that a Tiger 100 in good tune was capable of just short of the magic ton in road trim, Mimo and I wondered aloud if the faster rider might have been on one of the first postwar Vincent H.R.D. Rapides imported to France just after WW2. Blanchard’s brother disagreed, saying that Morin had spoken of having to hide the Tiger 100 before he could seek out the challenger to prevent the French armed forces from requisitioning it.
The Picardy Tiger isn't 100% original, with a later headlamp and the green paint job (very BSA!), but most of of the parts are correct.
So this Tiger 100 had been in France since before the war? No, said the brother. It had been imported from England during the war, but before the German invasion. It was a 1939 machine, he said, laying a 1980s document on the table, which gave the date of first registration as 1939. According to the (few remaining) factory records that survived the German air raid on Coventry during the night of November 14th 1940, when the Triumph works were destroyed, Triumph produced a total of 8,818 motorcycles from January to November 1940, of which just 274 were Tiger 100s. The engine and frame numbers of Morin’s T100 suggest it rolled off the Priory Street production line in October 1939. So the French bureaucrat who issued a new registration document in the 1980s was not mistaken: the T100 was indeed made in 1939 but for the 1940 season.
Tigers in Wartime
After Triumph relocated to Meriden, the firm was able to complete a few orders using parts salvaged from the ruins of the Coventry works. The Hollywood actor Rod Taylor is said to have received his new Speed Twin in 1942, delivered in a crate marked as tractor engine spares. Maybe this was the bike Taylor rode up to Hollister in 1947 with other Hollywood area bikers, but that is another story. Some students of the subject believe the last ‘Coventry Tiger 100’ made was the racer ordered by Rody Rodenberg on March 30th 1940 and dispatched to the US on May 18th that year. Rodenberg’s specifications included the optional bronze cylinder head and an Amal TT carburettor. Sold at auction by Bonhams in 2010, Rodenberg’s T100 comprises frame number TF 4030 and engine number T100-31131, Triumph having dropped the year prefix by then, according to some sources.
Before: The Triumph Priory Street shipping departement in 1939, as Tiger 100s are sent to Melbourne
The topic of late prewar and early wartime Triumph frame and engine numbers is worth a digression if only to save people from buying bitzas or, now that prices are rising, fakes. From 1937 on, all new Tiger engines were numbered in sequence, regardless of the model type. The 1938 Speed Twin engine, though not a Tiger, was included in this sequence, as was the Tiger 100 when it arrived for 1939. The 5T engine was fitted to the Tiger 90 chassis, which was given its Amaranth Red and chrome finish to distinguish it from the blue-lined silver-grey/chrome colour scheme of the Tigers. The engine numbers were prefixed by the year and model codes. The 500cc and 600cc engines were fitted to Triumph’s heavyweight chassis whose serial numbers were prefixed by the code TH for ‘Triumph Heavyweight’. The smaller models had lighter frames marked TL for ‘Triumph Lightweight’. However, the TH frame was barely able to absorb the power of the new twin engine and when racers and dragsters tuned their Speed Twins, frames and lugs would crack.
After: The Coventry Triumph factory after it was bombed on November 14th 1940. The factory was subsequently moved to Meriden, near Birmingham
The Speed Twin engine produced 26bhp, or more with hotter pistons and cams. However, the six-stud barrel-to-crankcase joint was prone not just to oil leakage at sustained high revs, but sudden, violent separation as studs were ripped from the alloy. Triumph introduced a new crankcase and cylinder block for the T100 with an eight-stud joint. The cylinder head was also new, with a larger one-inch inlet manifold and polished ports. It was made by the Birmingham firm of Birco, which some say explains the B suffix to the part number: E1454B. Birco also produced the optional bronze head (as fitted to the Rodenberg racer) that cost an extra £7 4s or $36 at contemporary exchange rates. The prewar bronze heads were also numbered E1454B but Birco produced a batch of bronze T100 heads for Triumph just after the war, in response to orders from the United States. These postwar heads were numbered E2258.
Another view of the 'Priory Street works' in Coventry, as photographed by factory service manager Alec Masters on the day after the bombing.
Some tuners fitted the T100 head to Speed Twin engines as the head stud configuration remained unrevised. I have a low-mileage 1939 Speed Twin motor given to me years ago by the son of a London Ton-Up Boy who had used for a season in his Norton-Triumph Special as a temporary replacement for his blown-up all-alloy T100C engine. The Ton-Up Boy had fitted it with a new T100 iron head, and I can confirm that the Triumph sales blurb about ‘polished ports’ was no lie. The Tiger 100 came with 8:1 forged alloy ‘slipper’ pistons. Other than that, the internals were Speed Twin, including the camshafts. In other words, the standard engine produced 34bhp, 8bhp over the Speed Twin. Tuned carefully, it was capable of far more, as Triumph’s Chief Development Engineer Freddie Clarke proved when he set a lap record of 118 mph at Brooklands in 1939.
A 1939 Triumph Tiger 100 catalog showing the Motor Cycle's power test of their motor
As stocks of the six-stud 5T crankcases were used up during the 1938 season, 5T motors were built using the new eight-stud crankcase and cylinder block but the existing 5T head. Towards the end of the 1939 production run, a few dozen 5T motors were installed in T100-spec TF frames. From then on, all Triumph heavyweights had TF frames. A total of 4,413 TF frames are logged in surviving Triumph records to 1942, by which time Triumph was in Meriden and concentrating on military motorcycles and other war-essential products. In other words, all genuine Coventry Tiger 100s should have TF frames but not all of the higher-numbered TF frames began life as Tiger 100s. As we know, just 274 of the 8,818 motorcycles made in Coventry from January to November 1940 were Tiger 100s. The first 1940 Tiger 100s would have been assembled from late-August 1939 onwards.
The Picardy Tigre Cent as it survives today
One of these was the Tigre Cent ordered by Monsieur Morin, Roi de la RN29 or King of Route 29 for a brief time early in the winter of 1939, before he had to hide his T100 from the French military and then, of course, the Germans. As a railway signalman, Morin was in a reserved occupation and therefore exempt from the military mobilisation of all Frenchmen of military age. This explains why he was around to collect his new Triumph from the firm’s northern French concessionaire, the Grand Garage Paul Passet in Amiens. Blanchard’s brother mentioned Passet’s as the place where his brother went to order spares for the T100. Founded by Paul Passet before WW1, the dealership had a second branch in Abbeville by the late 1930s, and sold other imported marques like BSA. Paul Passet’s son Georges was a well-respected Clubman racer in the 1930s. In 1970, when the Bol d’Or was held at the Montlhéry circuit south of Paris for the last time, Georges’ son Jean-Paul would race Triumph factory racer Percy Tait’s T150 triple, such was the close relationship between the Passet family and Triumph. The dealership closed down in 1980 and their old Amiens premises now houses the town’s Police Municipale.
Le Roi de Route 29
Many French speed freaks on two, three and four wheels tried their luck on the RN29 in the interwar years, after the abolition of speed limits on French highways in 1922. You could get up to full race speeds between the towns and villages along the 80-kilometre or 50-mile stretch between Amiens and Saint-Quentin, cutting across the Picardy landscape like a steel rule. Prudence aside, the law required that you slow down through built-up area, and the gendarmes would lie in wait, hoping to catch roadhogs and hooligans rash enough accelerate before the derestriction signs marking the end of the speed limit. As Morin told the Blanchard brothers in the mid-1960s, ‘les flics’ had nothing capable of catching his Tigre Cent on full song. Running from the cops was easier when they did not have radios to alert their comrades further up the road…but they still telephone ahead in the late 1930s. If hotshoe riders like Morin thought they’d been clocked, they would turn off the highway into the hinterlands, lying low for a while, before returning home through the back lanes. At night, it was even easier to vanish, by simply turning off their lights.
Laurent Mimart, or 'Mimo' aboard the Picardy Tiger in Paris
Morin, as an ‘essential worker,’ needed to travel between different railway signal boxes in the Amiens area, and had a fuel allowance for a motorcycle, but once the French authorities started requisitioning private vehicles (including more than 56,000 motorcycles, many of which would end up in German hands), Morin would have been expected to take the train to work, or to use a bicycle. No more gallivanting up and down the RN29. As mentioned, he must have hidden his precious Tiger 100, first form the French military, then the Germans. After the war, Morin retrieved his Tiger 100 from its hiding place and used it as daily transport, until the dynamo stopped working. After Gaston Blanchard bought the T100 from Morin, he used and abused it as a field scrambler for another few years until the magneto died. As anyone who has a prewar Triumph twin knows, the twin-lead version of the Lucas Magdyno is a rare item, so the T100 was going nowhere. Blanchard dumped it in the cellar of his mother’s house in Saint-Quentin.
The article's author, Prosper Keating, on the Picardy Tiger
Taking early retirement in the 1980s, the unmarried Gaston Blanchard moved in with his mother. He bought a 6T Blackbird and became quite keen on classic bikes, even subscribing to the British magazine Classic Bike and joining the Triumph Owners Motor Cycle Club, whose badge we found on his workbench. At some point Blanchard must have realised that his old T100 was in fact quite special, and worth restoring. His paint job was competent but gives the Tiger the look of a BSA. His homemade wiring harness was rustic and an eyesore with only thick red wires, but it works well. However, Gaston Blanchard’s engine-building and fitting skills were beyond reproach. He renovated the engine and transmission with genuine, new old-stock parts. The rare MN2L Magdyno is a Lucas-reconditioned unit dated 1954, with an expensive-looking bronze plate repair to the drive end bearing housing. It must have cost a lot, even in the 1980s. Judging by the faint traces of soot on the plugs and in the ends of the cocktail shaker silencers, which appear to be genuine NOS pieces (as nobody was making replicas back then), Blanchard probably fired the Tiger 100 up a few times to check the timing and lighting. We can be sure that he did not ride it as the bottom fork yoke was fitted back-to-front, interfering with the chassis geometry. It would have been dangerous. In any case, he had his 650cc Triumph, which locals remember seeing him riding from time to time.
The Picardy Triumph as encountered on Canal St. Martin in Paris
We took the Triumph back to Paris, where Mimo and I sorted out the fork, and checked the engine and transmission. Jake Robbins Vintage Engineering supplied the right fork spring - Blanchard had fitted a spring from the lightweight chassis. The fork is not the 1940 type with the double counter-springs but that is just a detail, like the paintjob. The headlamp is wrong but who’s asking? It throws a beam up the road and finding an 8-inch original or a decent copy is not a priority. The priority is to run-in the motor carefully and take the Tigre Cent back to the Route Nationale 29, which still exists but was renamed the D1029, with heavy traffic routed on the new A29 motorway, built a few kilometres to the south. Mechanically, the motor is almost noiseless, with minimal noise from the transmission and gearbox. The cocktail shaker silencers emit a powerful burble that rises to a menacing snarl when the throttle is blipped. The twistgrip is a very rare, original example of the ratchet type available as an option to riders wanting a form of cruise control. It is useful as enables you to make hand signals, although most car drivers these days are unfamiliar with hand signals, apart from the single or twin-finger variety one makes after being cut off by them. I have never liked the rubber-mounted handlebars fitted to late 1930s Triumphs but tightened up good and hard, the bars don’t move and handling is very light and precise. Speed cameras and traffic cops with penalty quotas to fill each month will make it hard to beat Monsieur Morin’s times between Amiens and Saint-Quentin in November 1939, but we will salute his ghost as we give the old Tigre Cent a handful of throttle along the RN29. Perhaps the ghosts of World War One, who haunt the many battlefields along the route, will remember Monsieur Morin’s Triumph.
Want to put your BikeExif-ready Scrambler to the test? No, not on the mean streets of LA or Paris, but the sand and rocks of Morocco! Scram Africa is organized by Barcelona's Fuel Bespoke custom shop, as a way to get out and have some fun on cool machinery, regardless its suitability for the terrain. As Bespoke puts it on their website; it's 'more than a trip, it's an amazing experience about overcoming, adventure and friendship. A trip of more than 2000 km for scramblers to the south of Morocco by roads, trails and dunes. A trip only for nostalgic riders!'
As 'nostalgic riders' ourselves (whatever that means), the appeal of taking a converted 30-year of BMW roadster over 1200 miles of rough terrain sounds like tremendous fun, and a lot of hard work. That matches the description of ace photographer Götz Göppert, who rode along with the traveling Scram circus this year. Here are his thoughts on the event:
"I’d been to Morocco for work in fashion shoots, and the people are great, very helpful. Wherever you go they try to help you, sell you things and offer you drinks. On this trip we didn’t get to see a lot of people though, we were always on a bike. We started in Tangier and visited the largest souk (market) in the world, we had half a day off for that. With lots of little villages in the middle of nowhere, when we finally stopped you’re happy to get off the bike and sit by the pool for a while, and in the morning you’re happy to get on your bike and get out of there!
"Karles (Fuel Bespoke) called and asked if I'd shoot this year's ride; it was exactly the right moment. I called Ducati and got one of their new Scramblers. It’s kind of a city bike, and not really meant to do this sort of ride - I brought it back broken! They didn’t mind. There were 18 bikes, 4 broke down, and there was one serious accident. Almost all the bikes had issues. We had a mechanic with a car who followed us, he repaired the machines when we'd arrive at the end of the day, starting at 5 or 6pm, but some bike didn’t get in till 10pm!
"Some of these bikes were 30 years old, so it was a real adventure, and real work on these street bikes; they were heavy, it was very soft sand, and it was hard work. Some were basically stock BMWs with knobby tires, and the riders had no experience riding off-road like this. They were heavy bikes, they’d get stuck in the sand, and it took 2 people at least to push them out, in the middle of the day in the heat! But you meet a lot of great people. We’d all take turns pushing each other.
They've been doing the trip 6 or 7 years now. We began on the Barcelona-Tangier ferry, then we crossed the countryside into the desert, where there's nothing dangerous but the occasional goat. On the flat areas you could see 100km in front of you, there was so much empty space, and then the mountains in the distance. If there was a house, we'd stop, have some tea and dates, and go off again! The lowland areas were really soft sand, and the mountain roads were made of big rocks. It was really hot in the desert, 35-38 degrees, while in the mountains it was chilly, like 7 or 8 degrees, so you needed warm clothes and cold clothes.
You can’t go over the sandy parts too fast, as you don’t want to break your bike, and if you break yourself it’s a long way from the hospital. In the Atlas mountains it’s all green, and very pretty; then in the sahara you’re on the sand. I never used the tents, just slept on the sand, on a mattress, and in the morning you shake the scorpions from your boots. You don’t see anything but the stars, there’s nothing else out there. It’s something you can’t forget."
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"The desert was really hot, you ride all day, there's good food in Morocco - its really nice."
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"In some places it's all flat, and you go straight for 100km, and there’s nothing. You see the mountains at the end, and you keep going, and there’s nobody."
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"Some of the riders were on basically stock 30-year old BMWs with knobbies, and no experience off road like this. They were heavy bikes, they’d get stuck in the sand, it took 2 people to push them in the heat! But you meet a lot of great people. We’d all take turns pushing each other."
Disneyland for revivalist gearheads. That pretty much sums up the Goodwood Revival, the enormously popular retro-themed event held on the expansive grounds of Lord Charles March's estate in the south of England. However you feel about mixing those 3 words will probably determine your feelings about Goodwood, as it's the best summary we can provide, having attended the event occasionally since 2004. It's a fun, expensive, crowded, colorful, anachronistic dress-up party, with a very wide latitude on the suggested 'period' attire (1940s-60s), and a surprisingly large percentage of participants playing along with the game.
George Formby lives! From the film 'No Limit', filmed on the Isle of Man - another Revival!
The remarkable effect of 90% period attire at a vintage motorsports/aviation carnival is amazing photography. Not that acclaimed French photographer Laurent Nivalle needed the costumes to boost his work; he was hired by Sebastien Chirpaz of A Piece of Chic to cover the event. But, since vintage suits and dresses are omnipresent at Goodwood, his photos gorgeously capture the eerie simulacra of contemporary mechanical and human subject matter merging into a slot in our collective memory. Since we learn the history of the period in question through photographs, Goodwood can really bend the mind!
1942? Could be, with a slightly de-saturated photo and the right outfit...
Goodwood is centered around the history of this private racing circuit, which was active on the European Formula One and club racing circuit from 1948-1966. The vehicles (and outfits) are nominally expected to fall within this timeline, and the best of the era comes out to play on the race track. Videos of the auto racing in particular show drivers really trying, whether they're in a Ford Cortina or a Ferrari GTO; the circuit is narrow, with a wide (but not very wide) grass verge, and spins are common. As the grass makes an even more slick surface than the track, over-exuberant drifting can lead to body-damaging shunts into the boundary walls. And everyone likes to see a multi-$Million getting used, and dented!
Patina earned through racing hours - the lovely Norton Manx of Swedish rider 'Esso' Gunnarsson
Goodwood also incorporates some fun motorcycle racing, although there are as many contemporary racing bikes - replicas - as genuine vintage motorcycles. Granted, the replicas are raced hard in the Lansdowne Series, and certainly fit with the reenactment vibe; there are also genuine Aermacchis, Nortons, and BMW Rennsports on the track. But there isn't the depth of exotica to match the automotive side, which is far more impressive, with rows of amazing GP and circuit-racing cars, their curvaceous bodywork tugging at some part of our hearts as Desire.
The tell-tale nose of a Jaguar D-Type in the basic paddocks at Goodwood
The aviation component is simply remarkable, and perhaps the most moving of all the activities, with a slew of old warbirds (Mustangs, Corsairs, Spitfires, Lightnings) taking off and flying in formation throughout the weekend event. Great sightlines of the parked planes, and the ability to inspect some up close, is a pure thrill, without the envy generated by some of the cars. Nobody expects to own a Spitfire except in a fantasy, but we all drive cars, and can't help but compare ourselves with the rich sods able to whack a mighty dent in their 250GTO Ferrari while the racing. That's burning thousand-dollar bills by the second!
The motorcycle racing camp - there are plenty of other motorcycles in various spots
If you've never been, you really must. We'll leave it to you to draw your own conclusions, but there's plenty of fun to be had, and lots of interesting people to chat with. If you're not a VIP, you might get annoyed at the 'velvet ropes' around the most interesting machinery - the GP cars, the champagne tents, etc. The keen-eyed will spot the 'helicopter crowd' who fly in wearing bespoke vintage outfits from French couture houses - as spectacular as the cars in some cases, and sometimes just as expensive! The rest of us can enjoy the scene from the sidelines.
An RAF Ariel outisde the Spitfire LoungeIt may be a Revival, but a Spitfire evokes real-deal emotions whenever it fliesA simulated film crew in a revival of a war scenario...but all the right gear in placeRain + Rockers = EnglandCareful attention to detail separates the true enthusiasts from the looky-loos...Yes, that's a Vought F4U Corsair coming in to land...Ack ack and all that.Oh lucky lad!Ready for a spin?Mechanics and crew at the races are required to wear white coveralls, which eases fashion decisions greatly!A Douglas DC-3 and the sky it belongs in...The Francis Barnett two-stroke racer, normally seen at the Brooklands MuseumDetails of the oil pump on the little Francis-Barnett racerWomen's RAF inform, I believe?Like a good carnival, there are mechanized rides and old-fashioned games galorGoodwood hires various troupes of models to pose around the venue over the weekendJake Turner of London's Mean Fuckers MC (he's really not so mean!) sports the full 'coffee shop cowboy' outfitJake's badges, collected since the early 1980sCool enough for furs, apparently.The ladies of the vintage American iron brigadeA replica of the 'Quadrophenia' scooter as ridden by Sting in the filmNever get out of the car, young man. My only advice on being allowed to steer the Lotus.Examining the cars under repair and maintenance between races is fascinating; the structure of their chassis, the details of their suspension, the the erotic twists of their exhaustLunch for the crew!Belt drive on a vintage Manx? Well, it does leak less oil that way...but of course, people raced with chain primary drives for 100 years...Corsair and Mustang, heroes at their ease...A beautiful combo; the Grindlay-Peerless 'Hundred Model' raced by EJ Tubb at Brooklands, winner of Best in Show at Villa d'Este, and a Norton Model 18 racerA better shot of the Norton, which was truly hot stuff in 1926!An military Norton in the RAF campA Norton 16H military looking well used in the mud...'Fork-tail devil' as named by the Germans - a P38 Lightning1958? In the Norton campJaguar town; lightweight E-Types, Lister-Jaguars, D-types, etc - all the great catsA Lotus XI tears through past the grandstandsThe Spitfire Bar is a lovely spot for a beer or hot lunch; note the Ariel W/NG, and the Aston Martin 'Ulster' in the background.
Ernst Henne, the ultimate pre-war speed demon, and the supercharged BMW pushrod WR750 which was so devastatingly fast
The Golden Age of supercharged racers was a brief but glorious moment, when competing factories built ultra-exotic machines which laid the foundations of modern motorcycling. By pushing the boundaries of engine and chassis technology, new designs were adapted out of necessity, like perimeter frames, front and rear hydraulic suspension, wind-tunnel tested fairings, etc. The power discovered through forcing an air/fuel mix into an engine - a 40% gain in HP, at best - revealed problems with high-speed stability and wind-cheating which are still being addressed by ever-faster sport bikes.
Romantic 1936 BMW brochure boasting Henne’s success
The German and Italian factories were the first to embrace supercharging as a race policy, and integrated blowers with their racing engines from as early as 1925. By the mid-1930s, all companies competing in the Grand Prix series were at least experimenting with blowers and multi-cylinder engines, barring Norton, who remained true to their naturally aspirated single-cylinder racers. While AJS had a blown V-four, and Velocette a blown vertical twin (the 'Roarer'), these machines were underdeveloped compared to their competition from BMW, DKW, NSU, Moto Guzzi, and Gilera, whose racers dominated the high-speed stakes in every racing capacity - 250cc and 350cc for the Guzzi flat-single and DKW two-stroke racers, 500cc for the BMW flat twins, NSU vertical twins, and Gilera 4s.
Joe Wright aboard the OEC-Temple-JAP on which he took Henne's record at Arpajon in 1930.
The World Speed Record was the sole property of supercharged motorcycles from September 19 1929 onwards, when Ernst Henne took the first of his many records on a blown WR750, with a pushrod 750cc motor based on the BMW R63, on the straightaway at Schleissheim, Germany, at 134.68mph. Henne's record was challenged the following summer by Austrian Brough Superior importer Eddy Meyer, who added a supercharger to his SS100, and a new JAP 8/50 racing motor, but French customs officers refused to import his special racing fuel, and he never reached the speeds he intended.
Piero Taruffi and the wingless aircraft which hid the Gilera Rondine; good enough for 170mph in 1937
It tookJoe Wright on a supercharged OEC-Temple-JAPto beat the BMW's speed, which he barely pipped at 137.32mph down the straightaway at Arpajon, France, just outside the gates of the Montlhéry speed bowl, on Aug 31, 1930. Less than a month later, Henne squeezed another mph from the BMW, and recorded 137.66mph at Ingolstadt, Germany, on Sep 21st. The remainder of the 1930s was a ding-dong battle between a clubby pack of English speed-demons and the might of the BMW factory, interrupted only by the Gilera Rondine snatching glory for a moment in 1937, when Piero Taruffi recorded 170.37mph on the Brescia-Bergamo autostrada.
A 1937 press shot of the Gilera Rondine ‘naked’ in supercharged for as raced pre-war. Post-war, the blower was removed, a new and excellent frame designed, and 5 World Championships were captured
The Brit club included George Brough,Freddie Barnes, and Claude Temple as builder/mentors, and Eric Fernihough and Joe Wright at the brave riders. These gents worked in glorified sheds, squeezing power out of the obsolete (by comparison) JAP pushrod V-twin engine, which they housed in their own chassis (Brough Superior, Zenith, and OEC respectively), and ultimately succeeded in retaining glory, until it was clear 'the competition' would shortly involve guns. The motorcycles they built are magnificent bitsas, masterpieces of handwork and inspiration, cobbled together by men of tremendous passion. Amazingly, almost all of these supercharged record-breakers survive.
Piero Taruffi inside the ‘cockpit’ of the Gilera Rondine with aerodynamic bodywork.
Below is a fantastic '5 minutes' with Piero Taruffi and the Gilera Rondine:
https://youtu.be/iDlJG3DVd6M
The BMW factory, by contrast, worked from a fresh sheet of paper, ultimately designing the RS255 engine for modern racing, integrating a blower to the engine castings, and developing this OHC flat-twin 500cc racer to win both the Isle of Man TT by 1939, and take the ultimate pre-war World Speed Record by 1937, at 173.68mph, which stood for 14 years. The BMW had half the engine capacity of its rivals from England (although the same capacity as the Gilera, which was only 3mph slower), but had the advantage of a modern factory and a team of talented engineers to build this superb machine from scratch. The BMW record-breakers were equally the product of passionate engineers, and are equally masterpieces of speed-inspired design. Amazingly, the BMW and Gilera record-breakers also survive, and all can be enjoyed in person, if you're lucky enough to encounter them. In the past two years, for example the Joe Wright blown Zenith-JAP and OEC-Temple-JAP could be seen at the Vintage Revival Montlhéry, as well as theConcorso di Villa d'Este, where one could also see the BMW WR750 and Gilera Rondine in original condition, and a rebuilt RS255 streamliner ('Henne's Egg'). These machines are reason enough to attend such events, as they leave a lasting impression as the pinnacle of the Golden Age of Supercharging.
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 early history of Harley-Davidson in Japan is little known in the West, but the complex relationship with its #2 export market in the 1920s (after Australia) is fascinating. Relations between the Motor Co. and its Japanese subsidiary became very contentious in the 1930s, as the Japan transformed into an aggressive Imperial power, with a militarized, nationalist, and protectionist political system.
Baron Kishichuro Okura, while a student at Trinity College at Cambridge University, entered the very first race at Brooklands in 1907. He drove a 120hp FIAT, and came in 2nd in the race! Okura was the first (unofficial) importer of Harley-Davidsons to Japan. [BritishLibrary]Harley-Davidsons first began trickling into Japan in 1912, when the Japanese Army purchased a small contingent of machines for study, but oddly, they never requested any spares. More machines were ordered in 1922, by the Tokyo import company Nippon Jidoshe KK, headed by Baron Kishichiro Okura, who was among the first to import cars into Japan. Okura spoke excellent English, as he was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge: he even participated in the very first automobile race at Brooklands in 1907, where he won 2nd place! Okura's company ordered a few 'J' model Harleys, in 1922 and a few dozen more in the following two years, but also never purchased spares with his bike orders, which confounded the H-D brass. This, plus a large order from Outer Mongolia, also without a spares supplement, spurred H-D to send Alfred Rich Child to sort out the Japanese situation in 1924. One of Harley-Davidson's earliest credos was dealer support and spares availability, and its Japanese dealers were not following the company's guidelines.
Alfred Rich Child in the early 1920s [AMA Hall of Fame Museum]Negotiations with Baron Okura (the semi-official importer) to set up a proper H-D import scheme were a failure, but while in Japan, Child befriended Genjiro Fukui, US-educated and a wealthy founder of the prestigious Sankyo Pharmaceutical Company. Fukui ran an import/export division of Sankyo, the Koto Trading Co., which had been selling 'bootleg' import Harleys, brought into Japan from the Outer Mongolian shipments, and sold under Baron Okura's nose.
Alfred Rich Child and his family in Milwaukee, before heading off to Japan in 1924 [Sucher]Since no love was lost between Child and Okura by this point, and a friendship blossomed between Child and Fukui, and since Fukui's Koto Trading Co. had set up a successful Harley-Davidson import and sales organization, it seemed natural that Alfred Child join forces with Fukui. They set up the Harley Davidson Motorcycle Sales Company of Japan in 1924, with Fukui/Sankyo providing investment capital, and Child as Managing Director, whose 'cut' was 5% of gross sales in Japan. Their initial order included 350 H-Ds, each with a sidecar (three-wheelers having been found extremely useful as utility vehicles in Japan, after the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake), plus $20,000 in spares, and $3000 of factory repair tools. As Sankyo already had pharmaceutical contracts with all branches of the Japanese military, Harleys were suddenly required for all manner of police, military, and Imperial Escort duties. The new venture was very successful, selling about 2000 bikes/year.
After the great Tokyo earthquake of 1923, three-wheeled vehicles were the best way to get around Japan's difficult roads and cities, and many manufacturers built special chassis for all manner of passenger and utility machines. This is a ca.1934 Harley Davidson VL 'rear car' [Sucher]In common with the American parent factory, H-D Japan hired professional motorcycle racer Kawamada Kazuo (who later became president of Orient Motors), after Alfred Child watched him win a 350cc race at Naruo in 1925, coming 4th in the 1200cc race on his Harley. "An American came up an hit me on the shoulder. 'Would you like to come and work at the Harley-Davidson sales office?' he asked. I jokingly replied, 'Will you pay me Y100 a month?' but I left for their Tokyo office for a visit anyway. At that time the monthly salary at a private university was Y28...Alfred Child said, 'Depending on your results, we'll pay you Y100 a month,' so I joined the company. A week later I won first prize at Shinshu Matsumoto City Race, riding a 1200cc Harley Davidson, and they did indeed pay me Y100..."
The Harley Davidson 'Rikuo', the Japanese version of the 1200cc Harley-Davidson VL model [Iwatate]After the global economic crash of 1929, the Yen was devalued by half; this combined with new import tariffs made importing any foreign-built vehicle nearly impossible. With the price of Harley Davidsons suddenly more than doubled, Child reasoned the only future for Harley in Japan was to license the outright manufacture of H-Ds to a Japanese company: his company. He sailed in 1929 to Milwaukee, with a representative of the Sankyo Co to discuss a deal, armed with an undisclosed cash payment (reputedly $75,000) from Sankyo. This stunned the Harley-Davidson management, who granted exclusive rights to manufacture H-D bikes and spares in Japan to the HDMSCoJ. That reputed $75,000 payment from Sankyo, in the worst year of the Depression, probably saved Harley-Davidson from bankruptcy, and was a company secret for generations.
A Harley Davidson factory-built racing special, made-for-Japan-only road racer, with 500cc OHV engine. Where is it now? [Sucher]In return for these rights, Childs promised never to sell Japanese-built Harleys or spares outside Japan [The same situation is established by H-D in India today, with H-D factories making bikes in-country, which are never seen in the USA]. Childs brought motorcycle industry veteran and H-D employee Fred Barr with him to Japan, to set up a new factory in Shinagawa (Tokyo), using H-D tooling, processes, and blueprints to build parts and machines to exact specifications. No other Americans were sent, and none were ever employed. Production began in 1932, and no mention was ever made of this unique agreement in the American press, nor was it publicly discussed by Harley Davidson until the 1980s.
Alfred R Child with one of the first EL 'Knucklehead' models imported into Japan in 1936 [Sucher]The first Japanese Harley-Davidsons were built in 1935, the 1200cc Model 'VL', and were branded the Harley Davidson 'Rikuo' (Road King) model. Their #1 customer was the Japanese military, who were rapidly expanding their arsenal under aggressive Imperial politics. Complications emerged in 1936, when H-D sent a prototype Model EL 'Knucklehead' for testing in Japan, and the home factory pressured H-D Japan for higher licensing fees. After test-riding 400 miles on the 'Knuck', Alfred Childs' son Richard felt the machine was unsuitable for the Japanese market, and not ready for production. Sankyo was unhappy with both the licensing pressures and the new bike, so the company sent its New York representative, Mr. Kusanobu, to pay a heavy-handed visit to the H-D Board in Milwaukee. He complained of Childs' 5% commission (which made him a wealthy man) and the increased licensing fees, and insisted Childs be removed from the Board, or Sankyo would cease financing H-D imports into Japan. Not only that, but the existing range of sidevalve machines would now be sold simply as the 'Rikuo', with no more licensing paid to Harley at all. Kusanobu was nearly thrown out on his ear, but he delivered on his threats. In 1936, Rikuo was re-born an independent marque, with no connection to Harley-Davidson, barring its design. As compensation for Childs' loss of a lucrative business, Harley-Davidson made him the exclusive H-D importer for Asia (Japan, Korea, North China, and Manchuria): he had, after all, saved the company's bacon with the 1929 deal.
A Japanese Imperial Navy Rikuo circa 1937, part of the special landing force that took Shanghai. [Vintagent Archive]Of course, Child's new job description didn't last long. With the Japanese military increasing their grip on both government and industry, agreements with foreign companies operating factories on Japanese soil were voided. The military encouraged/supported other factories to make H-D copies, without paying licensing fees to H-D. Japanese companies Kurogane, Aikou, Toko Kogyo, and SSD all produced H-D clones by 1937, with production almost exclusively destined for the military. In August 1937, Japan invaded China, and Alfred R. Child was warned to leave Japan immediately. He might have lost everything, had his friend Mr Fukui not purchased Childs' homes, businesses, and his remaining H-D stock. By 1939, Ford, Chrysler and General Motors were in the same boat, with all American employees forced to leave Japan, their companies effectively nationalized by the military, with no compensation to their American owners. Rikuo produced 18,000 'VL' models through 1942, which is about the same as Harley-Davidson's production of the same model! In 1942, Rikuo switched to making torpedos, but after the war, in 1947, they resumed production of the old 750cc WL sidevalve model, and in 1950 the resumed the 1200cc sidevalver too. Rikuo continued production on these pre-War machine until 1962, when Harley-Davidson once again established a dealership network in Japan.
From the Battle of Shanghai in 1937, several Rikuo sidecar outfits used as machine gun platforms. Note the 1936 registration of the far machine. [Vintagent Archive]Information and photographs for this article were sourced from 3 excellent books:
- 'A Century of Japanese Motorcycles', by Didier Ganneau and Francois-Marie Dumas, which is to date the only comprehensive English-language book covering all years of the Japanese motorcycle industry. Given the market dominance of Japanese motorcycles since the 1960s, this is a remarkable poverty of books, compared to every other nation's motorcycling contribution. Photos scanned from here are listed as (Iwatate). It's a must-own book!
- 'Harley Davidson' by Harry Sucher, for the Rikuo story; the first complete history of the H-D marque, with much info from people who were still alive in the early days. Extremely informative. Photos listed as (Sucher).
The first motorcycle to appear in Japan; a Hildebrand and Wolfmüller, in 1896 (Iwatate)
To understand the slow and chaotic beginning of the Japanese motorcycle industry, it helps to understand a little of the country's background, and history of its relations with the West. Japan was never isolated or ignorant of world affairs, having conducted sea trade for centuries with neighbors in China and Korea, and was well aware in the 1500s that an aggressive colonial expansion by European countries had begun in the New World. When Spanish and Portugese traders arrived on Japanese shores in the late 1500s, the introduction of Catholicism in southern Japan was seen as the spearhead of a possible colonizing effort by Europeans. In response, the Tokugawa shogunate (the feudal military rulers in Edo castle - this is also called the 'Edo period') passed laws starting in 1633 which drastically restricted contact and trade with the outside world, making entry into Japan by foreigners, and exit from Japan by locals, punishable by death. These laws remained in effect until 1868 (230 years!), the end of the Edo period, and the start of the 'Meiji Restoration'. As with all politics, while the colonial threat was the primary excuse for an iron grip on Japanese trade, an important effect was to enrich the Tokugawas and deprive rival feudal groups of trade revenue. Ultimately this unified Japan, and created a national identity.
A contemporary Japanese woodcut depicting one of Commodore Perry's steamships ('Net)
Japan still traded with the outside world, through tightly controlled channels: the sole European access was limited to the artificial island called Dejima, in Nagasaki harbor, where the Dutch East India Company handled imports and exports. All trade with China went through Dejima as well. Trade with Korea, the Ainu people of northern Japan, and the islands of the Ryukyu kingdom (Okinawa etc) were all handled at specific sites. Europeans tried for 200 years to establish relations with Japan by trickery or force, but were successfully repelled until July 8, 1853, when Commodore Mathew Perry brought four US Navy warships (the kurofune, or 'Black Ships') into Tokyo Bay, and broke the resistance of Japanese forces. He returned the following year with 7 warships, and forced the Shogun to sign 'Treaty of Peace and Amity'...classic 'gunboat diplomacy'; the treaty forbade the Japanese from levying tarrifs on trade (although of course the US could), and gave US citizens immunity from prosecution in Japan ('extraterritoriality' - same as in Iraq/Afghanistan today - some things never change). Such treaties were implemented soon after by European countries, a humiliating turn of events which led to the end of the Tokugawa shogunate, which was replaced by the Meiji oligarchy in 1868 [which corresponds to the invention of the motorcycle, in France (the Perraux steam cycle) and the US (the Roper steam velocipede)].
The first railroad opened in Japan in 1872, between Yokohama and Tokyo (Shimbashi) ('Net)
The sudden/forced opening to European influence was embraced by the Meiji government, who saw modernization as the only way to defend Japanese sovereignty and culture. They organized 'learning expeditions' to the US and Europe from the 1870s onwards, where large teams of diplomats and students examined all manner of manufacturing and governmental institutions (military, courts, schools, etc). These missions served Japan well, for within a generation the country had become acknowledged as a modern global power, with a burgeoning industrial base.
Meiji-era advertisement for an American 'Auto-Bi' motorcycle, built by E.R. Thomas.A contemporary photos of an Auto-Bi c.1900, generally considered to be the first production motorcycle in America, by E.R.Thomas in Buffalo, NY. Later the company produced Thomas motorcycles - so Thomas Auto-Bi is the generally accepted name of the brand.
The first motorcycle appeared in Japan in 1896; a Hildebrand and Wolfmüller imported by Shinsuke Jomonji, a member of the Japanese House of Representatives, who demonstrated the machine in front of the Hibiya Hotel in Tokyo (destroyed by earthquake in 1923?). In 1901, a Thomas motorcycle and tricycle were imported, and the motorcycle was ridden extensively through Tokyo, and generated considerable press comment. The first motor vehicle race in Japan was staged between the two Thomas machines and a Gladiator quadricycle, on Nov. 3, 1901. The Thomas is generally considered the first production motorcycle in the US, and its appearance in Japan at this early date is remarkable.
The Thomas Auto-Bi Roadster, Gladiator quadricycle, and Thomas Auto-Tri 3-wheeler, at the first motor vehicle race in Japan, Nov 3 1901
1908 - The First Japanese Motorcycle:
The true pioneer Japanese motorcycle builder was Narazo Shimazu, who established the Shimazu Motor Research Institute in 1908, in Osaka. Using knowledge gleaned from Scientific American and the English book 'Motor Cycling Manual', he built his first gasoline-powered engine in August 1908, a two-stroke single-cylinder of 400cc, and installed it into a home-built frame from salvaged bicycles (there being no raw tubing available) - the first entirely Japanese-built motorcycle
The first Japanese motorcycle; the NS, built by Narazo Shimazu in 1908, in Osaka (Iwatate)
In 1913, Eisuke Miyata, founder of a gun and bicycle firm (in 1892 - 'Miyata' is still making bicycles today), purchased a Triumph and made a faithful copy as the 'Asahi' motorcycle, which was used by the Tokyo police and for gov't minister escort duty, despite its 180yen price. The Japanese motorcycle industry had truly begun, although there was as yet no unified highway code in Japan, and inter-urban roads were terrible. Urban roads were worse, as Japanese cities were intentionally built in a crazy-quilt pattern during their Feudal period, to slow the advance of invading troops. A lack of road signs and even street names, combined with the horrific state of road repair, made the advance of motorization difficult. Japan had never relied on horse and carts for general movement of goods in their Feudal period, and almost all traffic was by foot.
The Miyata-built 'Asahi' of 1913; virtually a replica of a Triumph (Iwatate)
Narazo Shimazu returned to the motorcycle business in 1926, producing the 'Arrow First', a 250cc sidevalve single-cylinder, and after 6 were built, he embarked on a well-publicized across-Japan moto-tour, sponsored by Japan Oil, Dunlop, and Bosch. Six riders, on four red motorcycles, took a 15-day ride of 1430 miles from Kagoshima to Tokyo. The publicity drew the attention of the Ohayashi group of companies, which whom Shimazu founded Japan Motors Manufacturing. He improved the 'Arrow First', and eventually sold 700 over the next 3 years, before the business went bust.
Escorting Prince Hirohito with a ca.1926 Harley Davidson 'J' with sidecar...but the Prince had his own Indian! ('Net
The first motorcycle race in Japan was held in 1913, at the Hanshin Racecourse, a dirt horse racing track in Nishinomiya (near Kobe). Around 30,000 spectators attended, a record for any kind of race in Japan. Racing became more common at venues across the country, and professional riders emerged, such as Kawamada Kazuo (who worked for Alfred Child at Harley Davidson Japan - see below) and the remarkable Kenzo Tada, the first Japanese rider to compete at the Isle of Man TT, in 1930, aboard a Velocette KTT. [Read more on Kenzo Tada here]
Kenzo Tada and his Velocette KTT on the Isle of Man in 1930 (Clew)
Just like the United States after WW2, it was the need for military mobility which sped up infrastructure improvement for Japanese roads. An increasingly belligerent Japanese military (annexing Taiwan in 1895, and parts of China and Korea by 1910) used motorized vehicles in greater numbers than the rest of the country. By 1919, a unified highway code was established along British lines (meaning they drive on the left), and civilian contractors hired to improve roads and bridges, while the military was allowed to subsidize vehicle manufacture at home.
March 1926; winners of the Shizuoka Championship. K.Nose (BSA Super Sports), Matsumoto (H-D single-cylinder), and Kawabata (New Imperial) (Iwatate)
During the 1920s, Japanese textiles were driving their export market, and increased prosperity meant more imports of motorcycles. Harley Davidson's #2 global export market in the 1920s was Japan (after Australia), and Indian sold just as many (around 1000/year), including to Prince (later Emperor) Hirohito, who enjoyed riding an Indian Chief with sidecar. Henderson four-cylinders were also sold in Japan, and manufacturers from Britain (AJS, Matchless, Norton, Douglas, Brough Superior, and Velocette), Belgium (Saroléa and FN), plus Husqvarna, Moto Guzzi, NSU and BMW exported to Japan as well. The Road Improvement Plan of 1920 estimated a 30-year project of completely paving Japanese roads, and building bridges over rivers, and the motorcycle as a pleasurable touring machine for wealthy riders became a reality. Motorcycle clubs sprung up, some of which forbade riders to venture alone due to the terrible state of roads, and a culture of tonori('riding far') grew.
An advertisement for Belgian Saroléa motorcycles, ca.1926 (Iwatate)
A massive earthquake destroyed much of Tokyo in 1923, killing hundreds of thousands, and the utter lack of motorized emergency vehicles, plus the impossibility of the road system for efficient rescue/reconstruction work, meant big changes for the Japanese vehicle industry, and the roads they used. Tokyo was rebuilt with a more rational road system, which doubled the number of vehicles in a single year (1924), and led to a push country-wide for a modernized road system. To further promote the nascent Japanese vehicle industry, import tariffs were imposed on foreign vehicles in 1925, which led Ford (1924), General Motors ('27), and Chrysler ('29) to establish factories in Japan. Harley-Davidson followed suit in 1929.
An Indian Chief and BSA 'Sloper', touring in Japan ca.1934 (Iwatate)
Several small motorcycle manufacturers set up shop in the mid-1920s, including the 350cc two-stroke Sanda ('Thunder') from Osaka, the SSD of Hiroshima, and the grand-daddy of them all, a 1200cc twin called the Giant, built by Count Katsu Kiyoshi in 1924. The Japan Automobile Company (JAC) produced motorcycles starting in 1929, which included 350cc and 500cc sidevalve singles, and a 500cc v-twin on JAP lines. In 1931 JAC built about 30 examples of 1200cc flat-twin, used for Imperial escort duty. Between the late 1920s and 1937, when the military effectively commanded all civilian vehicle production, quite a few large manufacturers had firmly established themselves in the Japanese market. Maruyama, Toyo (Mazda), Meguro, Cabton, Showa, Miyata, and Rikuo. Miyata alone produced nearly 30,000 motorcycles between 1930-45, and as mentioned, Rikuo built some 18,000 heavyweight H-D clones between 1935-42.
A sporting Meguro 500cc OHV model of the late 1930s (taken postwar with a US Marine) ('Net)
Information and photographs for this article were sourced from 3 excellent books:
- 'A Century of Japanese Motorcycles', by Didier Ganneau and Francois-Marie Dumas, which is to date the only comprehensive English-language book covering all years of the Japanese motorcycle industry. Given the market dominance of Japanese motorcycles since the 1960s, this is a remarkable poverty of books, compared to every other nation's motorcycling contribution. Photos scanned from here are listed as (Iwatate). It's a must-own book!
- 'Harley Davidson' by Harry Sucher, for the Rikuo story; the first complete history of the H-D marque, with much info from people who were still alive in the early days. Extremely informative. Photos listed at (Sucher).
Lady racer (?) on a Sarolea Model 23M Sports. Note 'Gargoyle' sweater - they imported Mobil oil products (Iwatate
The romance of the place is captured in the name, redolent of the invisible goals of speed. El Mirage is nominally a town in the SoCal desert, nearest Palmdale, which is itself nearly nowhere, even though inhabited by many thousands. Its raison d'etre is a dry lake bed, now bounded by the El Mirage Off-Highway-Vehicle Recreation Area, under the purview of the Bureau of Land Management.
Shinya Kimura with his long-time salt flats racer, a Harley-Davidson Knucklehead custom named 'The Spike'
The lake bed is very nearly flat, with a cracked mud surface occasionally pockmarked by potholes, but with nothing of the inches-tall cracqueleure of Bonneville, nor its corrosive salt crust. El Mirage lacks Bonneville's pristinely bizarre beauty, and its relative cleanliness - as vehicles pound the miles of dried dirt to reach the SCTA timing camp, clouds of sepia dust trail them, as it does the high speed vehicles racing across its surface. The effect is dramatic and beautiful, but layers everything and everyone nearby with an ultrafine grit. While some vehicles used air cleaners while racing, others take their chances gulping in the powder, and never need worry about bedding in their piston rings.
The full view of Willy's Lakester - a vision of a past Future, painted an unusual shade of mauve, supposedly a works Bugatti racing color
November 13th, 2015, became an infamous day for more nefarious reasons, but it was my first visit to the place, and I reveled in its spare beauty, and the fantastic characters who temporarily populate its puzzle-cracked earth. The goal was to explore, and take a few wet plate photos, which was accomplished. As the racing is over a weekend, not a week as in Bonneville, there's no 'village' feeling, and the layout of disparate camps is chaotic, making introductions difficult. Everyone is busy racing, and while very friendly, its hardly a relaxed place to take photos. Thanks to the several people who took time for my work, I hope you enjoy the results. See more at MotoTintype.com
Alp Sungurtekin, who exceeded 175mph on his home-built pre-unit Triumph, featured previously on TheVintagent.Coming soon to Intersection magazine; a few shots of the Vintagent at work at El Mirage, thanks to photographer Gilles, captured here at George's junkyard, beside a familiar RenaultA closeup of the remarkable aesthetic ingenuity built into The SpikeShinya Kimura's longtime dry-lakes racer the 'Spike'Willy with a breed unique to the SCTA - the Belly Tank Lakester. Built from a discarded aircraft fuel tank, this is a genre unique to dry lakes racing in SoCal. This one used a Ford flathead V8 motor, and sounded amazing.Alp's crew chief, Jalika, who betrays her former career as a fashion model
Occasionally a great talent slips completely off the radar of design aficionados, due to a lack of available historic materials, or lack of work in translated into English, or a simple lack of recent press. The work of Louis Lucien Lepoix (1918-1998) is such, one of a few unsung visionary designers whose ideas and efforts were far in advance of the motorcycle industry. His ideas for streamlining and rider protection weren't embraced by the industry for decades, and many still look modern, or at least like a future we'd still like to see. His son Bertrand oversaw the creation of a 550-page tome on Lepoix's ouevre, published after his death in 1998, from which these photos are taken.
Louis Lucien Lepoix and his spectacular, futuristic bodywork for his BMW R12 [Lepoix Family Archive]Lepoix was born Feb.4, 1918 in Giromagny, France, to a very poor family. He studied industrial design and architecture in Lyon and Paris, continuing his studies with a degree in engineering. After WW2, he worked in Germany at Dornier Flugzeugwerke (makers of interesting aircraft, etc) and ZF Friedrichshafen (still in business making ZF gearboxes etc) whose director Dr. Albert Meier designed a small car chassis that Lepoix clad in shapely bodywork, to much acclaim.
Lepoix's pre-War sketch for his modern motorcycle design [Lepoix Family Archive]During the war, Lepoix, passionate about streamlined vehicles, sketched quite a few cars, motorcycles, and planes with futuristic curvy body styles and flowing lines. His son Bertrand claims that Louis Lucien Lepoix, who spoke no English, had no knowledge of the work of Raymond Loewy or Norman Bel Geddes, icons of the school of streamlining whose work for automotive, aircraft, and rail companies defined the ideals of an era. Their streamlined designs embodied the hope that the age of war, disease, and conflict would end with a coming age of Modernity.
Lepoix's 1937 'Air Car' [Lepoix Family Archive]An example of Lepoix's thinking is this 'Air Concept Car', drawn up in 1942-3, with seating for 7, and a clear emphasis on a low coefficient of drag. The general shape of the vehicle recalls Buckminster Fuller's 'Dymaxion Car', patented in 1937 (and revised in 1943), and the concept is identical - low drag equals high speed and efficiency, an aircraft for tarmac. The benefit of lower fuel consumption would have been very much on the mind of any automotive designer during WW2, given the fuel rationing imposed on all combatant nations, with eventual shortages as the war intensified. Fuller's Dymaxion was reputed to achieve 120mph and give 30mph - terrific for '37 - but the project was ultimately scuttled due to a fatal accident while the car was being tested...while a brilliant engineer, perhaps Fuller's ideas were ahead of their time as regards safety and stability. It wouldn't be sacrilege to suggest the same fate would befall the 'Air Concept Car'.
Rear view of the BMW R12 special showing its sweeping, integrated lines, and the original pressed-steel frame of the BMW beneath [Lepoix Family Archive]In 1947, Lepoix founded his own design atelier, initially focussing on two-wheeled projects, beginning with this amazingly futuristic bodywork for his 1934ish BMW R12, a 750cc sidevalve flat-twin with pressed-steel frame, which was considered quite stylish, with a bit of Art Deco flair. Lepoix purchased the BMW at an auction organized by the French military in Baden Baden, Germany (French HQ in occupied Germany at the time) and set about to completely revamp the bodywork, but not the structure of the BMW. Lepoix was a keen motorcycle enthusiast, and began work on his motorcycle with a brief to address the issue of a rider's exposure to the elements (cold hands, knees, and feet!), while making a statement about the Future. He had been working on drawings and models of his concepts during the war, and his sketches plus a hand-carved model motorcycle survive today.
Another view of the BMW special (note the BMW's original brakes and fork shrouds are incorporated) [Lepoix Family Archive]The finished result is spectacular, modernistic, and very stylish, if a bit heavy-looking. Very few motorcycles before 1947 had explored the concept of full streamlining of the motorcycle, and even more rare was consideration for the rider; in fact, it would be another 7 years before the Vincent factory introduced their Black Prince model, which was the first fully enclosed and faired (ie, the bodywork protected the rider with an aerodynamic, wind-cheating design) production motorcycle. To be sure, quite a few motorcycles built for speed records were designed with a full enclosure (Gilera, BMW, Brough-Superior, DKW, etc), but these were never meant for the road. Lepoix was in tune with the streamlining ideas of his time, and just that bit ahead of the curve in actually building a motorcycle with weather protection for the rider, so early after the War.
Sketches for 'Feet Forward' motorcycles using unit-construction two-stroke engines [Lepoix Family Archive]Remarkably, his sketches from the War years also include a totally aerodynamic Feet-First design, which predates the rage for this type of motorcycle (and bicycle) by fully 30 years! Very few FF designs like this were produced prior to 1943, although hub-center steered machines with 'tankless' seating positions were built as early as the Veteran period by Wilkinson ('09), Ner-A-Car ('19) [read our Road Test here]. The Ro-Monocar ('26) came closest to realizing an enclosed 'car on wheels' - the stated aspiration of so many designers. The Monocar has the clunky bodywork of a cheap saloon vehicle, but the seeds of the idea were sown. It's a shame Lepoix didn't have a Majestic [read our Road Test here] or Ner-A-Car at hand to modify, and realize his vision of a curvaceous and appealing body style with a proper hub-center chassis.
A sketch of the Horex prototype, built along the same lines as the BMW [Lepoix Family Archive]His later career was very busy, and occupied with cars, agricultural machinery, heavy truck cabs, aircraft, and a host of modernistic smaller designs (telephones, household appliances, etc). He was also busy designing motorcycles as late as the 1970s, for Kreidler, Hercules, Horex, Puch, Maico, Triumph, Bastert and Walba. According to the family, Louis L. Lepoix's 50-year career "included more than 3000 products, including around 300 vehicles." If he'd lived just a bit longer, his styling acumen could have vastly improved the 'plastic era' of motorcycling: the bodywork of modern motorcycles went through a long period without much sex appeal, and a man with Lepoix's flair might have produced bodywork with curvaceous sensuality superior to mass-produced four-cylinder appliances.
A 1950s catalog for the Maico Mobil, one design of Lepoix's that became famous for its rounded, universally appealing shape. [The Vintagent Archive]The Bastert scooter was another Lepoix design, built in very limited numbers. Only about 1200 Bastert scooters were produced from 1950, with all-aluminum bodywork and advanced technical specification. They are very highly sought after today, as they embody the best of Lepoix's design sense, and look stylishly aggressive even today. This machine was captured at the 2017 Concorso Villa d'Este. [Paul d'Orléans]The 1952 Bugatti Type 101, with bodywork designed by Lepoix. [Wikepedia]An even more spectacular set of bodywork on a Horex 400cc Regina, which sadly does not seem to have survived. [Lepoix Family Archive]
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.
When Georges Roy set out to combine the best qualities of an automobile with the thrills of a motorcycle, he created a remarkable machine – the Majestic. It’s the ultimate French Art Deco motorcycle, as his design enabled a free hand to create stylish, stunning bodywork over a radical chassis. The Majestic was revolutionary in 1929, and the ideas Georges Roy made into metal are still being explored by motorcycle designers.
Georges Roy himself with a prototype of his New Motorcycle. Love his riding kit! And the fishtail exhaust tips. [Private Collection]Roy’s first production machine was the ‘New Motorcycle’ of 1928, which used a pressed-steel monocoque chassis, rather than a tube frame. Roy was among the first industrial designers to grapple with mass-production techniques for auto manufacture, in which huge presses stamp out bodywork by the tens of thousands, very cheaply. Conventional motorcycle production with the bicycle-derived tube frame is labor intensive and expensive, and Roy correctly understood that inexpensive pressings could form the chassis of a motorcycle, including the frame, forks, and tanks.
Details of the New Motorcycle, showing its pressed-steel chassis. [Private Collection]
The catalog cover for the 1928 New Motorcycle, with Georges Roy aboard. [Private Collection]The monocoque concept was sound, and eventually became the norm in the automotive industry (called ‘unibody’ construction from the 1960s), although it’s rarely used on motorcycles. Pressed-steel frame parts, on the other hand, are absolutely the norm today, and the most popular motorcycle in the world, the Honda Super Cub with over 90 Million produced in 14 countries since 1958, uses pressed-steel forks, frame parts, and rear fender. The later C110 Sports Cub is also still in production (since 1960), and features a full monocoque frame of welded-up pressed-steel frame halves. Clearly, Roy's ideas were sound, and today, frame production is possible on a mass scale, very cheaply, using the ideas he explored. The New Motorcycle was hand-built and riveted together; robot welders and painters had yet to be invented, existing only as science fiction in 1928!
The Majestic
The original Majestic prototype used a Cleveland four-cylinder engine in a different chassis than the production models. [Private Collection]
The world soon caught up with George Roy’s concept, and even staid BMW produced motorcycles using a pressed-steel monocoque chassis from 1930-35. So Roy moved even further from the mainstream, exhibiting a prototype for a totally new design called the Majestic at the Paris Motor Show in 1929. The Majestic was in some ways retrograde from the New Motorcycle, as it uses a conventional automotive-type chassis with hub-center steering, technology that was old news by 1929. The industry had already seen the Ner-A-Car of the early 1920s, and even the Zenith Auto-Bi of 1907, among other hub-center steered bikes.
The full article introducing the Majestic to the public; MotorCycling, July 10, 1929. [MotorCycling]What differentiated the Majestic from earlier efforts was its totally enveloping bodywork; swooping pressed steel panels with unbroken lines from its beak-like nose to the sporting abbreviated tail. The sweeping curves of the design make the Majestic a brilliant Art Deco sculpture, and was made possible by the use of automotive ‘coachbuilding’ practice – placing a bespoke body onto a standardized chassis – for the first time on a motorcycle.
The tapering body and swells over the wheels are clearly visible; a stylish and elegant beast. [Paul d’Orléans]The chassis is constructed using two mirror-image side rails of square-section steel, which are joined by riveted cross members. Firewalls at the front and back of the engine are also riveted to the frame, with strengthening panels beneath the engine, plus the two large, fixed top panels. The whole structure is extremely rigid, yet very light. The rest of the bodywork is attached to thse fixed points, including the nose and tail sections, and the central engine covers, which are removable for engine access, and stylishly louvered for airflow, to keep the engine cool. The bodywork is thin-gauge steel pressed into shape, so the overall weight of the machine is fairly low, around 350lb with a single-cylinder Chaise OHV motor inside.
The fabulous, symmetric instrument panel on the Majestic's handlebars. This is the most elaborate version; some Majestics had far simple panels, or none at all. [Paul d’Orléans]The question of ‘what engine’, given an empty engine compartment, is open – the original Majestic prototype was built with an American 4-cylinder Cleveland engine! Other engines included Chaise and JAP single-cylinder engines, or a JAP v-twin mounted transversely. The fuel tank sits under the front bulkhead, and the instruments sat in a binnacle on the handlebars - in this case, a clock, speedo, and multi-position light switch. Conventional controls operate the machine, including a hand-shifter, which is a simple rotary device with a knob - no 'gate' for holding the lever in place, just a round boss with Roman numerals indicating the gear (there are III).
The Art Deco style of the 1930 Majestic catalog. [Private Collection]The steering and front suspension uses vertical rods for sprung movement (or ‘sliding pillars’ if you know Morgan sports cars), and a steering rod is connected between the handlebars and the central hub. The inside of the hub is complicated, as it incorporates very large bearings, the swiveling steering mechanism, and the front brake.
A Majestic is striking from every angle, and cast a long shadow on the design world. [Paul d’Orléans]The Majestic was an expensive, elegant machine, a true Grand Routier in French parlance, and could be ordered in several colors, or even an ‘alligator’ finish, which was hand-applied by very skilled artisans of the Guild of Decorative Painters. There is no other motorcycle built with such a paint finish, which far exceeds the skills of even the best coach-painter; it’s an artisanal and labor-intensive technique, using an inherently unstable process. The 'crackling' is created by using a fast-drying top paint layer over an incompatible 'base' paint coat. As the top layer dries, it shrinks and cracks into an alligator-like skin. That several Majestics have survived 90 years with this unusual paint scheme speaks well of the artisan’s skills.
A short-chassis 1930 Majestic; there were 2 chassis types available. [Private Collection]
The Road Test
The Majestic is clearly a different breed, and we approached the machine with curiosity and a trace of awe. After a short tutorial on the function of various knobs and switches, a quick sit astride the machine brings no sense there’s anything unusual going on. Except there are no forks to guide you; one is atop a totally enclosed vehicle with hub-center steering, and only the handlebars and extensive instrument panel can be seen from the perch. Starting the Chaise 350cc engine of our test machine was a doddle, and after a prod, a typical 1920's bonk emerges from the fishtail muffler. There was a slight valve clatter below the perforated engine covering, with no tank between rider and motor to muffle it. Not obtrusive, but noticeable.
Suitable for clergy! A priest on a Majestic. [Private Collection]Moving onto the road, the steering becomes very light, with no inertial sluggishness in changing direction, which might be expected for such a long machine. As the speed rises to the 30-40mph range, there’s a mid pendulum effect at the front wheel, as if it’s seeking to find balance, so a light hand is required on the handlebars to prevent a weave. Even with a delicate touch, the front wheel seems very slightly aimless - not hunting exactly, but not rail-like in steering; constant minor correction is necessary to keep the plot moving in exactly the right direction. That was the only unusual effect of the Majestic’s steering, which was still surprising, as other hub-center steered machines tend towards over-stability, and are difficult to deflect from a straight line! It might well be that Georges Roy chose his front end geometry to avoid exactly that tendency, and to keep the Majestic feeling agile rather than rock-steady.
The slimness of the design is clear from the front; it's little wider than a conventional single-cylinder motorcycle, and much narrower than a transverse 4. [Paul d’Orléans]The front suspension worked well, and the length of the machine meant bumps weren’t an issue at all. The Chaise engine isn’t especially powerful, so high-speed testing wasn’t possible, but as the throttle was wound back, the Majestic felt more stable than at ‘town’ speeds. The motor clattered away beneath the perforated steel cover, and the exhaust note was typical of the 1920s, with a tinny bonk from the silencer. At no point did the bodywork rattle or vibrate, and the whole machine felt completely solid, but in no way heavy.
The 'craqueleure' or alligator finish, an artisanal paint process requiring great skill. This example was spotted in the M2R museum in Andorra [Vincent Prat]The Majestic was, as Georges Roy said, a ‘new motorcycle’, and an extremely forward-thinking design. He attempted to build an 'ideal' motorcycle, which was a fascination before WW2, when all things were possible. His ideal was taken up time and again over the ensuing decades, with many small shops and even Yamaha and Bimota taking up the hub-center flag. It’s a ‘better’ system than conventional forks in many ways, except that motorcyclists are a very conservative lot. Far-seeing enthusiasts in the 1920s knew enclosed motorcycles were the future...and how right they were, decades ahead of time.
The hub-center steering mechanism in plain view, showing the steering rod connected to the curved steering arm. The brake plate is on the other side of the hub. [Paul d’Orléans]A luxurious Bernardet sidecar makes a perfect complement to a 1930 Majestic [Yesterdays]Access to the engine bay is easy with the top panel folded away. The Chaise 350cc OHV motor and Amac carburetor are visible and accessible. [Paul d’Orléans]How they're built today; a pair of replica Majestic chassis, showing clearly the contruction. Two mirror-image side rails, held together with riveted cross-members, strengthened by floorpans, and two bulkeads front and rear. The 'arms' extending forward hold the front wheel. [Private Collection]Side view of the remarkable Majestic-Bernardet sidecar outfit; the height of French Art Deco elegance [Yesterdays]
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 cover of Jeffrey W. Alexander's excellent new book, 'Japan's Motorcycle Wars'
Jeffrey Alexander has produced, in Japan's Motorcycle Wars: An Industry History (UBC Press, 2008) a scholarly account of the deepest origins of the Japanese motorcycle industry, exploring a host of tangential issues which impacted the early and later development of the industry as a whole. The book is academic in tone and structure, and feels like a doctoral thesis; he explicitly states that it isn't meant to be a 'motorcycle book', and there are few exemplary photos, but anyone seriously interested in Japanese motorcycle history would find the book a rewarding read.
Production line at the Fuji 'Rabbit' scooter factory in the late 1940s; definitely a hand-built body, at the least! And a different world from the highly centralized, efficient, and modern production lines Japan became famous for in the 1970s...
The gem of the book, interestingly, isn't the author's; it's a translation of a series of interviews conducted in Japan in 1972, of the Executives of several failed companies, and several interesting characters important to the Industry, including Kenzo Tada. These excerpts provide a diamond-hard insight to the ruthless and aggressive tactics used by successful companies to get ahead and stay there, including breaking agreements and cutting off supplies of vital components to competitors. The book also clarifies the attitude of the Japanese government, and agencies such as MITI (Ministry of International Trade and Industry) which promoted all industries post-war, whose influence gave a great boost to certain companies, most notably Honda.
The Honda Type A moped, their first production model from 1946, using surplus generator motors.
In a far-sighted series of moves (and in total contrast to Britian or the US), massive cash incentives were granted to companies willing to adopt new techniques which benefitted several industries at a stroke, and which rewarded the development of the Japanese economy as a whole. As an example, MITI gave Honda 400,000 yen to investigate whether die-casting would give more accurate results than sand-casting his aluminum parts, and a further y100,000 when the experiments worked. Honda calculated, as did MITI, that the payback point of installing the die-casting equipment would come when production leaped from hundreds to thousands of units per month. Cash infusions and consequent increases in the volume of motorcycles produced are all listed in the book, which mentions as well the boost (like an Archibald Low rocket in fact) to all the major industries when the US forgave Japan's war reparations debt.
The Tamagawa Olympia Speedway races on November 2, 1949, with tens of thousands of spectators for Japan's first post-war race.
Alexander makes an argument that the successful motorcycle manufacturers post-war had all undertaken technically challenging munitions contracts during WW2, in which their production lines (out of necessity) were designed for use by unskilled labor - all of the skilled labor having been called off to war. This gave Honda, Kawasaki, Yamaha, and Suzuki especially, a great advantage over their dozens of rivals, as they all had experience with mass-production techniques, where any part was interchangeable with another, without the need for fussy and expensive 'hand assembly'... and therein lay the doom of the handbuilt motorcycle.
Racers at the Tamagawa Speedway races on November 2, 1949; the first and third bikes are Meguro singles with Harley-Davidson forks (Meguro built H-D clones under license from the 1930's); the second bike is an Ariel Red Hunter clone by Cabton.
There are a few choice anecdotes buried in the text: "Immediately after the war, Honda took some time off from manufacturing and whiled away the better part of a year drinking medicinal alcohol and working very little."... [Marusho] "signed an import contract with the owner of a Los Angeles sushi restaurant..." Monarch Motorcycles had dealers buying product "with a rucksack stuffed full of y100 notes...however, the promisory note appeared on the scene - and these notes were a problem." [!]
Tokyo police forces with Kawasaki (Meguro) W1 twins,Shiro-bai(white bikes), 1969; licensed copies of the BSA A10 650cc 'Golden Flash'
Some fun facts;
- in the 1920's, Japan was Harley-Davidson's #2 export customer, after Australia. Soichiro Honda copied their system of dealer support for the motorcycles they sold.
- postwar, the Americans established motorcycle racing (with legal betting) in Japan, to encourage industry, and raise money for local gov't, the Japanese Red Cross, and m/c manufacturers. In 1950, six companies - Meguro, Rikuo, Cabton, Abe, Asahi, and Showa - split 4.6million yen in subsidies. A single US-sponsored race in 1950 netted over 1million yen, and each race was attended by 30,000 to 95,000 people.
You can buy Japan's Motorcycle Wars: An Industry History here!
What could be more Japanese than Sumo wrestlers enjoying a Honda Super Cub on the beach? 'You meet the largest people on a Honda'
Jorge Ubico, president of Guatemala from 1931-44, the 'Little Napoleon of the Tropics', tearing through the countryside on his 1942 Harley-Davidson EL 'Knucklehead'
A recent publication from the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC explored the history of one of their motorcycles (yes, they have many, includingSylvester Roper's 'first ever motorcycle' of 1867, and theCurtiss V-8 record-breaker of 1906, which clocked 136.3mph at Ormonde Beach, FL). Their intern Christine Miranda did a little investigating, and came up with this story - it seemed perfect for The Vintagent (and thanks to David Blasco for the nudge!).
"In museums, it's common for a single artifact to tell many diverse stories, far beyond the scope of any one exhibition. Christine Miranda, who interned with our Program in Latino History and Culture, explores this idea when she encounters a motorcycle used in Guatemala and digs further.
On the left, the museum's 1942 Harley-Davidson motorcycle as it appears in "America on the Move", designed to fit mid-century Portland, Oregon. On the right, the motorcycle parked in a driveway with a license plate that reads "Guatemala 1979-1983."
Our America on the Move exhibition on the history of U.S. transportation is designed to transport you around the United States. As visitors explore all 26,000 square feet of our Hall of Transportation, they "travel across America," entering a variety of carefully curated historical moments. One of the exhibition's later segments, "Suburban Strip," immerses museumgoers into the life of the "car-owning middle class" in Portland, Oregon, 1949. The display, complete with a replica road, features an array of vehicles typical of the time and place: a pickup truck, a Greyhound bus, a motor scooter, and even a genuine Harley-Davidson motorcycle. Despite the bike's 1949 Oregon license plate, it was never actually ridden in the Pacific Northwest.
Where was it really used? The roadways and landscapes of Guatemala. What's more, the customized motorcycle was owned for several years by the Central American country's president, Jorge Ubico.
Jorge Ubico in his days as a lawyer and politician in Guatemala, before assuming total control of the country
I discovered the object's mysterious past while searching the item catalogues for traces of hidden Latino history at the museum. I guess you could say I hit the jackpot. Though a Guatemalan ruler's motorcycle may seem like an odd choice for the collections at the National Museum of American History, its inclusion in fact sheds light on the global impact of U.S. transportation industries and broadens our understanding of who, what, and where "America" includes.
Jorge Ubico, a well-educated lawyer and politician from his nation's capital city, ascended to the Guatemalan presidency in 1931. He would then stay in that post for 13 years and become the self-proclaimed "little Napoleon of the tropics." Besides his flair for the ostentatious and suppression of political dissent, Ubico is best remembered for his aggressive pursuit of foreign investment and close economic alliance with the United States. Notably, Ubico strongly supported the U.S.-owned United Fruit Company (UFCO), the corporate giant nicknamed el pulpo ("the octopus") for its wide-reaching influence throughout 20th century Central America.
The locomotive Jupiter, a freight and passenger train used from 1876 through the 1960s, reveals that Ubico's motorcycle is not the only object in "America on the Move" with hidden Guatemalan history. In fact, Jupiter underscores the connection between domestic and foreign industrial development during the 20th century.
During his regime, UFCO became the largest landowner in Guatemala and enjoyed exemption from taxes and import duties. Via the International Railways of Central America (IRCA), UFCO also owned and operated the nation's rail network, which facilitated its own international trade. Interestingly, when visitors first enter our America on the Move exhibition, they encounter the giant steam locomotive Jupiter, ostensibly at home in Santa Cruz, California. Though the train did originate there in 1876, Jupiter actually spent the better part of its career transporting bananas along the IRCA in Guatemala!
Like Jupiter, Ubico spent many years traversing Guatemala with the help of American transportation technology. His flashy motorcycle, a 1942 Harley-Davidson Model 74 OHV (Overhead Valve) Twin, was infamous. As described by American journalist Chapin Hall in his Los Angeles Times column:
"When President Ubico, of Guatemala, starts on a tour of inspection, which he does several times a year, he doesn't order out the guard and a special train, but hops on a motorcycle, shouts 'c'mon boys,' and leads a squadron of two-wheelers, each one manned by a government department head."
Despite the almost comical image conjured by Hall's description of Ubico aboard his blue and chrome motorcycle, his "inspections" were the mark of his harsh, militaristic rule. Ubico's Harley-Davidson enabled him to travel to rural communities, where he personally settled local disputes and "imposed his own brand of justice," according to the same Los Angeles Times column.
As president of Guatemala, Jorge Ubico repressed democratic practice and political dissent. His pro-U.S. economic policy worsened the plight of the middle and lower classes, while his labor laws (designed to facilitate the development of public works, like roads) utilized indigenous labor. The image of Ubico atop his motorcycle, shown here, reveals the reality of justice under his rule: "the president might appear suddenly, almost out of nowhere, on his fancy, powerful machine to render judgment". (Quoteis from "I Ask for Justice: Maya Women, Dictators, and Crime in Guatemala, 1898-1944" by David Carey.) Image courtesy of Alvaro Aparicio.
This 1942 Harley-Davidson brochure, saved in the curatorial file for Ubico's motorcycle, emphasizes the company's role in military and law enforcement.
To my surprise, Ubico was far from the first to use a Harley-Davidson motorcycle for military purposes. Already used domestically by American police departments as early as 1908, Harley-Davidsons were ridden by General John J. Pershing's men in their unsuccessful nine-month pursuit of Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa. Harley-Davidson would go on to supply 20,000 military motorcycles during World War I and 80,000 during World War II. In fact, according to Paul F. Johnston, a curator here in the Division of Work and Industry, Harley-Davidson motorcycles were manufactured almost exclusively for the U.S. war effort in the 1940s, with Ubico's bike being a rare exception.
After the war, Harley-Davidson and other American corporations enjoyed a surge in the motorcycle's recreational popularity, with returning veterans bringing their experience and interest in riding back home with them. This is where Ubico's bike enters the story in America on the Move. Stylized with an Oregon license plate, the motorcycle helps recreate Sandy Boulevard, a burgeoning commercial area in the suburbs of Portland during the 1940s and 50s. By bringing to life this history of midcentury suburbanization, Ubico's motorcycle functions as a 1942 Harley-Davidson, not a symbolic set of wheels.
[Guatemala's political scene didn't improve much after Ubico; here's a Diego Rivera mural, 'Glorious Victory', which features CIA director Allen Dulles (who sat on the board of the United Fruit Co.) just after the US-orchestrated coup of 1954. - pd'o]In tandem, the motorcycle's two histories can help expand upon the themes of America on the Move and create important, interdisciplinary connections. Transportation history is industrial history is political history, and Ubico's acquisition and use of an American motor vehicle has everything to do with the economic relationship between the United States and Central America during the age of UFCO's prominence. When the tide turned for Ubico in 1944 and nationwide disapproval forced him to resign, Ubico sought refuge in New Orleans, Louisiana, where he lived in exile for two years before his death. Maybe it is ironic that his iconic Harley-Davidson followed him and found a final resting place in the Smithsonian.
Since its donation in 1981, the bike has been on almost continuous display, first in the Road Transportation Hall and now, of course, in America on the Move. Chameleonic, it continues to serve various purposes. Millions of museum visitors enjoy it as a classic American artifact, oftentimes recalling their own stories and experiences with motorcycle history and culture. I look at Ubico's bike and see that. I also see the overlapping social, military, and industrial functions of U.S. transportation, at home and abroad; the story of the man behind the motorcycle; and the multiple layers of history encapsulated by the most unexpected of museum objects. Perhaps, now you can too.
Jorge Ubico's chrome-tank 1942 Harley-Davidson Knucklehead at the Smithsonian
Cyril Pullin was a rare bird among the many fascinating motorcycle inventors of the early 20th Century; while there were many rider-designer-manufacturers during the era, he was in very rare company of men who not only designed, built, and raced motorcycles, but also won an Isle of Man TT race, a distinction he shares only with Howard R Davies (HRD) and Charlie and Harry Collier (Matchless).
Cyril Pullin in the 1913 TT aboard an early 2-speed Veloce, a very early example of what would become the Velocette marque. [The Vintagent Archive]Pullin began his racing career at Brooklands and at the Isle of Man in 1913, racing a Veloce, the first iteration of what would become Velocette (and finishing dead last), but the next year he moved to a Rudge, which he modified to suit his jockey-like stature. He lowered the top frame rail of his Rudge 'Multi', which not only gave a lower seating position and consequently lower center of gravity, but also updated the appearance of a typical 'Teens '5-bar gate' frame design, with parallel top frame tubes and tall saddle position.
Pullin aboard the Rudge TT Multi in 1914 at the Isle of Man. The 'Muli' was Rudge's patent variable-speed belt drive, which gave a variety of drive ratios, before gearboxes were common. [The Vintagent Archive]After Indian's 1911 1-2-3 sweep of the Isle of Man TT using two-speed chain drive machines, it was clear to all that multiple speeds equalled race success. Rudge and Zenith both built successful belt-drive racers using variable pulley diameters, and mechanical contraptions to take up the slack of the consequent belt looseness. While Scott used a 2-speed chain drive to win the 1913 TT, the Rudge Multi system had notches in its shift gate for 20 speeds, which did the trick in 1914, as Pullin beat Howard R Davies (Sunbeam) and Oliver Godfrey (Indian) to the line by 6.4 seconds, averaging a remarkable 49.5mph on the rutted, unpaved cart track which was the island circuit at that date. Rudge hoped to cash in on his success, and released a 'TT Replica' within the year.
Cyril Pullin aboard the first British motorcycle to achieve 100mph on British soil, a Douglas OHV flat-twin. [The Vintagent Archive]Pullin had an extremely inventive mind, and in 1916 submitted the first of 171 patents (at least, so far as I've found!) filed during his lifetime, concerning all manner of carburation, oil pumps, frame and fork design, brakes, etc. By 1920 he teamed up with Stanley Lawrence Groom on the design of a radically advanced two-stroke motorcycle with a pressed sheetmetal frame. This machine was the subject of 12 joint patents in Pullin/Groom's names, and drawings of the machine show clearly the forward thinking of this pair of designers. While the two-stroke design failed to materialize, many of the ideas for its chassis reappear later in the 1920s with the Ascot-Pullin, as does the team of Pullin and Groom.
The Pullin & Groom two-stroke of 1920, with pressed-steel monocoque chassis, perhaps the first in the motorcycle industry. Note what appears to be the facility for rear suspension? Note the strut below the saddle. [The Vintagent Archive]By 1922 Pullin was employed by Douglas in Bristol, and his sister had married that marque's chief designer and General Manager, Steven Leslie Bailey, and was soon racing Douglas machines in their heyday, while patenting many of the ideas he developed there. In 1922, he became the first man to record 100mph on a motorcycle on British soil, using a very special OHV Douglas flat-twin. He also continued to race at Brooklands and the Isle of Man, including at the 1923 TT, in which Douglas won both the Senior TT (Tom Sheard) and newly introduced Sidecar TT (Freddie Dixon, using a banking sidecar of his own design). Douglas, in its run of success, hired professional racer Rex Judd for a run of Brooklands records, and Pullin, ever the modernist, rigged a radio communications system with his rider, Judd having earphones within his helmet, from which he could communicate with Pullin back at the works garage - surely a first!
The patent drawings for the Ascot-Pullin monocoque chassis. [The Vintagent Archive]Even during these heady, successful days with Douglas, Pullin had a restless mind, and it seems the pull of his Great Idea - the pressed-steel motorcycle chassis - was too much to ignore. By 1928, he teamed up with Stanley Groom once again, and secured the old Phoenix factory in Letchworth, Herts, to establish the Ascot Motor and Manufacture Co Ltd. Their intention was to produce both a car and motorcycle of steel pressings, the car being based on the Hungarian 'Fejes', whose inventor, Jeno Fejes, held similar views to Pullin's own, although the car was far more radical than Pullin's designs, having even the engine built of welded-up pressings! The Fejes car (and what an unfortunate name...) was never actually built at the Ascot works, but Groom and Pullin drew up 22 patents relating to their two-wheeled venture, many of which found their way into the Ascot-Pullin motorcycle.
A press report from 1928 , with 100mph claim for the Ascot-Pullin. [The Vintagent Archive]The bright dream of a motorcycle inventor/racer could be forgiven if it looked like a camel, but Cyril Pullin had already proved with Rudge and Douglas that he had a designer's eye, and his sketches for the 1920 pressed-steel two stroke show a deep appreciation for aesthetic engineering. The Ascot-Pullin proved to be far more than a 'slide-rule special', having a perfection of line and proportion revealing its designers to be men inclined towards elegance; the complete machine is a gem of the English Art Deco design movement, being the happy integration of modern machinery and contemporary style. It's pressed-steel bodywork is at once more restrained than its extravagant contemporary rivals, like the French 'Majestic', yet more cheerful than the sober BMW R16.
The Ascot-Pullin as produced, a very handsome machine [Bonhams]We were lucky enough to become thoroughly acquainted with a 1929 Ascot-Pullin, its indulgent owner allowing a free hand to explore the machine's character, regardless that it's one of perhaps 7 survivors. The first impression of the machine is one of unity - an easy summary given the monococque chassis - and luxury. The machine is beautifully appointed with every gauge one could hope for on a late '20s car of the era, an appropriate comparison given the 'two wheeled car' ideal Pullin was aiming at. This notion of an 'ideal' motorcycle with fully-enclosed mechanicals, silent running, full instrumentation, and weather protection (not to mention an adjustable windscreen and wiper - an option on the Ascot-Pullin!) was an idea constantly referenced in the motorcycling press of the day, and which proved to be absolutely correct...50 years later. Witness the Honda Gold Wing, and every modern tourer today.
The forks of the Ascot-Pullin are pressed-steel, as is the chassis. The hand-shift is visible, as is the easy access to the cylinder head for valve adjustment. Not the quality of the finishes. [Paul d’Orléans]Pullin's baby bristles with both innovation and attractive design touches, like the numerous chromed star washers and a rocket-ship exhaust system. The engine is an advanced flat-single cylinder design, much like the contemporary Moto Guzzi but OHV, and with a geared primary drive to its en-bloc transmission. As noted, the chassis and forks are pressed steel, with strengthening indents accented with two-tone paint, while the wheels are interchangeable on Pullin's own quick-release patented hubs, complemented by his own-patent hydraulic brakes, the first on a motorcycle. The symmetrical instrument binnacle holds a speedo, clock, oil pressure gauge, multi-position light switch, ammeter, and unique mirror-image levers for the magneto and air controls. The bike sits on Pullin's patented telescoping center stand, which has 2 positions - parking and 'wheel removal'. There's plenty of room for tools in the tanktop toolbox, and access for mechanical adjustments is easy, via removable panels.
Access to the gearbox and magneto is easy, via a removable panel. The kickstart and clutch cable entry are clear. [Paul d’Orléans]With such elaborate specification, the Ascot-Pullin still only weighs in at a bit over 320lbs, and the saddle height is low at just over 26". The engine isn't a racer, as evidenced by a fairly low compression ratio, and consequent easy kickover. The beast starts with a woffle from its twinned exhausts, and the slow-scroll internal throttle reminds the rider that one needn't be in a hurry on such a fine piece of machinery. Pullin's own press releases claimed a 100mph top speed for the Ascot-Pullin, but that's not the impression we got - probably in the 80s is more accurate. At every speed, the extra-low center of gravity from the flat-single mass gives stable and secure handling, inspiring complete confidence approaching the S bends of our testing grounds. Still, Pullin didn't build this machine as a scratcher, and hard cornering will leave souvenirs of expensive chrome on an unappreciative pavement. Scrubbing off speed with those novel hydro-brakes was as about as good as any 1920s bike we've ridden, which is to say, plan your stops and leave room for surprises. Enjoy the feeling of extreme quality this machine exudes; luxury motorcycles went extinct by WW2, and the Ascot-Pullin is as good as any on the road in its day.
The road beckons! Sadly, this is probably the only road-going Ascot-Pullin on the planet, such is their rarity. Note the twin fishtail mufflers. [Paul d’Orléans]Cyril Pullin's two-wheeled brainchild was an idea too far ahead of its time, but he was absolutely correct in his ideas. Today we see motorcycles ticking the boxes of his spec sheet on every highway, with stereos blaring from weather-protecting fairings, and engines invisible under shapely steel (or more likely plastic) car-like coverings. In the heady year of 1929, the Crash greeting the Ascot-Pullin meant its doom, and the factory closed its doors a year later, after an estimated 500 machines had been produced. Pullin went to work for Douglas once again, before setting off into the skies with his new interest; helicopters. His son Raymond became the first pilot of a British built helicopter, designed by his father, in 1938, and Pullin carried on in the aero industry the rest of his working life. A few examples of his motorcycle masterpiece remain, and it was sheer pleasure to sample the unfettered ideas of one of motorcycling's greatest figures.
Cyril Pullin from a publication featuring cartoons of motorcycle industry bigwigs from the 1930s. [The Vintagent Archive]The lavish dashboard complements the overall finish, and was the apex of cool in 1929. [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.
Malle London is an accessories company with the right attitude; they set up events where their gear can be used, and for the sheer fun of it. 'The Mile' is their grass-track dragstrip on a private estate held the past few years, and now they've hosted ‘The Great Mile’, a 1000 mile, 72-hour motorcycle rally, that ran from the Northern Tip of Scotland to the Southern Tip of Cornwall. It was an event open to 'custom, classic and cafe racers', limited to 100 entrants, which they claim to be 'the greatest motorcycle rally in the country.' That might just be true, as British motorcycle rallies tend to be short-mileage events!
Photographer Fabio Affuso was along for the ride, and send us these shots from the route, which was a mix of wet and dry weather, held on small roads, and planned carefully by the Malle crew for maximum sightliness and fun riding. Taking the back roads through Scotland and Wales is a motorcyclist's dream, and having someone else organize the route, the food, and the bed makes for a great experience - ask any Cannonballer! It's also, at best, a great builder of comraderie between the participants. We at The Vintagent love a good moto-rally, and give the Malle team high marks for putting on fun events.
Sturgis: to a Café Racer, a sporting rider, or even a plain ‘ol vintage rider, it’s a name with zero resonance. We all know the deal: it's swamped with a quarter of a million bagger Harleys, peppered with unridable (except at Sturgis or Daytona) customs, salted with unasked-for exposed flesh (that cannot be un-seen), and washed out with drunken, boorish behavior. We’ve been there as your emissary, and must report that all of your assumptions are correct. What’s also true is the Black Hills of South Dakota is a magic landscape, sacred to its original inhabitants, and a place of gentle beauty. The landscape is an infinity of soft green grass and rolling hills, with exceptional motorcycle roads cupped between its swelling rises.
Photographer Michael Lichter, a legend in the Harley-centric world of Sturgis and V-twin ‘custom lifestyle’ books and magazines, has a warehouse-size exhibit hall dedicated to his ‘Motorcycles as Art’ exhibit, held annually at Sturgis since 2000. The exhibit was off our radar until we met Michael on the 2012 Motorcycle Cannonball Endurance Rally; he's the official photographer for the event, and has ridden backwards across the USA several times now! In early 2013 Michael asked if we could help source vintage Café Racers for his 2013 Sturgis show, to be called ‘Ton Up! Speed, Style, and Café Racer Culture’.
Michael Licther with Mars Webster's Godet-Egli-Vincent
We were immediately on board, and suggested a formal collaboration as co-curators, as Café Racers were our first vintage love. Paul d'Orléans' clip-on and rearset credentials go back to the 1980s, when he co-founded the ‘Roadholders’ Café Racer club in San Francisco, and he's owned a very long list of classic Café Racers, and covets his 1966 Velocette Thruxton as his 'you'll take it from my cold dead hands' bike.
Mark Mederski (National M/C Museum) also supplied his low-mileage 1970 Velocette Thruxton
What was Michael's reasoning for bringing a bunch of non-American canyon carvers to the mighty Bagger Bacchanal? "I've been watching the explosion of interest in Café Racers over the past few years on the internet and TV, and I see parallels with the Harley custom world - the personal expression, the quality of the work - and it seemed a good, if controversial, subject for this year." The absolute explosion of interest in the Café Racer and ‘CB’ Custom world since 2010 has overlapped with the best of the Harley custom world, and plenty of builders known for Choppers and Bobbers are now making performance-oriented motorcycles which can be ridden around corners.
The legendary Willie G. Davidson in front of his 'Serial #1' H-D XLCR, his epic attempt to manufacture a real cafe racer in America.
In fact, when word leaked of the Café Racer theme for Michael’s 2013 exhibit, we found ourselves turning away well-known shops who were eager, sometimes even desperate to be included in ‘Ton Up!’ It was overwhelming actually, how many shops proposed building machines just for Sturgis: I had underestimated the importance of Michael Lichter’s show to the builders themselves. In the end 7 bikes were built expressly for ‘Ton Up!’; they ranged from Sportster to Triumph to Victory to an RD Yamaha, with stock or home-built chassis, from visually fairly ‘standard’ to completely radical and unique, from the factory-slickness of Zach Ness to the hand-hammered and sticker-covered scratcher from ‘Brewdude’.
Roland Sands/BMW (RSD) 2013 BMW prototype 'Concept 90' with a BSA Gold Star and Dunstall Norton
We collared our Vintage pals for prime examples of 1960s-70s Café Racers, from Herb Harris’ immaculate ’62 BSA DBD34 Gold Star Clubman and Mark Mederski’s original-paint ’70 Velocette Thruxton, to a totally killer all-black Godet-Egli-Vincent Black Shadow, loaned by Mars Webster. The 13 ‘period’ Café Racers laid the exhibit’s groundwork, as the starting point for a show covering 50 years’ continuous history for the genre. The style of motorcycle characterized as Café Racer did not begin or end during the ‘Ace Café’ era, but is an impulse as old as motorcycling – the desire for a Racer on the Road. As a touchstone machine, we included Mark Mederski’s original-paint 1962 Norton 30M Manx, the last year of Bracebridge Street production of this seminal racer.
Mark Mederski's low-mile, original-paint '62 Norton Manx, included as the benchmark against which all Café Racers were measured
The Manx was hugely successful on the track, but was equally remembered for the perfection of its style, which is emulated on newly built Café Racers today, whether the bike underneath is British or Japanese. The continued evolution of the clip-on brigade included a pair of divergent Ducati round-case 750s; the Fuller Hot Rods Duc being a pared-down and slick traditionalist, and Shinya Kimura’s ‘Flash’ representing the far end of the artistic expression spectrum.
Willie G Davidson (retired head of H-D design); 1977 HD XLCR Serial #1
Another pair of machines, separated by 4 decades, showed the enduring strength of Café Racer style. Willie G Davidson pulled from his personal garage the ‘Serial #1’ HD XLCR, a landmark machine and a masterpiece from the legendary former Head of Styling at HD. In some kind of ‘first’, Willie G’s replacement at Harley, Ray Drea, on hearing his former boss would include the #1 XLCR, immediately started building his own all-Harley Café Racer, based on an XR1000 engine. The resulting ‘XR Café’ is a drop-dead gorgeous Milwaukee marvel, with completely uprated suspension, brakes, carbon fiber wheels, and hand-made aluminum bodywork which closely echoes the XLCR lines; a total performance-oriented street racer, which inherited the tough-guy good looks of its spiritual father, but kicks butt all over Dad’s spec sheet. It’s so good, I asked to buy it - but Willie G. beat me to it!
Ray Drea (then H-D head of design) built this incredible 1984 HD XR1000 'XR Café'
The response to ‘Ton Up!’ by Sturgis regulars, both industry pros and tipsy campers, was universally ‘WOW’. Even though we were beat from hand-placing 35 bikes on their plinths, and hanging over 200 pieces of art on the walls from 12 photographers and painters, our reaction was the same. Remarkably, I can’t recall a museum-quality exhibit of Café Racers, anywhere on the planet, until seeing ‘Ton Up!’ set up, lit, and filled with nearly 1300 people on opening day.
1280 visitors for the exhibition opening, August 5th, 2013
Not a negative peep was heard about the show’s content and non-Harley focus, and dudes covered with wrinkled, sun-faded tattoos and Rip Van Winkle beards were as fascinated by the Docs Chops’ Yamaha Virago(!) as by the super-tough Brawny Built H-D Sportster. Many times I heard ‘this show could travel anywhere’, and while moving the whole show is prohibitively expensive, luckily Michael Lichter and Paul d'Orléans collaborated on a book based on the exhibit. Motorbooks International changed the name to 'Cafe Racers: Speed, Style, and Ton Up Culture', and the book is in print in several languages (English, French, and German so far), and the text by Paul explores the real history of the 'racer on the road' impulse, and the nails the date of the first factory Café Racer to 1914! You can buy it here.
'The 69' - Dustin Kott's (Kott Motorcycles); 1969 Honda CB450David Zemla's 2003 HD 883 'DZ Sportster'Cover Girl! Yoshi Kosaka (the Garage Co) brought his gorgeous 1967 Triumph-Rickman MetisseBuilt for the exhibit! Jay Hart's 1972 HD XL 'XLMPH'The Pitch! This is how Willie G. Davidson presented the concept for the XL-Cafe Racer to the Board of H-D in 1975!The Zach Ness Victory with Shinya Kimura's 'Falsh'David Edwards (Bike Craft editor, former Cycle World editor); 1975 Triumph T140VThe only machine that didn't make it into the 'Cafe Racers' book, due to a logistical error. Ridiculous! Jonnie Green's (Ton Up Classics) 1965/7 TritonInstalling the show was like playing Tetris, sorting various-height plinths and where each machine fit in the schemePaul d'Orléans' '65 Triumph Bonneville was a useful work table during installation, and a perfect way to blow off steam after the intense work of installing the exhibition!Steve 'Carpy' Carpenter built this terrific 1969 Honda CB750KO 'Tenacious Ton'Brad Richards (Ford Motor Co) built this substantial 1999 HD 'Sporty TT'. Brad is now Chief of Styling at Harley-Davidson
Skeeter Todd's (OCC) 1979 HD XR1000 'American Café' - he said he 'wore two holes in front of his milling machine' to make the XR top end fit an XL bottom end...The '21 Helmets' display, which grew to 27 helmets!Thor Drake's (SeeSee Motorcycles); 1985 Yamaha RZ350 'BH347'[Michael Lichter]Richard Varner's (Champions Moto) 2004 Triumph Bonneville 'Brighton'Ray Drea and Willie G have a private chatThe display as completed; 15,000 visitors saw the exhibit over one week.Roland Sands and Ola Stenegard (BMW's chief motorcycle designer)Zach Ness; 2013 Victory Judge 'NessCafé Victory'How customizers thought of Cafe Racers in 1987; the "Ness Cafe" custom bike built by Arlen Ness [Michael Lichter]Michael Lichter set up his photo studio inside the Micheal Lichter Pavilion at the Buffalo Chip. These photos were used in the 'Cafe Racers' bookEpic! Gordon McCall's (McCall Motorworks); 1965 Dunstall Norton AtlasSeveral of the bikes stretched the definition of Cafe Racer - they certainly weren't light or racy! But the Brian Klock (Klock Werks); 2013 Triumph T'Bird 'Café Storm' had enough other cues to qualitySpeed, style and finesse; Kim Boyle (Boyle Custom Moto); 1971 Norton Commando 'Ed Norton'Kevin Dunworth of Loaded Gun Customs with his 'Bucephalus' with unique alloy-plate chassisLovely Michael Lichter shot of filmmaker Karen Porter in front of the Ace Café, part of his display of photography, which I hung next to David Uhl's fantasy painting of a Triumph-riding woman in the very same spot.Always fascinating; Jay LaRossa's (Lossa Engineering) 1967 Honda CB77 'Lossa CB77'Bryan Fuller's Honda CB550 with amazing Ukiyo-E engraved bodywork and chassis, the subject of Paul d'Orléans' profile in Cycle World.Jason Paul Michaels (Dime City Cycles) presented this pristine 1968 Honda CB450 'Brass Cafe'Woolie's way; the Deus ex Machina 1978 BMW R100SThe art of Conrad Leach was featured.Technically fascinating; Kevin Dunworth's (Loaded Gun Customs) 1967 Triumph 'Bucephalus'Steve 'Brewdude' Garn's (Brew Racing Frames) 1974 Yamaha RD350 'Streak'The Brandon Holstein (Brawny Built) 2003 H-D 'Brawny Sportster' on set up day for Born Free 5 at the Oak Canyon Ranch. [Michael Lichter]The $20 'bikini bike wash' seemed like a pretty good deal - the girls were thorough!Shinya Kimura's 1974 Ducati 'Flash' in epic company, waiting to be installed in the Ton Up! exhibitUnique! The Chris Fletchner (Speed Shop Design) 1965 BSA 'Beezerker', which we've ridden!Two women riders, in very different gear! Such is Sturgis...
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 rare art of Plumasserie is the labor-intensive process of cutting, dyeing, and applying feathers by hand, typically on very expensive clothing and accessories. The tradition dates back to French Haute Couture houses from the 1800’s, and has very few practitioners today - it's almost and extinct skill, although some luxury houses feather their products. Those that do keep Maxime Leroy going; he's the master plumassier behind a revival of the craft with a contemporary twist.
We caught up with Maxime Leroy at the Grand Palais in Paris, during the Révélations show, the International Biennial of Fine Craft and Contemporary Creation. We were invited to see Leroys' collaboration with Blitz Motorcycles of Paris on the 'Black Angel', an incredible helmet/bike combination of cut black feathering, hand-applied to leather, covering the helmet entirely (including laid-down quills for the Blitz 'lightning bolt' logo), and the top of the fuel tank. The mix of feathers on the fuel tank is almost vulgar, with hydraulic tubes, air vents, and fuel lines contrasting with the organic delicacy of the hand-cut and hand-dyed goose feathers.
The fuel tank of the Blitz 'Black Angel' - almost vulgar in its contrast between the organic and mechanical.
LeRoy founded his own luxury brand M.Marceau, as well as Sacco Baret, a collaboration of Jayma Sacco, Maxime Leroy and Paul Baret. All are exploring new venues for the old craft, and brands like Chanel, Givenchy, Jean Paul Gaultier and Louis Vuitton have featured their incredible featherwork. Leroy was recently recognized internationally as "one of the most inspirational and influential artisans" in Olivier Dupon’s book “Encore! The New Artisans”. He was also selected to create the centerpiece for an art installations at Paris' Palais de Tokyo, for the exhibition 'Double Je'.
'Celine' by Maxime Leroy for the 'Double Je' exhibit at the Palais de Tokyo
For 'Double Je', Leroy totally covered the bodywork of a Suzuki GSXR, that he named 'Celine'. I was the heart of the exhibit, which was itself a large-scale installation of many artists' work, themed around the crime-thriller novels of Franck Thilliez. 'Celine' is perhaps the most haute-couture motorcycle ever built, and perhaps the most evil-looking! We can honestly say we've never seen a helmet like this, nor motorcycles like these! Follow the work of Maxime Leroy at his M.Marceau brand, and at Sacco Baret.
The helmet for the Blitz 'Black Angel'The helmet deserves scrutiny, as the detail is simply amazing.The tank top of 'Celine' - all made of feathers and quills!Maxime LeRoy from the website of his couture brand M.Marceau
As noted in Part 1, it typically took two years for a team of English enthusiasts to build up a Speed Record machine in their off-hours, while keeping a small factory busy building road machines. The face-slap of the BMW record at the very onset of the Depression made for interesting bed-fellows among former rivals. Freddie Barnes had spent perhaps too much time in his race shop building Gold Star winners, and not enough making a profit, and the kidney-kick of the '29 Crash had sent Zenith into bankruptcy. Their ace rider Joe Wright acquired the big Zenith-JAP speed machine, which by now had a supercharger, but was contracted in a hurry by Claude Temple to attack the record again in 1930, to snatch the laurels from upstart BMW.
Joe Wright, many time World Speed Record holder, beside the supercharged OEC-JAP at the Olympia Motorcycle Show in 1930. Note his less-than-enthusiastic smile... (Aldo Carrer collection)
The FIM Speed Record book claims that on 6th November, 1930, Joseph S. Wright took his Temple-OEC, with supercharged JAP 994cc engine, to 150.7mph (242.59kph) down the rod-straight concrete pavé at From Cork, Ireland. The 1930 record was a significant advance on the Ernst Henne/BMW record of 137.58mph, achieved only weeks prior at Ingolstadt, Germany, on a supercharged 750cc ohv machine. But in this case, the history books are all wrong.
Joe Wright aboard the Temple-OEC-JAP record-breaker, which failed to take a record that day. Just behind it is Wright's personal supercharged Zenith-JAP, which took the actual record run.
But a pair of machines was present at Cork that day; the OEC which had been prepared by veteran speed tuner Claude Temple, and a 'reserve' machine in case it all went pear-shaped. The second-string machine was a supercharged Zenith-JAP, of similar engine configuration to the OEC, but in a mid-1920s Zenith '8/45' racing chassis. Zenith at that date was technically out of business, so no valuable publicity could be gained for the factory from a record run, nor bonuses paid, nor salaries for any helpful staff who built/maintained the machine. While Zenith would be rescued from the trashbin of the Depression in a few months, and carry on making motorcycles until 1948 in fact, the reorganized company, with its star-making General Manager Freddie Barnes, never sponsored another racer at Brooklands or built more of their illustrious special 'one off' singles and v-twins, which did so well at speed events around the world - from England to Argentina!
A beautiful shot of Joe Wright aboard the Zenith at Brooklands, before the supercharger was added
Joe Wright had already taken the Motorcycle Land Speed Record with the OEC, back on August 31st at Arpajon, France, at 137.32mph, but Henne and his BMW had the cheek to snatch the Record by a mere .3mph, on Septermber 20th. That November day in Cork was unlucky for Wright and Temple, as the Woodruff key which fixed the crankshaft sprocket sheared off, and the OEC was unable to complete the required two-direction timed runs. With the OEC out of action, and FIM timekeepers being paid by the day, as well as arrangements with the city of Cork to close their road (and police the area), a World Speed Record was an expensive proposition, and the luxury of a 'second machine' was very practical...although the 1930 Cork attempt by Wright/Temple may be the only instance where a second machine was of a completely different make. Imagine Ernst Henne bringing a supercharged DKW as a backup for his BMW; simply unthinkable!
Wright was successful, and set a new Motorcycle Land Speed Record with his trusty Zenith at 150.7mph (242.59kph), although the press photographs and film crews of the time were solely focused on the magnificent but ill-fated OEC, as Zenith was out of business, and OEC paying the bills. Scandalously, everyone present played along with the misdirection that the OEC had been the machine burning up the timing strips, and the Zenith was quickly hidden away from history, a situation which still exists in the FIM record books.
Joe Wright's supercharged Zenith-JAP at the 1930 Cork World Record attempt
Photographs from the actual event show the Zenith lurking in the background while Joe Wright poses on the OEC, preparing himself for a blast of 150mph wind by taping his leather gloves to his heavy knit woolen sweater, and wrapping more tape around his turtleneck and ankles to stop the wind from dragging down his top speed. His custom-made teardrop aluminum helmet is well-documented, but the protective abilities of his wool trousers and sweater at such a speed are dubious at best...but there were no safety requirements in those days, you risked your neck and that was that. Nowadays, when any 'squid' can hit 150mph exactly 8 seconds after parting with cash for a new motorcycle, Wright's efforts might seem quaint, but he was exploring the outer boundaries of motorcycling at the time, and was a brave man indeed.
A screen capture from the British Pathe film of the 150mph record shows clearly the bike is Wright's Zenith!
The record-breaking Joe Wright Zenith was a rumor for decades, becoming a documented story only in the 1980s via the classic motorcycling magazines and the VMCC journal. The whereabouts of the Actual machine was known only to very few. I've had the great pleasure of making the Zenith's acquaintance, it does still exist, and is currently undergoing restoration; ironically, it now lives in Germany, having been in safe hands with arch-enthusiasts for decades.
== All BMW, All the Time ==
Ernst Henne with his supercharged BMW WR750 in 1936
For the next 7 years, as England struggled with economic calamity, the World Speed Record became a BMW benefit, as speed-man Ernst Henne piloted increasingly sophisticated, and increasingly streamlined, supercharged flat-twins to higher speeds. The Ingolstadt road proved troublesome, so the hunt was continued for a very long, flat, and straight road, somewhere in Europe. The plains near Tat, in Hungary, were the next speedway, with the Hungarian officials happy to sponsor such a publicity coup. In 1932 Henne upped the Zenith record by a hair, reaching 244.40kph on a slightly better-shaped WR750. BMW of course shouted the achievement through posters and catalogs, and spent the next 5 years raising their own record. A few more tweaks to their bodywork in 1934, and a move to Gyon, Hungary, raised their own record slightly to 246.07kph.
Ernst Henne and his streamlined 'Egg'
By 1934, Hitler and his propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels were eager to use all aspects of international sporting activity in service of their fascist state, which included car and motorcycle racing. BMW and DKW benefitted from wheelbarrows of cash supplied by the Nazi government, and both factories used the money boost to make radical technical changes to their cars and motorcycles. DKW was part of Auto Union by 1932, a huge conglomerate of car and motorcycle manufacture, with DKW by then the largest motorcycle manufacturer in the world. The story of their Auto Union racing cars, the most powerful and exotic GP cars ever, and their competition with the likes of Mercedes-Benz and Alfa Romeo, is a direct parallel to our motorcycle story. BMW at the same time developed their 328 sports-racer, an incredibly competent and beautifully designed car, considered an all-time classic.
A very rare photograph of Adolf Hitler inspecting the DKW factory. (Aldo Carrer collection)
In accepting Hitler's cash, the racing and record-breaking teams of both factories came under the scrutiny and supervision of the Ministry of Sport (DRL), and suddenly, their drivers and riders wore swastika armbands over their racing coveralls and leathers, and raised their arms in the fascist salute while 'Deutschland Uber Alles' played for the crowd. This has unfortunately given the impression that all German competitors were Nazis, which is certainly not the truth; they were racers in Germany in the mid-30s, and some were fascist supporters no doubt, but many private stories from the pre-war period depict legendary motorcycle racers like Georg Meier pooh-poohing their Nazi handlers. Not all Germans were fascists, and plenty of Englishmen, Americans, and Frenchmen supported fascism...but that's another story.
Looking like a letter to the future, the DKW record-breaker without its canopy, which badly affected handling
There seems to have been a gentleman's agreement between DKW and BMW to stay off each other's racing turf, as DKW focussed on 250cc and 350cc GP racing and record-breaking, while BMW concentrated on 500cc racing and the absolute World Speed Record. While BMW is perhaps better known for their speed record bikes, DKW as equally at the forefront of the new science of streamlining and engine development, having pioneered the Schnurle-loop scavenge system on their two-stroke engines, and the use of superchargers with twin-piston combustion chambers, so the blowers didn't simply push the fuel mix straight out the exhaust pipe!
The DKW record-breaker with its full bodywork; a science-fiction wet dream…but very loud!
The photographs with this article show 250cc and 350cc racers of stunning speed and sophistication, with fabulously compelling bodywork, developed in wind tunnels (something they could afford with Nazi cash) alongside their Auto Union GP cars. BMW's experiments with supercharged 500cc GP bikes bore fruit with an entirely new design, which was never intended to have a 'street' version.
The new BMW OHC flat-twin engine, with integral supercharger, Type RS255
Their new OHC flat twin had a supercharger designed with the engine, integral with the crankcase casting, and fast as hell. While their GP racers used a version of the roadster R5 chassis with a tube frame and rigid rear end, the record-breaker chassi retained a version of the old WR750 tube frame, but was now placed in a better streamlined body. The new OHC engine was far more powerful than the old pushrod 750cc, even with a 1/3 capacity reduction.
The BMW three-wheel record breaker with its full streamlining, which was more stable than the DKW bodywork
It was no longer necessary to search Europe for a suitable speed venue, as Hitler had ordered new autobahns built across the country, and the A3 was set aside by an eager government to prove the new BMW's speed. With an engine now half the size of their English competition's JAP V-twins, Ernst Henne might have been expected to incrementally increase the Speed Record, but in 1936 he blistered the new concrete of the Frankfurt-Munich autobahn at 272.01kph, in his fully-streamlined silver projectile with only his helmet visible, giving rise to the nickname 'Henne and his Egg'.
Eric Fernihough aboard the semi-streamlined Brough Superior-JAP record breaker in 1936, at Brooklands, after his successful 163.82mph run
George Brough was many things; a showoff and blowhard, but also a truly gifted motorcycle stylist, and a keen competitor. Brough Superior remained a tiny factory, producing during its entire 20-year lifepan (around 3200 machines) less than one month's output of rival DKW. While his roadsters had become chunky Grand Tourers by the mid-30s, the fire of competition and national pride still burned in his heart, and he had been quietly working with veteran racer Eric Fernihough to build a new, supercharged and streamlined, Brough Superior-JAP record-breaker. Without the benefit of government support or a wind tunnel, their work cladding the Brough in aluminum sheet was instantly old-fashioned compared to developments in GP car racing and aircraft aerodynamics, and the machine relied more on sheer brute horsepower from the big blown V-twin engine. They must have felt like David with a slingshot against the Goliath of the huge German factories, but their effort worked in 1937, as Eric Fernihough piloted his oil-leaking beast to squeak past the BMW record by 1mph, at 273.24kph.
The spectacular Gilera Rondine, with its laid-down across-the-frame DOHC watercooled, supercharged 4-cylinder engine; the most advanced motorcycle engine in the world, which set the pattern for motorcycle engines through the present day.
Of course, while Alfa Romeo battled Auto Union's GP projectiles, Gilera had also seen the future, and purchased the plans, rights, and tooling for the remarkable water-cooled 4-cylinder DOHC supercharged CNA 'Rondine' (Swallow) in 1935, arguably the most technically advanced motorcycle engine in the world. The Rondine had its roots back in a 1923 across-the-frame 4-cylinder OHV engine from the OPRA research firm, which was slowly developed by engineer Peiro Remor into an OHC and finally DOHC engine. OPRA went bankrupt in 1929, but Remor then created the CNA research group, and the engine became DOHC. Remor moved to Gilera as part of a 'deal' with CNA in Gilera's purchase of this incredible machine and all rights to produce it. Gilera had the racing history to develop the chassis, and the resources to develop the engine of the Rondine, and by 1937, it was the fastest motorcycle in the world. Proof was provided on the Brescia-Bergamo A4 autostrada in 1937, as GP racing driver Piero Taruffi (who began his career like most Italian racing legends, on motorcycles) raised the record to 274.18kph, on a poorly-streamlined egg with handling issues. Outside of a fully-enclosed fairing, the Gilera trounced the BMW in top speed stakes, which pleased Mussolini (see photo), although the watercooled engine was still too heavy for the razor-sharp handling required of GP racing.
Mussolini inspects the Gilera Rondine DOHC 4-cylinder, watercooled racer, the fastest motorcycle in the world for a few months in 1937
While post-war Allied archivists documented Hitler's cash 'donations' to German motorcycle and car factories, I've never seen evidence of a corresponding gift from the Italian government; the Rondine was a home-grown product developed over 15 years to a remarkable state of tune, and lived on postwar as the normally carbureted Gilera 4-cylinder racers which dominated the GP World Championships of the 1950s, while BMW's problems with race handling prevented anyone but the German ex-cop, the super-tough superman Georg Meier, from winning a World Championship or an Isle of Man TT.
Benito Mussolini inspecting the Bianchi factory, from a Bianchi promotional poster (Aldo Carrer collection)
BMW answered the Italian challenge on the morning of 28 November 1937, when Ernst Henne averaged 279.5kmh with his BMW 'Egg'. Henne then retired from record breaking, and his egg-record remained unbroken until 1951.
Ernst Henne and his stunning mid-30s BMW record-breaker, after his retirement
1938 was a big year for global motorcycle racing, as Ewald Kluge won the Lightweight Isle of Man TT on his supercharged DKW two-stroke, the first time a German rider won the TT on a German machine, and resoundingly so, finishing 11 minutes ahead of his next competitor. The invasion of sophisticated Italian and German racing bikes on British soil was but a precursor to the coming years of war and misery, although most civilians still crossed their fingers that a war would not come. George Brough was the lone English factory up to the challenge presented by Gilera and BMW, and returned to Hungary in 1938 with a slightly improved Brough Superior-JAP racer, with Eric Fernihough in the saddle again. Sadly, the streamlining on the Brough presented a barn door sized target for cross-winds, and Fernihough was killed when his machine ran off the narrow road at over 250kph. The death of his friend took the wind from George Brough, and he returned to England, gradually transforming the Brough Superior works from motorcycle production to specialized machine work for the military; it was a scene echoed across the small factories which once defined the British motorcycle industry.
Eric Fernihough aboard the streamlined Brough Superior he rode in Gyon, Hungary, where he was blown off the road and killed
1939 was an even more dramatic year in racing, when Georg Meier won the 500cc Isle of Man TT on his kompressor BMW, raising the red-and-swastika flag over the very heart of British racing. The defeat of Norton and Velocette in this race was a stunning blow, and a huge propaganda coup for Germany, finally victorious in the world's toughest road race. Germany hoped such victories were a portent of greater success on the world's battlefields, and so it proved to merely a year later. Of course, certain complications like the Royal Air Force and a stubborn Russian populace halted Hitler's seemingly unstoppable expansion across the globe. The brave lives lost racing for two-wheeled glory were suddenly overshadowed by millions of deaths for national survival, as the symbolic battlefields of speed records and GP success were traded for real battlefields, and the rival countries battled it out directly, thankfully to a very different outcome.
The immortal Georg Meier aviating the BMW RS255 at the Isle of Man TT in 1939
If you happen to be in London, I recommend a visit to the National Gallery on Trafalgar Square, which houses one of the best painting collections in Europe. The original building was designed by William Wilkins in the 1830s, has since had many extensions added, becoming the neo-classical heap you'd expect of a big national institution of the 19th Century.
While every sign and security guard says 'No Foto', we couldn't help but document the surprising discovery of a motorcycle on the floor of the National Gallery. We are firmly in the camp of the Photo Liberation Front, a group of artist-tourists sick of being reprimanded for taking photos in museums!
We were delighted to discover on a recent visit the delightful mosaic of 'The Pleasures of Life', discovering a cartouche labelled 'Speed', which of course features a motorcycle! The entire entry and mezzanine level floors are covered in mosaic murals, but the upper right mezzanine is where you'll find the bike. The image is stylistically rooted in the late 1920s/early 1930s, and depicts a readheaded woman astride a 'flapper bracket', with a fishtail exhaust beneath her high heels. The exhaust is distinctive; a sedate production item, and not a full-house racing 'Brooklands Can', and very much in the style of a four-valve Ariel single-cylinder ca.1930, or perhaps a Rudge.
A broader shot of Boris Anrep's mosaic tile murals in the National Gallery lobby
As the mosaic covers the entire floor around the grand 1889 staircase (by Sir John Taylor), it's not easy to find an information plaque explaining them, but a quick search revealed the artist as Boris Anrep, a member of the Bloomsbury group, which included the writer Virginia Woolf, economist John Maynard Keynes, and painter Vanessa Bell. Anrep was a Russian lawyer who abandoned his practice in 1908 (age 25), to study art in Paris and Edinburgh, eventually settling on the mosaic as his chosen medium by 1917. He spent WW1 as a Russian officer in Galicia (an ethnically diverse kingdom in the Austria-Hungarian empire, now straddling Ukraine, Poland, and the Czech Republic). In 1917 he was sent as a military attaché to London, and never returned to his homeland, probably because of the Revolution in Russia, as well as his burgeoning art career, and the commissions for mosaics which kept him busy the rest of his life.
Anrep on Oct 28 1929, working on the 'Speed' mosaic; what laborious work, and no assistants in sight! The scale of the image is clear, as is the pile of tesserae used to make the mosaic. [Getty Images]Anrep's work at the National Gallery began in 1928, the 'Labours of Life' and 'Pleasures of Life', of which the Flapper on a motorcycle is part; the mosaics took 5 years to complete. In 1952 he returned to lay the 'Modern Virtues' at the foot of the staircase, which incorporates portraits of Winston Churchill, Dame Margot Fonteyne, and Bertrand Russell...whereas the earlier mosaics included Virginia Woolf and Greta Garbo, but no attribution is given for the woman on the Ariel.
Greta Garbo as Melpomene, the Greek muse of Tragedy...
[From Iron&Air magazine. Words: Iron&Air staff. Photos: Gregory George Moore & Scott Toepfer]
Wheels & Waves California [co-produced by The Vintagent and the Southsiders MC] is a tight-knit, invite-only moto event that is a much smaller, complimentary version of the well-known annual European motorcycle show. This past August, the star-spangled version of Wheels & Waves took place over three days in the small surf town of Cayucos, California, 200 miles north of L.A. if you follow the famous Pacific Coast Highway.
Iron & Air teamed up with our friends at Converse to roll in and cover this "who's who" of two-wheeled culture. Hosted by Wheels & Waves organizer Vincent Prat and the Vintagent himself, Paul d'Orleans, the invite-only event was capped at 300 people. You know when you walk around a party, hoping to stumble into at least one person who has even a modicum of something interesting to say? Wheels & Waves California isn’t that kind of party; every person we met was interesting, accomplished, and unique.
Take, for example, Alan Stulberg, founder of Austin’s Revival Cycles. Or good ol’ Roland Sands, who needs no introduction. Or Go and Masumi Takamine, the delightful couple behind Brat Style. Adorable moto duo Shinya Kimura and Ayu Kawakita of Chabott Engineering were in attendance, too, as well as fellow Japanese builder Toshiyuki “Cheetah” Osawa. We hung out with Fred Jourden from France’s Blitz, David Borras from Spain’s notorious El Solitario, and Max Hazan, the dashingly handsome creator of rolling sculptures. We watched OG skateboarders Steve Caballero and Max Schaaf shred a mini-ramp in downtown Cayucos, sitting alongside Scotty Stopnik and his old man, Big Scott, who run SoCal’s Cycle Zombies chopper shop. We spent time on the road and hit the beach with surfer and shaper Troy Elmore, then discussed the golden era ofmotorcycle racing with Miguel Galuuzzi, design director at Piaggio’s Advanced Design Center. And when we ran out of words, we shut up, collapsed on a couch, and listened as musician Rocco DeLuca worked a slide along the strings of his steel Dobro while the documentary Sugar & Spade played through a projector.
This wasn’t some bullshit parade of old bikes puttering up California canyon roads—people rode hard. One day Roland Sands and racer-turned-entertainer, Jamie Robinson of MotoGeo, were ripping full-tilt through the hills, and the next day they were neck and neck during down-and-back sprint races at the Santa Margarita Ranch airport. People gathered at the start-finish line on the runway—some carried bougie paper parasols to help cut the oppressive 105-degree summer heat—and everyone cheered as racers warmed their tires with indulgent burnouts. Individuals who stalled at the line were lovingly harangued, and the crowd went absolutely mad the few times races ended in a photo finish. Far-flung individuals from around the world, all sweaty and smiling, bonding over an extremely eclectic mix of motorcycles.
Thanks for the memories from friends new and old. We hope our invite is in the mail for next year. Until then... Iron&Air
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.
