'Black Chrome'
The California African American Museum in LA hosts 'Black Chrome', an exhibit featuring black motorcyclists, their bikes, and a bit of history (through April 12th, 2009). I managed to catch it last weekend - the show is poorly advertised in the motorcycle community, and only a chance google result raised the website of the museum, which sits next to the LA Coliseum (and its stunning Robert Graham headless nude man/woman statues, which caused such controversy at the 1984 LA Olympics). The museum complex also includes an Aerospace Hall, with an SR-71 'Blackbird' plane outside - amazing.
'Black Chrome' (gotta love the name) is a mixed bag of a show - a superlative and long overdue concept, with a few real gems, but on the whole it lacks the depth needed to make a statement about motorcyclists 'of color'. The gems; I never knew that the builder of those seminal choppers in Easy Rider, Ben Hardy, is black! A claim is made that the whole extended fork style of custom motorcycle was created by Black rider/artisans - take that, nazi bikers! It all makes sense of course - who invented the 'look' and sound of Rock music, who created Jazz and Blues, who started the trend for outrageous stage outfits/antics which were parroted and expropriated by everyone else? Okay, I'm done.
But, this tidbit of information is presented on a 8" square card, between two 'Easy Rider' posters. I'm not sure if the curators really appreciate the significance of this nugget of information, and the exhibit strikes me as curious for its lack of a catalog or much background information at all. Someone is either completely unfunded, or isn't really savvy to the impact a show such as this could/should have on popular culture. They are aware, however, of the popularity of the Chopper craze, as quite a few bikes on display are new OCC-style bikes.
A Discovery Channel video on the History of the Chopper (a Jesse James project), on continuous loop, does explore the exclusion of Black riders from Chopper magazines In The Day. The video also allows 'Sugar Bear' to explain his own history of building custom bikes since the 1960's, and most significantly, mention is made of photographs of Black choppers dating back to the 1950s... and you can bet The Vintagent will pay this man a visit!
The period photos in 'Black Chrome' poorly reproduced, displayed, and explained - they speak volumes, but I truly wish the curators had spent more time exploring a world most of us don't know. Where's the sholarship on the subject? I guess it's here - hire me folks, I write cheap. The photo above is Esvan Mosky, with his dog Koo Koo Man, on their modified BMW /2 tourer - Esvan was in show business somehow, but I'd like to learn more about this intriguing fellow.
Images of women riders are included, with a brief mention of Bessie Stringfield, founder of the Motor Maids, and a few words that women had their own motorcycles within the riding clubs, then and now. More please.
Gang and Club 'colors' are prominently displayed, including the East Bay Dragons, a still-active group I see on the road at times. Their Drag Bike (see photos) is perhaps only intact as it had a rather serious 'issue' with the crankcases during a sprint. Oops. I love that it is presented 'as is'! Unfortunately, a 1960s Sportster is also presented thus (ie, incomplete) with no good reason other than to fill space. A nice orange metalflake Panhead makes sense, as does a beautifully pinstriped Sportster named 'My Man', owned by a woman.
My favorite Club jacket - the 'California Blazers M/C' (above); aesthetically uninspired, barring the late-model Velocette Scrambler used as their logo...cool.
[The black/white period photographs from the 'Black Chrome' exhibit are used here by kind permission of Na'il 'Shayk' Karim, publisher of The Black Biker magazine and Breezin on Two Wheels. Shayk painstakingly collected these photographs from family members of the subjects, and the photos were licensed exclusively to Shayk.]
Book Review: Garden Gate Manx
A host of terrific motorcycle books cross my desk every year; in this I'm very lucky, as books are one of life's great pleasures. Books are also the foundation of TheVintagent, along with decades' experience with vintage machinery, and not web-search content - long may it remain so. I write books too, and contributed this year to 'The Ride: 2nd Gear' from Gestalten, who published my magnum opus on choppers last year, 'The Chopper; the Real Story'. And while I reviewed 'The Ride: 2nd Gear' on CycleWorld.com, there's a solo effort you won't find in any bookstore which absolutely blew my mind this year.
It's called 'The Book About My Bike, C11M14566', and I know - the un-sexiest motorbook title ever. I was merely geek-interested when Niels Schoen offered to send his self-published book about Uncle Ko's Garden Gate Manx, which he inherited and restored. But Niels is a freelance CAD-engineer, and while taking his uncle's Manx to bits, he thought it 'a good training exercise' to render every single part of the Manx in the SolidWorks program, so the bike could be dis/reassembled virtually while the same was happening in his living room. Niels lives in a 4-storey walkup in Rotterdam, and has no workshop, so the disassembly, scanning, cleaning, and reassembly was done literally in-house.
Scanning and rendering over 800 parts took 9 months, and was completed in September 2010. It took a further few years to figure out 'how to present and share all the oddities, the beauty and the marvels I encountered in the process.' He took inspiration from Mick Walker's 'Manx Norton' book of 1990, as well as an original 1948 Norton advertisement featuring the Garden Gate Manx. The resulting layout is impeccable, as is the information; every exploded view of a parts assembly is accompanied by the relevant part numbers, and labeled according to Norton's original nomenclature. The text is a mix of family history, Norton lore, and straight-ahead explanation of what's shown. The book is, in sum, the best parts list/assembly manual ever devised for a motorcycle. It's the manual every confused motorcyclist wishes for; an absolutely clear view of how it all fits together, so brilliantly self-explanatory it makes a Haynes manual look utterly primitive.
I understand it's far too much work to create such a manual for every motorcycle, but I'm jealous there isn't such a book for all my motorcycles. And for, say, a Velocette Mk8 KTT or Brough Superior SS100 for some fascinating entertainment. Niels Schoen isn't the only person to have rendered every single part of a motorcycle; Uwe Ehinger has done the same for most Harley-Davidsons ever built, and anyone making replicas (or 'continuations') today is no doubt using SolidWorks to render their parts as well. After building an actual motorcycle, I can't imagine a better use for all that information, than to share it with the world as Schoen has. It's a first-class integration of the very modern with the vintage, the new in service of the old. I laud his accomplishment; may it serve as an example for others.
The only way to order 'The Book About My Bike' is directly from Niels Schoen. He has a FaceBook page (https://www.facebook.com/GGMbook) and to order, send an email to Niels direct (newstep3d@gmail.com) with your mailing address and preferred payment method (IBAN or PayPal), and he'll sort you out.
The Skull and Crossbones
Perusing Aldo Carrer's excellent book 'The Motorcycle Uniform During the World War One' (Zanetti, 2008), I was struck by this image: does this photograph show the first instance of a 'skull and crossbones' (or Jolly Roger) on a motorcyclist's outfit? The photo was taken in Italy during WWI, and shows 'Renzo' on a Bianchi Model 500A. Renzo ("waiting for action" it says on the back of the photo) was an Ardito (literally - 'audacious man'); the Arditi were the equivalent of Special Forces in the Italian Royal Army, created during a difficult period during the War for a specific job - to break a stalemate on the entrenched Italian Front. They were specially trained as an elite unit, with (according to 'Italian Arditi') "special recruitment procedures, training, arms, uniforms, priveleges, and benefits. For the first time, an Italian soldier was given concentrated, specific training, both psychological and physical; the Ardito also received the best available equipment and enjoyed superior living conditions. In order to counter the high casualty rate (!)... esprit de corps was very important..particular attention was focussed on comraderie and attitude, in order to motivtate the men and help them bear the psychological stress involved."
Regarding the history of the skull and crossbones; there is evidence it originated on the flag of Roger II of Sicily (1095-1124), a sponsor of the Knights Templar. After the Knights were disbanded, former Templars flew Roger's flag when pirating at sea. In the 1700s, the 'totenkopf' (death's head) became very popular, and was used in an official capacity by von Ruesch's Hussar Regiment #5 of the Prussian army. In the same era, the 'Jolly Roger' was adopted by pirates, privateers, and corsairs plying the world's oceans, and the first citation of sighting the 'Jolly Roger' was in 1724, in Charles Johnson's 'A General History of the Pyrates').
The Jolly Roger has been utilized by 'bikers' in the twentieth century for the same purpose - as a 'memento mori' (reminder of mortality), and to signify 'no fear' of death. The image has been modified in a thousand ways since this first, simple logo on Renzo's riding outfit, but the message remains the same; don't mess with me.
The motorcycle is a Bianchi Model 500 A, a 498cc sidevalve single-cylinder machine with a short-leading-link front fork (see patent drawing from Jan 19th, 1915), a Bosch magneto, and Zenith carb. This was Bianchi's mainstay model, introduced in 1916, which dates the pic of Renzo between 1916-18, as the Arditi were disbanded after WW1.
The Bianchi used a cone clutch inside the unitary engine casting, plus a kickstarter and a geared primary drive, all very advanced for 1915, although the final drive is still a single-speed belt. While similar in profile to the ubiquitous Triumph used by English despatch riders during WW1, the Bianchi is a better-engineered machine - the clutch alone makes for a far more useful motorcycle.
The photograph of Renzo can be found in Aldo Carrer's amazing book 'The Motorcycle Uniform During the World War One' (Zanetti, 2008), which can be ordered (and his previous effort, 'The Dawn of the Motorcycle') from Aldo directly here.
The Bianchi motorcycle photos are from 'Eduardo Bianchi' (Gentile, NADA, 1992), which is a lovely book in English/Italian.
The photo of the Arditos (knives raised!) is from 'Italian Arditi: Elite Assault Troops 1917-20' (Angelo Pirocchi, Osprey, 2008). As a further note, many of the Arditi joined Fascist paramilitary units just four years after WW1, to support Mussolini's rise to power. They were created about the same time as the Austro-Hungarian and German armies founded the Sturmtruppen - not a very romantic outcome.
For more information on pirates, I recommend 'Under the Black Flag; the Romance and Reality of Life Among the Pirates' (Cordingly, Harvest, 1995), which is the best book I've found on the subject.
The Alt.Custom Scene - Co-Opted?
Sideburn magazine's Gary Inman, a friend of mine, wrote a thought-provoking piece on Influx.co.uk (a multi-motor blogazine) called 'Custom Bikes and Trophy Wives'. I'll quote a few bits here, but if you're at all involved with the alt.custom scene, it's worth a read, and I'd love to hear your opinion. I confess to be deeply embedded in this world professionally, while never having been an owner/rider/builder of alt.customs themselves. Still, I count many of the most important players in this business as personal friends, so am well-placed to write about their world. Hence my 'Custom and Style' editorship at Cycle World...
Some thoughts from Gary: "The annexation of the most vibrant motorcycle sub-culture in decades didn’t take long...For marketing departments, desperate to find any growth in Northern hemisphere biking, it’s an easy sell. It’s all smart haircuts and expensive denim, an appreciation of art, architecture and photography, a willingness and the means to travel. The holy-bleeding-grail of target audience if you’re trying to shift ‘lifestyle’ products. And the bike manufacturers didn’t have to lift a finger for the scene to become so large they could no longer ignore its potential. What was an exciting niche is now a cliché. Inevitably. But – another question that only time has the answer to – is it a bad thing for ‘the scene’?..."
On that note, it might be worth re-reading my 'Instafamous/Instabroke' essay, or my very similar thoughts on the Industry poking fingers into the Custom scene, called 'Awake, Leviathan'.
The Sex Machine
Words: Paul d'Orléans / Photographs: Rita Minissi
She squeezed me, shouting over the freeway wind-roar, “Guess what?” ‘That’ was the latest in a long string of confessions, at which I could marvel but sadly never share: she’d had an orgasm while riding pillion on my vintage Triumph Bonneville, buzzing at a steady 65mph. It’s a heady old cocktail, sex and motorcycles, stretching back to Art Nouveau posters with bloomer’d ladies astride crude motor-trikes: hardly rousing now, but straddling and riding was understood as the playground of Victorian sex bombs. Women are the fastest-growing segment of motorcycle sales today, and despite clichés of choppers draped with bikini babes, female riders imagine new scenarios of sexuality and power with bikes.
The motorcycle is the second most intimate of machines: the first being, of course, the vibrator. An older motorcycle combines these intimacies, because they too vibrate. Within the aluminum confines of an engine, hot steel shafts push oily pistons up tightly-bored holes, with explosions every four strokes. A motor is a natural sexual metaphor, but technical progress has engineered vibration out of new machines. Lovers of old bikes embrace vibes as one note in the symphony of flaws adding up to the near-human quality of ‘character’. Before advanced engine balancing systems in the ‘80s, designers could only choose the vibratory and smooth periods for each motor. For example, I own two Velocettes: the touring Venom is dead-smooth at 65mph, while the production-racer Thruxton is glass-table dreamy at 80mph; they’re the same motor, but tuned differently, like instruments. Music works as a metaphor for riding, as we conduct a song of combustion with the wrist, shifter, brakes, and clutch, finding emotional resonance in motion and the exhaust note.
"The motorcycle is the second most intimate of machines: the first being, of course, the vibrator."
I love this music, it transports me in every sense, and while sex frequently swirls inside my helmet on a ride, its my brain, not the bike switching on the juices. Tragic, compared to the ladies, who respond quite differently to their genitals pressing atop a pleasantly buzzing, 400lb machine. Many passengers in my 37 riding years have admitted unexpected pleasures aboard my various motorbikes, and this recent event inspired an email poll: 1. ‘Have you ever?’ 2. ‘Tell me more.’ A few responses: ‘HAHAHAHA never’; ‘I’ve always wanted to share this – yes I love it’; ‘One time, on the back, holding on tight, doing the ton down a California highway on a perfect day’; ‘No - I’m too busy riding’; ‘Once as a passenger, ’96 Sportster, magic hour, he broke my heart, don’t mention my name’; ‘Last time was on Park Ave in a traffic jam smiling at the cab driver next to me.’
The general trend: passengers have more orgasms, but do they have more fun? Given motorcycling’s eternal dance with lethality, a distracting orgasm at the helm of a fast machine binds eros too tightly with thanatos. But as research fodder, the unsung pleasures of the passenger has potential; the unfathomable variety of women’s sexual response clearly extends to motorcycles, as evidenced in my brief survey. We’ve reached Terra Incognita, a great undiscussed erotic secret, hiding in plain sight. More research is needed: stay tuned - we're on the case.
Robert Hughes: Art Critic, Motorcyclist
A champion of Motorcycling has died after a long illness; Robert Hughes, creator/host of the 'Shock of the New' television series and long-time art critic for Time magazine. While artists and public television watchers knew Hughes for his acerbic opinions on art and artists (he once described the work of Jeff Koons as "so overexposed it loses nothing in reproduction and gains nothing in the original"), he was also a motorcycle fan. More importantly, he was the most visible and well-known art critic to defend the inclusion of motorcycles in the Guggenheim Museum, at the 'Art of the Motorcycle' show.
The most famous art critic in the world 'came out' as an avid motorcyclist in his Aug 18, 1998 column in Time magazine, 'Art: Going Out on the Edge': "The fact that the great spiral of New York City's Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is at present full of motorcycles has annoyed some critics. Not this one. If the Museum of Modern Art can hang a helicopter from its ceiling, why can't the Guggenheim show bikes? "The Art of the Motorcycle" may seem an opportunistic title until you actually see the things. Design is design, a fit subject for museum consideration, and in any case I'd rather look at a rampful of glittering dream machines than any number of tasteful Scandinavian vases or floppy fiber art."
The article laments the inclusion of only a single 'custom' motorcycle in the 'Art of the Motorcycle' show; the 'Captain America' chopper designed by Cliff Vaughs for the film 'Easy Rider': "...everything in [the show] is stock, so that it ignores the creative ingenuity that has gone into making the custom bike one of the distinctive forms of American folk art." Of course, the international explosion of Custom motorcycles since this 1998 article has merely reinforced Hughes' opinion on their importance at the 'art' end of the motorcycle spectrum.
Hughes wrote of owning two Norton Commandos before moving on to Honda CB750s in the early 1970s, and to having a bad accident on a Kawasaki, which ended his biking career. A fascinating and controversial writer, he drew from a deep reservoir of historical knowledge to support his arguments, whether or not you agreed with them. More important to The Vintagent, that seminal Time article championing Motorcycles was read by millions, far more than than were able to attend the Guggenheim show itself, and helped usher a sea change in public opinion about bikes, as worthy subjects of study and exhibition.
For Hughes' obituary in the New York Times, click here.
For a selection of his scathing art criticism, click here.
Song of the Salt
In the last Ice Age, Lake Bonneville was a 20,000 square miles large and a thousand feet deep; abused by climate changes and the bursting of natural dams over the past 30,000 years, only a few actual lakes remain, remnants of this once-mighty inland sea. Ringed by high mountains and fished by locals ten thousand years ago, caves a hundred feet up the mountainsides, the former shoreline, are still being discovered with old fishhooks, woven sandals, and bones. Distill a lake that large into the atmosphere, and liquid memory becomes a thin, hard layer of salt, dead flat, but not smooth. Bonneville State Park is enormous, and entered from a 10-mile strip of asphalt called the ‘boat ramp’ - the lake’s memory hovering above.
Bonneville is still a lake at times, as every winter the 4000’ altitude brings rain enough to fill the shallow basin with a few inches, refreshing the surface as a season-long tide smoothing the surface. The alluvial deposits ringing the lake grow a salt-resistant scrub as they descend to the flat, dotting the now-dry waterline with tufts of soft green for a mile as packed silt gives way to a dusting of white, then a thin and soft crust, and finally, a mile and a half from the edge, an inch-thick, hard layer of million-year old salt.
The salt is a terrible place to go fast, and the worst possible place for machinery.
But the salt is disappearing, the hard center pan shrinking every year, as the winter lake is pumped away to extract valuable minerals. The mining companies are obligated to return the salty water and refill the basin, but this costs money, and their years of skimping leave less and less salt, and a grassroots movement to ‘save Bonneville’
The center of the salt flats is no place for a human, utterly forbidding, with no water, no plants, no bugs, visually disorienting, and plenty hot. The nearby mountains are no guide to scale or distance, their bases floating on mirages, the dry clarity of the air bringing them close, but an exploratory hike in any direction will see you plodding for hours, overheated and dehydrated. For all its inhospitality, the salt remains a place of extreme beauty, a photographer’s paradise, a massive white canvas stretched horizon to horizon, making art of anything placed upon it. Every hour of the day, every mood of cloud, sun, or evaporating rain is simply stunning, the most so with a bright blue sky touching the white under your feet in every direction.
Bonneville is also the worst possible place for machinery. Corrosive salt cakes every crevice and cranny, refusing to leave, eating away at anything metal. Washing your machine, your car or motorcycle, is a good idea, and a joke. If you don’t strip your motorcycle down to the nuts, crankshaft, and spokes, you won’t have a motorcycle in a few months; certainly not a safe or rideable one. The salt will eat your chain first, then your steering head bearings and spoke nipples, and eventually start on your frame, because when you washed your machine, liquid salt went inside too. Rental car companies will charge $1000 if they find salt caked under your car, as you’ve effectively destroyed it (although they’ll just sell it to someone else).
The salt is also terrible place to go fast. Yes it is generally packed firm, on a good year, although on a bad year even the scraped-smooth racing lines will have soft spots hungry for your speed. Packed salt gives poor traction, being greasy and slick, with loose bits scattered over the top, and applying power is a delicate business. Plenty of powerful machines simply cannot put all their horsepower through the wheels, and calculating wheelspin into rpm/speed readings is a fine art. Typically estimated at 10% of your wheel rotation, what this means is you’re doing a white burnout all the way down the line. A too-rapid course correction, say after a gust of wind, could well have you spinning off course, or far worse. Braking is a bad idea too, for the same reason; what you are riding on is best thought of as salted ice. Flat yes, fairly smooth (but pretty bumpy in the pilot’s seat), slippery and treacherous for the very people who cannot keep away; acolytes of the cult of Speed.
They come from all over the world. Denmark, Australia, Germany, England, Japan, Canada. It is the most truly international of all race meetings, all comers in a salty embrace. The racers are sometimes rivals, but to a man (and woman), their only true foe is Time, and against clocks they battle, any hundredth of a second shaved from a measured mile a victory. Time is not the enemy though - the salt is. Time will kill us all in the end, but the salt might get there first, or simply bedevil your years-long preparations with niggling little problems, or catastrophic ones. The beginning of a Speed Week at Bonneville creates a mechanical village in the center of nowhere, a 6 mile drive into white blankness, a huddle of trailers, canopies, big rigs and motorhomes huddled close in the vastness. By the third day, holes in the gypsy camp appear as dejected racers and destroyed machines skulk home, to try again next year, or not.
Every vehicle has a crew attached, sometimes just a patient wife providing water and company to a sweaty middle-aged man out for a little low-cost fun on a vintage Suzuki two-stroke. Sometimes the sheltering canopies host spreading mobs of interested semi-participants and hangers on, out to see what their favorite will do, eager to lend support and good cheer, even when magnetos go south or mysterious misfires have riders cursing the gremlins tormenting their labor, and their patience.
Some crews seem to hoard luck, making easy runs at eyebrow-arching speeds, with ratty looking contraptions or immaculate objects of beauty; there is no predicting who will do well by appearance, neither of machine, man, or crew. Every camp has a ‘vibe’ and a look about it; some clean and simple and Scandinavian, some scruffy and full of apparently unrelated metal objects in a good-humored jumble, some professional and cold. Again, no predictor. Some of the most impressive machinery, mighty and awesome in its supercharged, nitro-injected, double-engine streamlinitude, are utterly impotent, posting times bested by 40 year old mid-capacity road bikes. Gremlins; sometimes permanent ones. These sites you avoid, knowing the money and time invested, thinking ‘but for grace, there go I…”
For all its difficulty, for all its harshness, Bonneville remains as romantic as a doe-eyed candlelit dinner with your true love, it is the ultimate temple of going fast for its own sake. There is no reward but a cheap slip of paper with numbers, but something about the history and energy of the place makes you want to Go, man, Go; get on your machine, and nail it. Even in the rental car you’ll have to spend two hours cleaning afterwards…
An Egli Reunion
Words: David Lancaster Photos: Dave NorvinBike, Sandra Gillard, Ahmed Sinno, David Lancaster
It’s 50 years since Fritz Egli debuted his Vincent-powered special at the Geneva Motorcycle Show. Moto Revue dubbed it the ‘Surprise à Zurich’, and a Lightning-spec Egli-Vincent glowered from their March 1967 cover. It was nearly the last time the British motorcycle industry could look down on the rest of the world – two years before the Honda CB750 – and Egli’s horny, hand-built special was a benchmark in performance and looks.
Fritz Egli’s genius was to rebuild and race-tune Vincent engines, and house them in a slim, light frame, supported by top-shelf cycle parts; Ceriani forks, cable operated Campagnolo disc brakes, plus the first oval swingarm, for rigidity. The 130+mph performance potential of a tuned Vincent motor finally had a chassis that could comfortably handle the 70+hp available. Egli’s creation was light, low and competitive. His famous aluminium ‘banana tank’ was a structural homage to the curve of twin exhausts, and a finishing touch to a bold, elegant motorcycle. Chassis and engine development were forged in the heat of battle, with Fritz himself winning the Swiss hill-climb championship in 1968. At an open-class meeting at Brands Hatch in 1969, Egli’s rider Fritz Peier battled for first place against Giacomo Agostini on his MV Agusta four, and Phil Read on the two-stroke Yamaha. That’s three very different motorcycles duking it out for top spot – until Peier took a fall, in close combat with Read. It had to be Read.
Since the 1960s, many copies of Egli’s oil-bearing frame were built by other shops - some good, some less so. Egli used his signature chassis with everything from Triumph and Ducati twins, to Yamaha two-strokes and Honda fours. In 1975, Fritz built and tuned an Egli-Kawasaki, which won the Bol d’Or 24 hours race with Georges Godier and Alain Genoud sharing the ride.
In June 2017, a devoted cadre met in Dijon to celebrate the Egli-Vincent, and Fritz Egli’s 80th birthday. Most riders at this 6th invitational Egli-Vincent meeting (organised with much charm by Guy Dano) were mounted on the Egli-sanctioned Patrick Godet bikes, usually with his highly developed 1330cc engine – the power plant Fritz himself uses in his neat, light outfit, which he’s ridden for many years. Two days of riding, eating and a little drinking were accompanied by a good deal of rain, but the assembled pressed on regardless.
Godet and Egli have forged a long friendship based around these bikes. Godet’s enthusiasm for Vincents can be traced to the early 70s, when he owned Norvin in Rouen. Other models followed, until his own highly developed Black Lightning-spec Shadow took him to the win the French classic racing series (AFAMAC). He began building Egli-based bikes in the 1980s. Now – costly though they are – there is no other Egli-based Vincent that compares in attention to detail, development and performance…which is why the Godet bikes are the only ones with Fritz’s approval.
The pair speak in French when talking about life, and English when discussing technicalities. Attending the gathering with Fritz and his wife Patricia, was his son Fritz Junior who has developed a highly competitive version of the Vincent, using a Godet engine but with milled original Vincent style oil tank, worked up in cooperation with Terry Prince – the London-born former Egli collaborator in the mid 1960s, now resident in Australia.
Which kind of brings things full circle: it was in 1965 that Fritz, and his then wife Margrit, rode their Shadow and Comet specials over from Switzerland to compete in a sprint at Church Lawford in the UK. They ran into Philip Vincent. ‘I was nervous about meeting him,’ Fritz says. ‘He knew my plans – but it was an honour to meet him, and he was very interested in what we were doing.’ Theirs was an unusual meeting in many ways; Philip Vincent had not made a motorcycle for 10 years, as the factory had ceased production in 1955. Fritz, by contrast, was on the cusp of producing one of the most beautiful and most successful specials ever to issue from a boutique builder.
From a young age, Fritz Egli had looked beyond the confines of his native, land-locked Switzerland. As a phenomenally talented machinist, he’d won a scholarship to work in California in the early 1960s, and spent a year developing a love for early blues music while racing an Ariel in the desert on weekends. He took home a taste for American music, bikes and cars – which proved useful when he later began tuning and racing Corvettes.
Egli has come a long way in 80 years. In 2009 he returned to the States, this time to the Bonneville Salt Flats, and at the age of 72 with a third wheel attached to his Swiss Performance Racing Hayabusa he took the class land speed record up to 209 mph. ‘Life is fun on a bike at over 300 kph,’ he recalls. These days his pace has slowed somewhat, but not his enthusiasm – especially for the Stevenage-built twins he’s so associated with. What’s so special about them? ‘So many intelligent, technical features first of all,’ he says. ‘The effortless acceleration. Yet, they are relaxing, comfortable. Testing or racing a four cylinder, you come back from a ride a little nervous, a little tense. With a Vincent you come back relaxed, with a big smile on your face. They are deep in my heart now.’
The Paris Scene
Guest Post by Francois-Marie Dumas
For its 40th birthday this year, Rétromobile, which has presented some fantastic exhibitions in the past, seems to have forgotten about motorcycles completely, with only a few examples hidden between the cars. As late as 2011, terrific motorcycle displays dotted this enormous show, and made the trip worthwhile for hardcore vintage riders. There are still a few bikes on display in the stalls, and plenty of moto-mobilia (posters, parts, etc), but don't come expecting much of a two-wheel show. The cars are, of course, fantastic.
The contrast with Retromobile could not be more stark at the Bonhams Grand Palais sale; the motorcycle has returned to its origins! Among the first-ever exhibits at this magnificent Art Nouveau masterpiece was a car and motorcycle show back in 1901. There were actually two shows that first year, and the second one gathered 556 cars, 21 three-wheelers and 81 motorcycles, with 190,000 visitors passing under those glazed arches.
The big Paris Auto Show was held at the Grand Palais from 1901 until 1961, and until 1950 for the Motorcycle Show, followed by decades of little use for the building, as the car shows moved to the outskirts of town, into large purpose-built exhibition halls. Which are pretty uninspiring architecturally. Thanks to Bonhams, both cars and bikes are back at the Grand Palais for the past three years, under that astounding glass roof once again, for the annual Bonhams auction of exceptional cars, motorcycles and ephemera.
This year 48 motorcycles were presented, the oldest being a French Griffon 2hp from 1907, but the most interesting machines included the seriously exclusive 1974 Bimota 750 HB1 (serial #3), and the almost unique prototype of the Benelli 750 Sei, which was exhibited at the famous “Art of the motorcycle” exhibition at Bilbao Guggenheim museum.
Kenzo Tada
Kenzo Tada was a motorcycle racer in Japan who began his career, as so many early-century racers did, competing on bicycles at the dawn of the 20th Century. In the midst of a successful motorcycle racing career, he became the first Asian to compete in the Isle of Man TT, in 1930, making a daunting 40-day trip by sea and rail to reach an island half a world away, in the Irish Sea. His journey was remarkable; the next Japanese rider competed at the Isle of Man was in 1959! He was the Velocette agent for Japan (Tomeye Trading Co. in Tokyo), and the Japanese national racing champion in the 1920s and 30s, which must have endeared him to the Veloce factory, who sponsored his ride on the Island. In the photo above, he is pictured with a 1929 Mk1 KTT, after the TT prize-giving ceremony, in which he wore traditional clothing.
Invited to compete at the 1930 Junior TT by Veloce management as thanks for his efforts in Japan, Tada was loaned Alec Bennett's 1929 IoM third-place winning machine. This was quite a leap of faith for the company, for although he was an expert racer in Japan (which used mainly dirt tracks until the 1960's), Tada had never set eyes on the complex and demanding 37.5-mile Island circuit. He acquitted himself well, gaining 15th place, and the nickname 'the India Rubber Man', as he took numerous minor spills during the course of the race, yet always remounted, and completed the Junior TT in fine time. The below photo shows Tada astride the ex-Works 350cc ohc Velo, with Percy Goodman, Managing Director of Veloce Ltd, directly behind him. Note Tada's Japanese flag on his lapel.
For the 1930 Isle of Man TT, Veloce management seems to have invited Velocette dealers from around the globe to race, as a celebration of the superiority of the KTT in worldwide racing, including at the Isle of Man, which which Velocettes won handily in the 350cc class in 1928 and '29. Bringing riders from far afield seems to have been unlucky though, as the best places for Velos in the 1930 Junior TT was 4th, ridden by David Hall of South Africa (2nd from the left in the photo above), and the 7th place of Englishman George Mitchell, behind the petrol tank, above. From its introduction (1929) the KTT was sold all over the world, in Japan (3) to New Zealand (5) and Australia (5), South Africa (9), India (1), the US (1) and Canada (1), and all over Europe - 180 sold in total from January to December of 1929.
In the 1930 silent film 'Faster Than Ever: An All-British Victory!', which is a British Pathe property, has a nice (albeit silent) sequence showing the various racers on the grid for the '30 Isle of Man Senior and Junior TT... one of which is obviously Kenzo Tada himself smiling for the camera. Photographs of Tada are quite rare; I was thrilled to see this one. Below is a short preview of the film - the Tada sequence is just past the halfway point, right after Graham Walker smooches Tyrrel Smith!
Kenzo Tada's Tomeye Trading Co. was the Velocette agent for Tokyo, and ordered three of the earliest KTT models; KTTs #20, 22 and 28, all in February of 1929. We also have an interview conducted in 1972, recounted in the excellent book, 'Japan's Motorcycle Wars' (reviewed here in The Vintagent):
"I began as a bicycle racer, and started that at the end of the Russo-Japanese War, in 1905. That first race was once around Shinobazu pond in Ueno Park, Tokyo, which was a 3 mile course, as the pond was bigger at that time. I was 18 years old and the prize was half a dozen beer glasses... Afterwards I trained for the Komiyama race as an apprentice, like a young sumo wrestler. I rode bicycles imported from America by the Ishikawa company in Yokohama. I joined their racing team in 1907. The pace car at that race was a Triumph motorcycle."
"Most bicycles were imported then and the Ishikawa company brought in American Pierce and British Triumph bicycles... I rode in a 250 mile bicycle race on 30 June 1907 and I won... In those days various stages of the race were reported by telegram to the finish line. I won several races after that and was reported on widely in the press. I was paid 3 yen per month by the Ishikawa company and I raced 3, 5 and 10 mile races. 10 miles races were the main event and if I won I was paid 10 yen and 5 yen for shorter races."
I read three British motorcycle magazines all the time, Motorcycle, Cycling and Motorcycling and therein learned about the Isle of Man TT (Tourist Trophy) race. That was the age of ships, not of airplanes so I went to Korea, Harbin and then travelled to Europe by rail in the spring of 1930. From Paris I went to Dover and it took about 40 days in all to reach Man in May. I practiced for a month for the race which was scheduled for June. I rode a British 350 Velocette motorcycle on the 420 km asphalt course. A racer on a Norton came in first place that year [actually it was Rudge 1st in both Junior and Senior TTs] while I finished 15th and received a trophy... I had some western clothes but at the prize reception photo shoot I wore a Japanese haori (half coat), hakama (traditional loose fitting trousers), white tabi (socks) and felt zori (sandals). I went home via the Mediterranean sea, through the Suez canal to Singapore and then to Hong Kong before arriving home in Japan after a 41 day trip. Mine was the first overseas racing expedition to be completed and it it linked the racing community of Japan with the rest of the racing world."
And Then Came Rudge...
A friend forwarded an episode of the classic 1969 motorcycle TV show 'Then Came Bronson', in which James Bronson (Michael Parks) meets Alex (Keenan Wynn) in Sturgis. Alex has a 1937 Rudge Ulster hidden away in a friend's garage, and Bronson's presence reveals his secret, causing a bit of strife with his wife. The episode has great riding scenes towards the end, with the men off-roading their respective machines (Rudge Ulster and Harley-Davidson Sportster) in the green grass of the Black Hills, including a flying leap over a creek. Bronson learns a bit about the viability of vintage motorcycles in the process - undoubtedly you'll think the Ulster a far more suitable off-road machine than a '69 Sportster! Keenan Wynn was well known for his motorcycle enthusiasm, but the stunts look to be performed by Carey Loftin , who had quite a career.
Carey Loftin is an AMA Hall of Fame inductee, and a legendary stuntman who taught himself trick riding skills as a very young man. At 19 he was hired in Skip Fordyce's traveling stunt-riding show after performing a back flip from the saddle, landing behind the bike and controlling it with the seat, before hopping back on and coming to a halt. Loftin earned his living via trick riding and mechanicking during the Depression, and after WW2 started work in Hollywood as a stuntman and character actor, with hundreds of film and TV credits over a 50-year career, riding motorcycles and driving cars, including hairy scenes in 'Bullitt', 'The French Connection', and 'Vanishing Point.' Loftin died in 1997 at the ripe age of 83 - who says stunt riding leads to an early grave?
The Big Wheel
Chris Burden's 1970 sculpture 'The Big Wheel' is currently at the Little Tokyo branch ('the Geffen') of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. You can occasionally spot Stacie B. London (the exhibition production coordinator) firing up the work's Benelli single, and revving the daylights out of the bike to spin up the Big Wheel. Stacie also supervised the sculpture's mechanical renovation, as the Benelli needed a light top end overhaul - not the usual museum work! The piece consists of a huge cast iron flywheel from an 1800s coal mine, spun up to high speed by a motorcycle, in this case a 1968 Benelli 250cc, sold here in the US through the Montgomery Ward department store chain as the 'Riverside'. The Benelli was Burden's own motorcycle from the late 1960s, when he was beginning his art career.
Stacie is a vintage motorcycle enthusiast (with a '69 BMW R60US), and enjoys giving the little bike some stick! Watch the video as she winds the little Benelli up to top gear/top revs, when over 70 mph reads on the speedo; that Big Wheel is moving pretty damn quick. Note its proximity to her back! After a noisy wind up, the motor is cut and the bike moved away from the madly spinning flywheel; the gigantic mass spins silently for hours...
Chris Burden is a pioneering performance artist/sculptor/bodily harm artist, and probably best known for his shocking pieces of the early 1970s. In the notorious 'Shoot' from 1971, Burden had himself shot by an assistant with a rifle, at a distance of 15 feet. In 'Transfixed' from 1974, Burden was crucified onto a Volkswagen beetle (below), which was driven out of a garage on Speedway Avenue in Venice, CA, revved for two minutes, then driven back inside. His '747' (below) saw him shooting at an airliner near LAX - an act which drew the attention of the FBI.
My favorite and his most canny work by far is 'The Visitation' of 1974, in which it was announced that Burden would perform a piece at the opening of a large group show of California artists in New York. Anticipating danger and outrage, an excited crowd jammed the gallery space. Burden sat in the basement, with his wife guarding a locked door. Only one visitor was allowed inside at a time; when the viewer entered, the door was locked behind. The assembled spectators grew frenzied in their attempts to see what was happening, crowding at the locked door and breaking windows to the basement in an attempt to get inside. Of course, Burden sat calmly talking with the 15 or so who actually saw him, while the anticipated drama was provided... by the audience.
Here's a video of Stacie B London bringing the 'Big Wheel' to life:
Jean-Marie Guivarc'h
Jean-Marie Guivarc'h has been sending his sketches and watercolors to The Vintagent for a few years now, which are primarily automotive, but he's a man of broad tastes, and makes evocative sketches of motorcycles as well. These notebook pages were drawn at the LeMans race circuit last Sunday during the 'Bidon 2 Litres' event, which he explains below.
In the artist's words:
"I'm sending you three drawings of old French motorcycles.
The first is a Dollar 350cc ohv with an Imperial side-car...two famous names in France. [some Americans saw the Dollar 4-cylinder machine at the Art of the Motorcycle exhibit at the Guggenheim].
The second is an FN with a Bernardet side-car; perhaps it is the oldest Bernardet with a very rare body (1925 or 1926), with only two survivors and one in the USA! The first owner was a sailor...[I know the very sidecar; it was part of the Good Olde Days collection, where I found my 1965 Velocette Thruxton. We called the Bernardet the 'Captain Nemo' sidecar! I believe it was hitched to an FN as well?]
The last motorcycle is a Styl'son with a 250cc JAP engine; this bike was bought during the 1970's but was restored in 2000. The owner was in University originally and had no money to restore it back then. I have made these sketches during the 'Bidon 2 Litres' event, Sunday 25th of April at Le Mans. It is an economy run with only two liters of petrol; of course, the winner has the most economical engine! It was a great pleasure to meet the owners, to speak with them and to discover these wonderfull motorcycles.
Best regards,
Jean-Marie"
Book Review: 'The Chopper: the Real Story'
Speedreaders.info, which features 'authoritative reviews of transport books and media', has seen fit to review my most recent book 'The Chopper: The Real Story
Read the review on Speedreaders.info here!
Vintage Revival Montlhéry 2015 (Pt 2)
George Orwell's Motorcycles
Vintage Revival Monthléry 2015 (Pt 1)
Why on earth, my friends ask, would I travel 20 hours on a round-trip plane to Paris, and spend a couple of grand of my own money to attend a weekend event at a suburban Parisian racetrack in lousy condition, with shabby amenities, mediocre food, which is a pain to reach unless you have a car? The reason is simple; it’s worth it. If you’re a fan of pre-1940 racing cars and motorcycles, there really isn’t a comparable event, anywhere. Vintage RevivalMontlhéry has become to my eyes the most authentic vintage motorsports event in the world. Not as in ‘period correct’ as per the Goodwood Revival, that glorious costume party of 50,000 people, who are not allowed access to the truly interesting stuff, like the pits. It may be the right crowd, but it’s Disneyland crowded, and shares a bit too much of that park’s gloss for my taste. I prefer a little grit, because pre-war racing wasn’t a theme park, it was dangerous and poorly-paid stuff, and the participants did it for the love of the sport.
I suppose if that tens of thousands turned up at Montlhéry there would be tiered access as well, but as the crowd is still 4-figures small, with a very large playground, it feels very much in tune with the old Brooklands ad – the right crowd, and no crowding. VRM is the work of Vincent Chamon, who took on the mantle of the late lamented Jacques Potherat, the grandfather of vintage racing in France, who organized a ‘Vintage Montlhéry’ gathering for decades, before his untimely death 15 years ago. The track was without such a mixed-vehicle event for ten years, until Chamon decided to do something about it. This is the third of these bi-annual events, and it just seems to get better.
Unlike most motorsports events, the organization is almost invisible, with a very light touch. Gents and ladies in white boiler suits direct the action, and their attention is generally focused on getting vehicles onto the track in an orderly fashion. The glorious chaos of the scene, which actually has a fluid and orderly movement, includes a mix of pedestrians, bicyclists, children, and racing vehicles using the main throughfare/track access, which means there’s a constant mix of revving racers and ordinary folks milling along, with a kind of friendly acceptance of of each group’s needs. The frustration level looked very low, and I didn’t hear a voiced raised in anger amongst the scrum between pits and track, which considering the high temper of a rider or driver about to do hot laps, is really something.
Perhaps it’s because there’s nothing to win; the track time is a ‘parade’, which means a few take full advantage of the fantastically historic track’s banking and chicanes, while most are content with a fast but not furious pace. Some even potter, and know well enough to stay out of the way, clinging to the very bottom of the banking, while the really fast ones sail up the top line, which feels awfully near vertical when you’re on it. It’s an eerie sensation to gaze at the top of another rider’s helmet as you pass by/over and they’re perpendicular to you. But it is bumpy on the crumbly old concrete. Riding the track is truly living the history of the place, as an awful lot of world speed/distance records were set there from its inception in 1924 through the 1960s. Unlike Brooklands, competing interests (like tanks) never sullied the architectural concrete track banking, and we can still enjoy the magnificence of the place today. I found it especially poignant to be back at Montlhery after visiting Daytona for the first time last September, during the Cannonball, and being sorely disappointed at the lack of romance about the place. The center of the Montlhéry track is a forest, with big swaths of green grass, flowers, and shade if you need it. The grandstands will hold a thousand people at most, all else is trees and sky in the environs; it’s simply gorgeous. Visit the place before something stupid happens.
What appeared in 2015? Racers from collections all across Europe, from as far as the Czech Republic, with plenty from Germany, Holland, Italy, and England. To date, no motorcycles from US stables have appeared, a situation I’d love to rectify in 2017. There were American bikes certainly, Indian and Harley and Excelsior board trackers which seemed right at home on the banking – just about the only venue suitable for them actually. Mostly it’s what you would have seen on European Grand Prix circuits from the early 1900s through 1940, with plenty of ultra-rare machines you’ll see nowhere else, dragged from the depths of family collections far from the public (and the tax man’s) eye. The photographs here are a reasonable selection, but don’t encompass nearly everything – just the ones I managed in an attractive shot.
Here’s huge thanks to Vincent Chamon and his team for putting on an exceptional and beautifully run weekend event, and for arranging perfect weather too!
Book Review: 'Lewis Leathers'
If your library isn’t half full of Rin Tanaka’s books, it’s time to upgrade your bookshelves. He’s produced the My Freedamn! series since 2003, exploring the history of motorcycle, surf, and skate culture, mostly through the lens of clothing. His books are self-published, but you’d be very wrong thinking they’re anything but first rate, even when documenting the seemingly prosaic history of SoCal surf tee-shirts from the 1960s!
He’s also produced books in collaboration with Harley-Davidson (The Harley-Davidson Book of Fashions), Steve Mcqueen’s 1963 ISDT ride - Steve McQueen 40 Summers Ago....Hollywood Behind the Iron Curtain (Cycleman Books), a general history of leather jackets (Motorcycle Jackets: A Century of Leather Design
Tanaka’s latest history is Lewis Leathers Vol.1: Wings, Wheels and Rock 'n' Roll (English and Japanese Edition)
Lewis Leathers and its various side brands – D. Lewis, Aviakit, etc – have gone through countless cycles of popularity with different groups, from aviators, motorcycle racers, and in latter days to punks and fashionistas. Rin Tanaka’s new book, ‘Lewis Leathers: Wings, Wheels, and Rock&Roll! Vol. 1’ is an extraordinary compendium of the clothing, advertising materials, and period photographs documenting the early history of the company. With 1600 photographs, the book shows how Lewis Leathers became an absolute icon of racer/rocker/punk/fashion history.
This book is a must-have! You’ll spend hours poring over the photos, which are really terrific. You can order Lewis Leathers Vol.1: Wings, Wheels and Rock 'n' Roll (English and Japanese Edition)
