100 Years of Montlhéry: VRM 2024
Rumors have swirled for years that the Centenary of the Montlhéry autodrome, organized by Vincent Chamon and his team at Vintage Revival Montlhéry (VRM), would be the last. Those who know the magic of this august racing circuit, a bowl filled with the ghosts of racing past, quickly submitted eligible pre-1940 racing cars and motorcycles, with priority given to vehicles that had raced at the track in its heyday of racing and record-breaking. And so they came: a bumper crop of incredibly rare and storied vehicles, many only read about in magazines and books. Plenty of applicants were turned away to make space for the best of the best, whose owners had taken pains to bring over 500 of their machines not for show, but for go.
The Quail: A Watersports Gathering
We'd avoided it for 14 years, but finally the rain came, and made up for all those sunny Saturdays (and Fridays for the Quail Ride) by dumping an inch and a half of water in two hours onto the motorcycles at The Quail: a Motorcycle Gathering, to use its official name. Readers from anywhere but California will roll their eyes, as events get rained on in most of the world regardless of the season, but recent climatic changes mean we no longer get 'rain' here; we get 'atmospheric rivers' that dump with tropical fervor. As some wag once said, 'motorcycles don't melt in the rain', and well over a hundred enthusiasts parked their precious survivors on the lawn regardless the forecast, and stuck around for the duration.
The Motorcycle Portraits: Gordon McCall
The Motorcycle Portraits is a project by photographer/filmmaker David Goldman, who travels the world making documentaries, and takes time out to interview interesting people in the motorcycle scene, wherever he might be. The result is a single exemplary photo, a geolocation of his subject, and a transcribed interview. The audio of his interviews can be found on The Motorcycle Portraits website.
The following is a portrait session with Gordon McCall, the founder of The Quail, a Motorcycle Gathering, the McCall Motorworks Revival, and the The Quail, a Motorsports Gathering. Gordon is brilliant at hosing a vehicle show that feels like a party. Gordon basically created Monterey Car Week, after decades of working with the Pebble Beach Concours, then branching out on his own to create something more fun. David Goldman caught up with Gordon in Carmel Valley on January 21, 2022, and asked him a few questions about motorcycling: the following are his responses:
My name is Gordon McCall, we're here in Monterey, California, where I'm a lifelong resident of the Monterey Peninsula. I'm CEO of McCall Events Incorporated, I'm the co-founder of the Quail, a Motorsports Gathering, as well as the Quail, a Motorcycle Gathering, which takes place annually at Quail Lodge and Golf Club. And I'm also responsible for McCall's Motorworks Revival at the Monterey Jet Center, held each August.
How I got started with motorcycles is really simple for me to describe. It happened at a really early age: Cycle World magazine was a big influence on me, and when I turned 14, I saw an ad for a Honda CL90 in the local newspaper, and I thought, you know, I need to sell my 10-speed and buy a motorcycle. Never ridden one, didn't know what they were like to ride, but I knew I had to have one.
That Honda CL90 that I bought when I was 14 lit the fuse for me with motorcycles. As far as I'm concerned, I mean, I think of that bike every day, I get to look at it every day, I still own it. I'm in my 60s now, so it's been a while, but that motorcycle taught me everything. It taught me how to work on motorcycles, how to ride motorcycles, how not to get in trouble, how to push the envelope and the rules a little bit.
My parents didn't know I had it. I couldn't get in trouble, or else the gig was over. So it turns out it's a pretty common problem, or story, I should say. That motorcycle has led to, gosh, I don't know how many motorcycles I've owned in my life, but I can't get enough of them, and I ride, not every day, but I ride today like I did when I was 14.
Motorcycling has led to so many adventures in my life, and has enabled me to meet people that I know for a fact I would have never have met without an interest in motorcycling. It's such a common denominator on so many different levels. It's such a personal thing, you know, you can't fake it on a motorcycle.
You either know how to ride, or you don't. There's no posing, for lack of a better description. It's authentic people with authentic passions that are into it for, basically, we're all into it for the same reason, the independence, the freedom. Again, it's something that I share with the people that I've met. I just feel grateful that I have such an interest in two wheels, and have had the opportunity to meet other people with the same. It's pretty remarkable.
Well, motorcycling means absolutely everything to me. By profession, I'm technically in the car world, but motorcycles have been a big part of my life, long before cars were, at a very early age, earlier than when I had a driver's license. What motorcycles have taught me is priceless in my book. Not only the people I've met, but also the skills I've acquired, and the determination I've required. There's nothing more frustrating than being on a motorcycle that has a mechanical issue, and you're out in the middle of nowhere. You better figure it out, or else you're not going to get to there. I credit all of that back to motorcycles.
Road Test: Sunbeam Shoot-Out!
1924 Model 5 vs. 1925 Model 6 Longstroke Sports
[Mar 24, 2008]
Sunbeam motorcycles were built by John Marston Ltd. starting in 1912 in Wolverhampton, England, as an outgrowth of Marston's highly successful Sunbeam bicycle business. Marston began his career in 1851, manufacturing 'japanware'; glossy enameled home accessories and furniture with a luxurious black or red finish and gold leaf accents, modeled after traditional Japanese lacquer ware. Japanware was all the rage in the late 1800s, and in 1887 Marston took the advice of his wife Helen and expanded his business into the booming bicycle trade. With over 30 years of experience in top quality paint and gold leaf, Marston's Sunbeam bicycles were renowned for the superb black and gold finish, and for the patented pressed-metal 'Little Oil Bath' chaincase that kept the rider's trousers clean. Sunbeam bicycles were expensive, but designed to last a lifetime, and many a centegenarian+ Sunbeam bicycle still retains its original finish in perfect condition.
What are they like to ride?
Since my 1925 Sunbeam Model 6 Longstroke arrived two weeks ago (March 2008), I've been curious to compare its character to that of James Johnson's 1924 Model 5 touring model. They're both sidevalvers from the mid-20's, with very similar running gear and mechanical configurations, from the same esteemed manufacturer; how different could they be?
The Longstroke was developed from Alec Bennett's 1922 TT-winning (at 58.31mph) machine, and was initially known as the 'Model 6'. The 'Longstroke' name was added for 1925, to what would have been the 'Sports' model in that year, but was called the 'TT Replica' in 1923. How quickly things changed in those critical years between 1923-25, where the Longstroke dropped in esteem from TT Replica to a 'Sports' model in just 2 years. That's because Sunbeam added a new overhead-valve engine to its line in 1924, the Model 9 (and its variants), which sounded the death knell to the sidevalve as a racing machine.
James purchased his '24 Model 5 from British Only Austria about two years ago, and has spent considerable time in his workshop, making the 84-year old Sunbeam perfectly reliable. Now he feels confident in its mechanical soundness, and several long rides (including one 800 miler!) have borne out his conviction that his Sunbeam can be ridden as the maker intended.
The Motorcycle Portraits: Anne-France Dautheville
The Motorcycle Portraits is a project by photographer/filmmaker David Goldman, who travels the world making documentaries, and takes time out to interview interesting people in the motorcycle scene, wherever he might be. The result is a single exemplary photo, a geolocation of his subject, and a transcribed interview. The audio of his interviews can be found on The Motorcycle Portraits website.
The following portrait session is with Anne-France Dautheville, the first woman to ride a motorcycle solo around the world. David Goldman caught up with Anne-France on September 1 2023 in Paris. David asked Anne-France a few questions about motorcycling: here are her responses.
Please introduce yourself:
My name is Anne-France Dautheville. We are in Paris, in a little restaurant which is called Á la Ville d'Epinal, next to the Gare de l'Est, which is the railway east station, and it is the place where I give all my appointments, where I have my lunches, and it's my place in Paris. I'm an old lady now, going to be 80, and I have got an incredible life.
In fact, because I rode a motorcycle, and with this motorcycle I rode around the world, around Australia, around South America, and so many different places, traveling by myself, which is my happiness, considering I drive exactly like a shit, because I'm not a good driver, I'm not a sport woman, I just survive on a motorcycle. I started my life as a copywriter in advertisement agencies, and in 1968 we got huge strikes, even a revolution in Paris, and I had to walk. There were no metros, there were no buses anymore.
What was your first introduction to motorcycles?
So when the peace came back, I decided that I should be on my own, even if there was another revolution. I had no driving license of any sort, so I bought myself the only thing with an engine you could afford, which was a CB50. The first minute I sat on it, I said I made the biggest mistake in my life, and the second minute, anybody who would touch my 50cc would be dead.
And during my holidays, which I took always in September, I decided to go and see the Mediterranean Sea, which was something like 700 kilometers from Paris, and everybody in the agency said, “you're crazy, you go by yourself?”, yes, yes, yes, but it's dangerous, can't you go? And I made the best trip of my life, came back, and back through Alsace, which is the northeast of France, came back to Paris, and so during my years in advertisement, every weekend I used to jump on my motorcycle and ride to a place with a nice hotel, with good food, good wine, etc. And during this month of September, I used to drive around, and after a few years, I began to say that I'm very, very happy during 11 months of the year, and I'm so perfectly happy the 12th, so when I die, I will have only one twelfth of my life, which will be perfect, and I left everything, jumped on the motorcycle, and began traveling around the world, because I love traveling, I’m built for the travel, and writing, because travel without writing is only half of the problem.
Share a great story or experience that could have only happened thanks to motorcycles?
Which story for me, oh, it was a good one.
Let's go to 1975, the north of Australia, there is a gravel road which goes to Normanton, from Georgetown to Normanton in Queensland, I'm riding a 750cc BMW, it's my first gravel road, I didn't know how to drive this big motorcycle on the dirt road, so I start at the end of the afternoon, so there was a city in Georgetown, but no, there was no city, it was just a ring for car races twice) a year, but on the map it was like, okay, so I go to Normanton, something like 150 kilometers of gravel road, and the sun goes down, down, and when the light is not so hard, suddenly I see a huge brown frog jumping from my right, so I bump my horn, and the huge brown beast stops, and it was a kangaroo, and I stopped in front of the kangaroo, and I looked at him and said in French, you crazy man, and he looked at me and said, oh motorcycle that's talking, and in fact I learned that day, that when the kangaroo jumps in front of you, if you bump your horn, it stops to know where the noise comes from, so that was a very good lesson in my life.
What do motorcycles mean or represent to you?
What do motorcycle represents to me?, it's a machine, it's just an assembly of things that make it roll, it doesn't talk, it doesn't think, it's just a machine, but that machine allows me to go around the world, to go into places, and in fact it is the link between the nature and me, I mean when I am on a motorcycle, I have all the perfumes of the earth that grows from my nose, I didn't ride very noisy motorcycles, so I can hear sometimes hard crying birds, or things like this, if I go near the wood, I have that sort of freshness of the air, because of the trees, when I'm on a road, every little pebble on the ground makes a sort of a movement in the front wheel, and goes through my arms, so my whole body is alive, when I'm on a motorcycle, if I'm in a car, I'm just like a fish in a can, you know, motorcycle is a way to have a permanent discussion, exchange with the nature around you, and the fact, all my life I will remember the first shot of lavender I got when I was on my little 50cc in the south of France, I was on top of the mountain, and suddenly the wind brought me that huge perfect smell of lavender, it's still there, I wouldn't believe that, so perfectly, if I were on foot, because I go slow, with the motorcycle, I can pile lots, lots, lots of sensations, and this is happiness.
[Please read our previous story about Anne-France on The Vintagent: The Unstoppable Anne-France Dautheville]
Art of Ride - Bernard Testemale
The wet plate/collodion photographic process was invented in 1850 by Frederick Scott Archer, only 11 years after the first fixed photographs were publicized using the Daguerreotype (Nicephore Niépce - who also invented the internal combustion engine) and Calotype (Henry Fox Talbot) methods. While these pioneering and technically difficult methods continue to be used by artists and enthusiasts today, the wet plate process proved far easier to master with more reliable results, and became the photographic standard for half a century. For astronomical photography, wet plate or 'dry plate' glass negatives continued to be used deep into the 20th Century, as the silver particles suspended in collodion or liquid gelatin are 1000x finer than is possible with 'film'. As a medium for artists, the wet plate technique was lost in the latter half of the 20th Century, until a few DIY die-hards dug into old books, ordered the basic chemistry (collodion, ether, grain alcohol, iodine and bromine salts, silver nitrate crystals, sodium hyposulfate, ferric nitrate, acetic acid, etc.), and re-learned what every photographer in the 19th Century knew by heart. Hats off to them.
Wet plate photography has been a peculiar fascination of mine since I saw an exhibit of 200 original 'Nadar' portraits in France, back in 2010. The Jeu de Paume photography museum had recently taken over the Château de Tours, and its walls were covered by 8x10" albumen prints of the most interesting characters in Bohemian France in the second half of the 1800s. These included writer Victor Hugo (Lés Miserables), actress Sarah Bernhardt, composer Franz Liszt, painter Gustave Courbet, writer Alexandre Dumas (Three Musketeers, Count of Monte Christo, etc), poet Charles Baudelaire, anarchists Mikhail Bakunin and Piotr Kropotkin, futurist Jules Verne (20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, etc), sculptor Auguste Rodin, writer/feminist George Sand, explorer Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza (whom I wrote about here)...basically anyone who was scandalous and brilliant in Paris from 1854-1910, when a Nadar studio portrait was simply necessary.
From Bernard Testemale:
"Art of Ride is the culmination of 10 years of photographic work: a voyage along the paths traced by pioneers of the artistic expression of wet plate photography, such as Gustave le Gray and Felix Tournachon, known as 'Nadar'.
In the world of photography, as in that of antique vehicles, some are vintage and others are modern. For years I have been fascinated by 19th-century photographic techniques, and I use the original wet collodion process: a technique that has enabled me to produce extremely fine images. These black-and-white shots, with their infinite nuances, provoke an immediate flashback to the past, releasing an emotional charge that is as unique as it is unpredictable.
Support Bernard Testemale's Art of Ride here.
Vintage Revival Montlhéry 2013
It is hands-down the best combined car/bike event I've ever attended, whether static or track, concours show or oily-rag festival, because it includes all of that, in the most compelling venue possible, the only original autodrome still in use from the early days of motorsport. The Autodrome de Linas-Montlhéry, to give its full name, is situated only 40 minutes south of Paris, yet feels of another world and another time. Currently owned and used by a consortium of car manufacturers (for testing), the 2.4km oval was originally designed to handle racing cars of 2200lbs, moving at 140mph; having traveled over 130mph (in a modern rally car) on the banking, I can assure you the track is in no danger from such abuse, only the car itself, and its madly bouncing passengers. While not as bumpy as Brooklands, Montlhéry is still a concrete track with expansion joints and decades of shifting movement, and the faster you travel, the harder the hammering.
A Visit to Lewis Leathers (2013)
On a recent (Spring of 2013) whirlwind trip to London and Paris, I had a chance to catch up with Derek Harris, proprietor of Lewis Leathers, the oldest motorcycle-clothing business in the world - founded in 1892. Derek is a breath of fresh air as proprietor of an internationally recognized 'brand', and the very opposite of today's capitalist-opportunist-vultures who snag a dead name, creating Franken-brands stitched up from skins of the 'cool' dead, in the feverish pursuit of money money money. (Ask me how I really feel).
Top Ten Bikes at Mecum 2024
Motorcycles, how do we love thee? Well, thousands of us are willing to sit in an indoor rodeo arena in Las Vegas for days, listening to the drone of a professional cattle auctioneer's callout as hundreds of motorcycles pass under the hammer every day. 2024 is another banner year for Mecum's Las Vegas mega-auction, with over 1400 motorcycles ready to roll across the auction podium at the South Point Hotel and Casino, with the action commencing at 9am Wed Jan 24, and running till about 4pm on Saturday Jan 27. The amazing variety of motorcycles on offer come from individual sellers, professional restorers, and this year from a record 18 special collections, ranging from John Goldman's superb Museo Moto Italia collection to the Classic Motorcycles Austria collection to the Bud Ekins Family Trust.
The Vintagent team has selected their Mecum Top Ten for 2024 from the rabbit hole that is the entirety of Mecum's four-day list. We invite you to have a look for yourself, and if there's anything we missed that you think should be included, feel free to add it to the comments below, along with why it floats your boat. The following bikes float our boat, filling a variety of different neurotransmitter receptors, from funky and original, to awesomely historic, to groovy one-offs. Enjoy!
1957 F.B. Mondial 250 Bialbero
1938 Brough Superior SS100 with Sidecar
This ultra-rare, low-mileage 1953 Harley-Davidson Model KK is a one-year-only model and a factory Hot Rod. The odometer reads a believable 6,500 miles, and as a first-generation K model has a 45 CI (750cc) sidevalve V-twin motor that was revolutionary in the Harley-Davidson lineup. It was the first Harley-Davidson with both hydraulic telescopic forks and hydraulic shock rear suspension and was their first unit-construction V-twin.
The K model was Harley-Davidson’s answer to the British motorcycle invasion postwar, being significantly lighter and smaller than their Big Twin Panhead model, and intended to take over in Class C racing from the WR sidevalve model. The K model used the same bore/stroke as the old W series (2-3/4” x 3 13/16”), with a 6.5:1 compression ratio, with heavily finned aluminum cylinder heads to aid cooling. With a unit-construction crankcase, the K model saved space and weight and had a modern look, years before the British twins adopted the same idea. The standard K model Sports Twin produced 30 HP and weighed 400lbs, but the KK was a hotted-up model with a factory-installed ‘speed kit’ that included roller bearings and roller valve tappets, larger valves, ported and polished cylinders, and matching heads for better gas flow, including hot camshafts. By no coincidence, Harley-Davidson also introduced the KR model in 1953 as the factory Class C racer, and the expertise gained in tuning the new K model for racing was adapted in a slightly less fierce form to this roadster model KK: racing improves the breed, as they say.The KK Sport Twin produced 34 HP and was good for over 90 MPH, with very good handling and a modest weight making for a very sporting twin indeed.
Yamaha's Ascot Scrambler is a fascinating machine, a combination of the YDS-2 street bike and the TD1 production racer, with its own unique bits that make parts sourcing for this bike basically impossible. Yamahas were the 250cc engine of choice for Amateur class racers, as they were limited to that engine capacity for their first year of AMA racing, and Yamaha was the fastest engine available. Tuners and racers commonly put TD1 engines into special frames by Trackmaster, Redline, et al, which put Yamaha on the podium at tracks like Ascot Park, without the factory even trying.
Yamaha had sense enough to make their own dirt racer, and the Ascot Scrambler was result: a 250cc twin-cylinder two stroke with 35hp. The Ascot, introduced in 1962, used the aluminum cylinder barrels of the TD1 with slightly smaller intakes (24mm Mikuni carbs were used), combined with expansion chambers and wheels from the TD1, and its own frame. Production lasted from 1962 to 1967, and while it was a popular seller for racers, very few survive intact, and not many are in such good original condition like this bike.
Tiny cafe racers, like kittens and puppies, provoke the same response in all motorcyclists: they SO CUTE! And this Bianchi Falco is extra super cute, and seriously badass at the same time. With its elongated gas tank looking like Alien's motorchild, the clip-ons and humped seat, the blue metalflake paint job, and its rarity, make this Bianchi the micro etceterini cafe racer to have. It's got a single-cylinder 50cc two-stroke motor, and isn't a moped as it doesn't have pedals: it's a small motorcycle, and exquisitely designed.
I've seen this bike installed in the home of its owner, John Goldman, and immediately coveted it...and all the other crazy cool Italian Grand Prix racers and cafe racers in his collection. Much of that hoard is on sale in Vegas this January as the 'Museo Moto Italia Collection', which includes the largest private sale of F.B. Mondial motorcycles ever.
1947 Supercharged Zundapp KS600 Oskar Pillenstein racer
After WW2, Germany was banned from the Grand Prix circuit, but they still held motorcycle races, and their own German National Championship. Also, not being part of the FIM meant they could use superchargers, which were banned everywhere else. This remarkable blown Zundapp KS600 racer was originally built by Oskar Pillenstein with help from Zundapp's head of design, Richard Kuchen. Pillenstein promptly won the 1948 German Motorcycle Championship with it, setting a class record of 103kmh.
The KS600 was the continuation of Zundapp’s prewar engine, and the basis for the legendary Green Elephant KS601 to come. Its 600cc OHV motor normally put out 28hp at 4,800rpm, but the addition of a supercharger definitely gave a power bump. There are tons of factory racing bits inside and out, as this is a unique motorcycle, and basically a factory racing Zundapp. It was restored in 1987, and was on display at a museum for almost 30 years, but is now available to you.
The first of the legendary Indian fours were basically rebadged Aces, as Indian acquired that brand in 1927, and sold them as the Indian Ace Series 401, with a 77ci (1265cc) inline 4-cylinder engine. Initially the Indian-ACE was a parts-bin special, using up remaining ACE stocks, but the Four was changed over time to become a fully Indian machine. In the first half of 1928, the engine got lighter alloy pistons, pressurized oiling, and a new cam, giving it more power and reliability, and by August of 1928, Indian had redesigned the 4-cylinder to harmonize with the rest of its model lineup. Only the first-year Indian-Ace Fours used the leading-link front fork and frame seen here, which are pure Ace items. These early Indian-Ace Fours are coveted for their rarity and unique style, and clear connection to the father of the American Four-cylinder, William Henderson.
I've known Ken Seavy for decades: he arranged the purchase of my Velocette Thruxton in 1989, after his boss at Good Olde Days got busted with 6 tons of amphetamines, and had to liquidate his amazing motorcycle collection. I've long known Ken was racing legend Art Bauman's nephew, and that he owned Art's old Kawasaki H2R 750, among other very rare bikes, but he never invited me to see his collection. In the 1980s and early 90s, the Kawasaki was at the nadir of its value, but Ken knew what he had. Finally, that mean green racing machine has come to light, and it's a beauty, with a presale estimate of $180-220k.
First Moto Cycle in Australia: 1896
The motorcycle is an old concept. The first recorded image of a two-wheeled vehicle with an engine dates back to 1818, and the first known functional motorcycle, Sylvester H. Roper's 'steam velocipede', dates back to 1869. Several other steam-powered motorcycles were built in France and the USA in the 1870s and 1880s, but the first motorcycle to be built on an industrial scale was the Motorrad built by Hildebrand and Wolfmüller from 1894-1897. Heinrich and Wilhelm Hildebrand were steam engineers, and the initial (1889) prototype of their Motorrad was steam-powered, but they teamed up with Alois Wolfmüller to produce a gasoline-powered version in 1894. One look at the construction of the Motorrad reveals its steam heritage, and makes it unlike any other motorcycle: the engine's cylinders have exposed connecting rods that act directly on the rear wheel hub, in the same manner as a steam train, making the rear wheel effectively the flywheel of the motor. A rubber strap helped rotate the rear wheel on the 'return' stroke, and can be seen laying on the ground in the illustration below. With no clutch possible in such a direct drive, the Motorrad is a push and go starter, with no bicycle pedals as with other early gasoline motorcycles, as the Hildebrand and Wolfmüller chassis had nothing whatever to do with traditional bicycle design.
The Moto Cycle: A Wonderful Invention
Sydney Daily Telegraph, March 26 1896
Yesterday afternoon the Cycle Austral Agency gave a public exhibition in George Street of the motocycle, which is causing such a great deal of public interest throughout the world. Since the advent of this machine in England, France, America, Germany, and other countries, it has caused an enormous amount of newspaper controversy. The machine has been attached to carriages and different kinds of vehicles, and many of the London and provincial papers have published illustrations purporting to show that in the course of a few years, carriages drawn by horses would be rarely seen. Already races have been held, for a few months ago a race took place from Paris to Bordeaux and back for motocycle, or horseless carriages, as some choose to call them, and it proved to be very successful. Fully 100,000 people witnessed it. A race has also been held in America. The Prince of Wales has had several rides in one of them, and the mail which arrived in Sydney on Tuesday brought word that His Royal Highness had ordered one, so that it is likely to become very popular.
The machine is to be exhibited at the Agricultural Show, and Mr. Henslow, on behalf of the league, last night concluded arrangements with Mr. Elliott, the manager of the Austral Cycle Agency, to give an exhibition of pace on the Agricultural Ground on April 25th, at the race meeting which is to be given to Mssrs. Lewis and Megson prior to their proceeding to England. The machine will pace probably Lewis or Megson a mile, and then will run 5 miles at its top speed, under the care of Mr. H Knight Eaton.
A few more photos with interesting details:
Egli Motorcycles Workshop To Close
The motorcycle business has never been easy, and even a famous name cannot ensure a future for a small factory. Alexander and Felicitas Frei purchased Egli Motorradtechnik AG from Fritz Egli in 2015, with high hopes to carry on with his legacy of building amazing high-performance cafe racers. This week, the Freis put out a press release stating they are shuttering the famous house of Egli:
There's a time for everything...
More than 9 years ago, Fritz W. Egli was looking for a successor for his Egli Motorradtechnik AG and finally found it in 2015. When we stepped in to continue the company at its location in Bettwil, our aim was not just to keep the workshop as it was at the time and to continue importing brands. We wanted to raise Egli to a higher level as a Swiss Motorcycle brand and also to build up a classic department which, in addition to the Egli range, would carefully restore vintage and classic motorcycles by hand.Our re-entry into the racing scene with our involvement in the IOM Classic TT was intended to be a further step towards revitalizing the brand. At the same time, we tried to bring the Egli-Vincent trademark back to its place of origin. Unfortunately in vain - the Vincent and Egli-Vincent brands were sold to a group in India [actually, the names were licensed by their owner many years ago - ed.].
After the presentation of the new Egli "Fritz W." in 2017, the idea of an Egli Motorcycle developed and manufactured entirely in Switzerland - including its own engine with road approval - became more and more concrete, until the starting signal for the new project was given in 2018 with a team of young engineers and qualified employees. The new Egli with a 1400 cc V2 engine is running, has already passed the first noise and exhaust measurements and has covered a considerable distance on closed roads. We have come a long way, but we are still too far away from road homologation and it will take a lot of time and additional financial commitment to overcome the final hurdles in the „forest“ of standards and regulations.
The world has changed rapidly in recent years - economically, politically and environmentally - and the requirements on motorized traffic are changing at the same pace. We too have now reached retirement age and have therefore decided to step back from daily business.
Over the past 9 years, we have had many great moments with customers, employees, business partners and friends. We were able to celebrate successes and also had to deal with setbacks - everything that is part of an exciting motorcycle life. We would like to thank you all very much for this. Without your support, many things would not have been possible. But everything has its time and so we will cease business operations at the Bettwil on November 30, 2023 and put the company into an orderly liquidation.
We are pleased and grateful that all employees have already found a new job or have decided to become self-employed.We wish you all the best for the future!
- Alexander & Felicitas Frei
For your additional interest: the following is an exclusive interview for The Vintagent with Alexander Frei, after his purchased the Egli name outright from Fritz W. Egli. Paul has long known Alexander's cousin, John Frei of San Francisco, via a long association with the Velocette Owners Club. John Frei’s grandfather was brother to Alexander's grandfather, and was watchmaker in Switzerland who emigrated to US.
Alexander Frei (AF): Motorcycles take over your life.
I started my professional career in the watchmaking industry; starting the traditional way with an apprenticeship as a micromechanic, then earned a microengineering diploma. When I met my wife Felicitas, her father owned a medical implant company, so I joined the business. When her father died his businesses were sold, with the last in 2000. Then I started a career in car racing, as more or less a hobby. At the beginning I raced Lamborghinis, then was a factory driver for Courage Competition, a French endurance racing team in the Le Mans series. I raced LeMans four times with the LMP1, and three times with and LMP2. Kevin Schwantz was racing the same LeMans team as mine, and Mario Andretti too, but a few years before me. Mario Andretti was old but still a good endurance driver – the cars were fast, but the materials were not always first class as they were short of money. You’d be going fast them boom, you waste time in the pits. I’m not as good a motorcyclist as car driver, but I’ve always had motorcycles, since I was 19 or 20. In 1982 my family went to Laguna Seca with my cousins, and saw Randy Mamola in Battle of the Twins racing, against Norton, Triumph etc. Kenny Roberts was still racing.
AF: One of my sons is 32 years old, he started as a car mechanic, then became a motorcycle mechanic. He worked for Harley-Davidson, and one said he’d like to open his own workshop. We discussed this, and he was looking for motorcycle brands to open his own dealership. One of the names was Norton, the other Royal Enfield, and the Swiss distributor was Fritz Egli, and they had a meeting. Of course I knew his name, I'd read about him, but didn’t go to this meeting. My son told me he’s selling his company, I said ok let’s have a look! I was fascinated about the whole thing. I realized of course for 25 or 30 years they hadn't built any motorcycles: they built frames and parts, and strange things like Yamaha Vmax tuning, but not real Eglis anymore. I started discussing with my son how he might start his dealership: I could buy Egli to restart some kind of motorcycle manufacturing, and also a restoration business. This was the initial idea, in the summer of 2014. I bought the Egli business on Jan 1 2015. I never thought I’d start a business again, certainly not in motorcycles. But when I saw the Egli company with such great history and bikes, I thought 'let’s try it, it can only break'. Otherwise the name is gone! I’ve seen this in the Swiss watchmaking industry many times, smaller shops breaking down, then a revival with external investors, but it's really difficult to do this.
AF: Euro3 vs Euro4 means much less noise, and pollution is much stricter, these are the two main factors, plus ABS and OBD now. The petrol tank must breathe through an active carbon filter, etc, which makes construction much more complicated. I’m a afraid instead of two wheels and an engine, there will be a lot more gimmicks to hide, which is no longer simple. In Switzerland we are still allowed to sell Euro3 bikes, but I think the rest of Europe cannot. For example in Germany, lots of bikes had a fire sale as they couldn’t pass Euro4. In Europe we can still sell Euro3 bikes now, all that were imported or built before 2016. So Egli is more or less in the last minutes… but we are so limited in production. They inspected the bikes before the end of the last year, and we were not allowed to build more than 6, but for me it’s ok. Everything we do in the future must pass Euro4, and in 2020 will be Euro5, and it’s not clear what will change – definitely more regulation; less noise, less pollution, and so on.
AF: I don’t know, maybe we have to look at electric bikes.
It's not possible to use older engines for manufacturing. For example, the Godet-Egli-Vincents have to match Euro3 too, so he can’t use a newly manufactured Vincent engine, it's only possible for an old bike restoration: you cannot start new production with an old engine. You’d have to design a new Vincent motor, and even Fritz tried - I saw the plans, he looked for financing, the approached bankers, but couldn’t raise the money. It must have been in the 1980s, a Vtwin. We will have to tackle the Euro4 regulations, from the structural side the bike is not a problem, but the ABS is not so easy to get. I was in discussion with motorcycle companies who were willing to sell us an engine, but the problem is with Bosch who has the patents for ABS, but they don't sell a full package with all the electronics. And that's very costly to develop; we would have to pay them to develop the software for our bikes, and with only 6 or 12 bikes its not workable. Thierry Henriette had the same experience with the new Brough Superior; ABS makes everything more complicated and expensive. Fritz Egli was in the workshop many times saying how difficult it is now, and how easy it was then!
AF: If one of our customers wants to race our 6 new bikes, we have tuning kits, exhausts etc, but of course that's not street legal. We’re a bit into classic racing, we race a Godet 500 Vincent at the Classic TT, with Horst Zeigel riding for us, and we’ll go back this year. I think we’ll do another bike like Egli did in the past, in Switzerland we have one or two classic races, and there are 500 Honda motors available. For now that’s enough to put in a foot, but not jump wholly into classic racing. Plus, we've decided to show a 750 Honda Egli at the 2018 Concorso Villa d’Este, so see you there!
[All of us at The Vintagent lament the closure of Egli Motorcycles, and wish all parties the very best in future projects. The Egli name will surely live as long as motorcycles are remembered.]
Do Cafe Racers Dream of Electric Starts?
By Scott Rook
Being a child of the 1980s, I never knew a time when fast bikes on the showroom floor didn’t mimic the factory's race bikes. Kawasaki had the Ninja and Honda had the Hurricane. [Shameless plug: read our history of the cafe racer, 'Ton Up!'] The bikes appeared on magazine covers in the school library that all my friends drooled over in study hall. When I got interested in vintage bikes in the 1990s, the idea of an old street bike that was kitted out in race trim took hold: a cafe racer. The Honda CR750 was the bike that did it for me. Cycle World ran a story about Dick Mann and his Daytona-winning Honda CR750 from 1970: someone built a replica and was racing it at Daytona in the AHRMA series. The factory CR750 racer looked nothing like the old CB750 that I'd owned. The Honda had been replaced by a 1979 Triumph Bonneville, but when I saw the CR750 in the magazine I thought, I could build that and ride it on the street. After all it was just a CB750 underneath that root beer colored fairing, and CB750s could be found cheap in the early 1990s. This was my cafe racer dream. I started making spreadsheets of parts and searching the internet with my dial-up Internet connection. I perused the newspaper looking for any old cheap CB750. I found one; a non-running K1 for $250. My girlfriend (who would later become my wife) went with me to check it out. We stopped at U-Haul on the way and picked up a motorcycle trailer just in case. The bike was rough. The cases were cracked but most of it was there, and it had a title. The 1971 CB750 came home with me that day and has been with me ever since.
I had loved the process of building my Dunstall Honda: it was full of the anticipation of riding a bike that belonged in a different era. The Dunstall Honda was something different, like a lost treasure that the world had forgotten. And I brought my cafe racer dream to life in my garage. The realization was exhilarating, but the ride was terrible. I remembered my old CB750 and how it did literally everything: I rode it on grass while learning to ride a motorcycle, I rode it to school and took it on camping trips with my friend on the back. That old CB750 took me and my high school girlfriend everywhere. The Dunstall Honda did nothing well other than go fast and look great. I couldn’t take it anywhere without experiencing pain. Maybe that is how beautiful strange things from a different era are supposed to be. They have to extract a toll from their owners for their existence. Not just a financial cost, but actual pain when used as intended. I wanted to like riding the bike, and gave it my best, but never really enjoyed it. So I changed clip-ons and played with different hand grips, and tried to make it even more cafe racer by adding a boxed swingarm and rear Hurst Airheart disk brake conversion. I changed the wheels to the even more rare Henry Abe mags, all in an effort to love the bike I had built. None of it worked. I rode the bike once or twice a summer for many years. I polished the aluminum covers and waxed it. I kept it in tip top running condition hoping that someday I would love riding it. But that never happened. The cafe racer dream had become a painful nightmare.
I still have a cafe racer dream, but it doesn’t involve Dick Mann or clip-ons. I want to build a bike that has the cafe racer look but keeps the standard riding position. Paul Dunstall built Sprint versions of his Norton Atlases and Commandos. These were bikes with performance upgrades and the cafe tank and seat but with regular bars and pegs. A bright red Dunstall Domiracer Sprint sounds about perfect for me. I guess I have a new cafe racer dream. Stay tuned.
The Pornography of Speed
The Detroit-built V-8 engine is as big a chunk of American identity as the flag, the cowboy hat, and the jacked pickup with tires as big as Daisy Duke’s inflatables. American-style drag racing squeezes a nation’s worth of sex and violence into this engine’s compact lump, and within its confines, hot steel shafts push oily pistons up tightly-bored holes, mad hot with the stroking, exploding every four thrusts. It is powergasm on asphalt for all to witness; the earth-splitting bellow of crazy-revving engines, the flaming cannonfire of exhaust stacks, the steely whine of a supercharger, the rippling deformation of tire-skin under the wrenching torque of actually unmeasurable horsepower. The V-8 engine is nearly ubiquitous in the drag scene (and NASCAR), like the Frenchman’s bread and the Swissman’s cheese…more like the goddamn air, because V-8s are everywhere. With hundreds of millions built since the 1930s, the foundation for outrageous power is as common as mud and weeds, and about as cheap.
[This article was originally published in the Spring 2015 issue of At Large magazine]
The Remarkable Mister Cox
The label ‘artist’ is tossed around lightly these days, for which we can blame Marcel Duchamp - but he had his reasons. Anyone building an aesthetically pleasing custom motorcycle gets an A in this post-‘Art of the Motorcycle’ world, but if a good custom doesn’t deserve a museum slot, what does? Still, the realm of aesthetics is not necessarily the realm of art, and a talented stylist with bodywork and paint doesn’t necessarily see the world through the strange prism of an artist. That’s not a put down; the world needs good design - it makes life better. But natural born artists are weird; they do what they do because they’re compelled to. Lucky for us, some artists stick their hands in design with remarkable results; for example, Paul Cox.
And then there’s the question of fame (or notoriety); some artists get famous, most labor in obscurity. Paul Cox hasn’t shunned the spotlight, but he certainly hasn’t had his due, which is partly due to honest humility, and partly the company he’s kept on his journey as an artist-craftsman. Cox rose to visibility in the late 1990s beside his friend Larry DeSmedt, who burned very brightly as the consummate showman Indian Larry. It was easy to misunderstand Paul Cox and Keino Sasaki’s role at Indian Larry Enterprises, given Larry’s charisma, and his fully reciprocated love for the camera. But anyone who’s seen Paul Cox’s work understands his past contributions, and the incredible range of his talents, from painting on canvas, making knives from Damascus steel, tooling the finest leather seats anywhere, and building kickass NYC-style choppers.
Growing up in the late 1960s and early ‘70s, Cox painted and drew as kids tend to, but not many children copy the paintings on their grandparents’ walls. “That was my first body of work – my grandmother would buy them for a dollar, which planted the idea of making a living as an artist.” Mid-‘70s choppers and Bicentennial graphics inspired him to create extended-fork bicycles, which soon progressed to minibikes, and making boats and hang gliders; “Basically anything I could make into a moving contraption.” After attending VCU (Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts), Cox moved to New York City (1988). He landed a job in commercial illustration; “I had a ton of work printed in newspapers and magazines, and was making art paintings at home. That lasted two years, until I got sick of advertising illustration.” He started modifying a Yamaha XS650 and a couple of Triumphs; friends soon wanted bikes built for them too.
For a Lower East Side biker, the center of the 1990s universe was Hugh Mackie’s 6th Street Specials. “A lot of my bike world connections were made and grew there, with Hugh and Dimi. They were the first shop to pay me to make a seat; they’d just opened, and it was a high energy scene, really raw, and really a blast.” Paul met Larry DeSmedt at 6th Street, and the pair clicked. By 1992, both worked at the new Psycho Cycles, Larry fabricating and mechanicking, and Paul doing leatherwork and fabrication. “That’s when things really took off. Steg and Frank and Larry and I made up our tight group, but it was my relationship with Larry that was truly inspirational.”
The 1990s chopper scene was volatile and hand-to-mouth, and when Psycho Cycles closed around ’98, Larry built bikes in a little garage below his apartment; “He was totally thrilled doing that, no strings attached, he could walk downstairs in his flip flops and underwear, it was perfect for him.” Hugh Mackie offered Cox space inside 6th St Specials for his leather and fabrication. “I owe so much to Hugh in so many different ways. He’s just a humble soft spoken guy, and it’s easy to pass him over because he’s so laid back, but how much he meant to me coming up in this scene gets glossed over, because there are so many other colorful characters.”
Indian Larry was primary among those; in 2000, he, Paul and other artisans leased a 5000 sq/ft warehouse on North 14th Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. “That’s the space everybody knows, it was one-stop shopping,” laughs Cox. With Keino Sasaki as a mechanic, the shop was re-branded Indian Larry Enterprises. Bobby and Elisa Seeger came on board to manage branding and merchandising and help run the show. The world spun faster when Jesse James invited Larry on his Motorcycle Mania TV show, which brought Indian Larry into the mainstream. “We’d done a lot of film work previously as ‘biker gang guys’ - you’d show up and get $100. Larry really dug that, and did it whenever he could. Motorcycle Mania was right up his alley. Like Ed Roth, Indian Larry was his own finest work of art; he created himself, and wanted to be a showman.” Before the Internet, TV exposure was gold, and people were floored by Indian Larry’s charisma. “He was a real guy, times 10. The world connected with him. It was all going well in 2002/3/4, and Bobby and Elisa really worked with him to keep things on track.”
When Larry left this world on August 30th 2004, the outpouring of emotion convinced Paul, Keino, Bobby, and Elisa to change the shop to Indian Larry Legacy. “We thought we had to carry on what we’d started together, what Larry had built, all that momentum, and not turn it off overnight. The industry was really amazing and accepting. We kept building bikes like we had, but kept moving forward in design ideas in the same niche NYC chopper style - that little hotrod Harley we’d always done, which I still do today. The style is based on where I ride, what I ride, and what inspires me.”
In 2007, Cox decided to branch out. “It was a delicate time, but whatever I was doing creatively, I wanted to do professionally. That’s why my shop is Paul Cox Industries, not Paul Cox Choppers - it’s more about a creative lifestyle. I might look at architecture or furniture, and bring those ideas into leather or knives or bikes. I’m coming full circle to painting again, getting into a kind of pure art instead of only the ‘high performance art’, as I call my chopper work. Painting gets me excited, and influences my other work, and it all plays against each other. For me, painting, leather, and metalwork are always happening at the same time. My shop is set up in zones; there are people who are interested in certain aspects of what I do, who may not know the other things I do!”
[This article originally appeared in the inaugural issue of 1903 magazine, in 2016]
Is This Motorcycle Cursed? A BSA B50 Story
Story and Photos by new Contributor Scott Rook
I had wanted a BSA B50 for many years. They were the final distillation of BSA’s unit singles that won World MX Grand Prix championships with Jeff Smith in the 1960s and were the last competitive factory four stroke MX bikes in the early 1970s. CCM and Cheney built special framed purpose-built racers around the B50 engine that kept them competitive into the mid and late 1970s. The B50 also had the weirdest and one of the most beautifully shaped alloy gas tanks ever conceived for a motorcycle. It wasn’t exactly round but it wasn’t rectangular either. It was dubbed the lozenge. Triumphs had Pear shaped tanks and Harley had Tear Dropped tanks, BSA came out with a cough-drop shaped tank. The B50 was also recognized as one of the last great British singles in a long line of bikes that stretched back to the early teens and twenties. British singles won Grand Prix Championships with great riders like Geoff Duke and John Surtees. Names like Comet, Manx, Goldstar, Venom, Thruxton and Victor were all great British singles. The B50 also performed admirably in road racing and endurance racing, often bettering larger displacement bikes. I wanted a piece of that heritage.
The rebuild started immediately. The night I brought it home, I took it for a quick run around the block and then started taking off all the stuff that had been done to it over the years. Within a few days the engine was out and the frame was getting stripped for powder coat. We have long winters in western New York which becomes rebuild season. The goal was to have my Dick Mann approved BSA B50 D/R ready for spring. I sent the engine to the foremost rebuilder of B50s in the U.S. Ed Valiket of EV Engineering. Everything else I would rebuild myself. Rebuild season is a time of hope and optimism. All the parts you have gathered start to come together to form this thing that has only existed in your brain for years. Winter turned to spring and then summer. The B50 wasn’t ready. The engine was still in another state as was the alloy gas tank that I had sent out to have the dents removed. By August everything had arrived and the drive to complete the bike was in full swing. I took it out for its maiden voyage on August 2, 2018. The bike wasn’t finished but the only things left to do were more cosmetic than functional.
Restorations are never complete when all the parts are done, and the motorcycle is back together. Restorations are really complete after all the running issues have been cleared up and the tuning has been completed which usually takes some weeks and miles. My B50 showed some issues on its first run outside of my neighborhood. The gearbox was giving false neutrals and I couldn’t get it into 4th gear without it popping back out. I thought the gearbox might have some wearing in to do or maybe the clutch needed attention. The other problem was a flat rear tire about 20 miles from my house. The tube stem had been ripped out. I had decided against running a rim lock on the rear tire. My mistake. Clearly this bike needed some more attention. The dirt trails would have to wait. It was August already and I had other bikes to ride that didn’t give false neutrals. The late summer and fall would give way to winter soon and if I wanted to maximize my riding time left then I would take the Triumph or the Dunstall CB750. The B50 got put away until rebuild season started again.
It worked, kind of. I still would get a false neutral once in a while, but I think it was down to the shift lever not being in the ideal position and not getting a good purchase on the lever. The new old MCM Spark Arrestor sounded great, but it would pop and sometimes really POP on deceleration. Probably an exhaust leak. The bike ran great after about 15 minutes of me panicking that I would downshift rather than brake. There were no flat tires, it ran great below 2,000 rpm, and the rear rim is in one piece as far as I know. There are still some things to be done. When I got home there was a noticeable oil leak which is down to the frame being overfilled. I added oil after it wet sumped. My mistake. And the exhaust has to be sealed. I think the cursed bike might actually not be cursed anymore. I didn’t manage to actually get lost, but I rode some roads that I had never been on before. This bike needs further miles. Remember all restorations are only finished after they have been tuned and all the issues worked out. This bike took 4 years after its restoration before it was actually finished. It might not be, but it kind of feels like it for now. I might make Dick Mann proud yet and finally ride to one of those trails that don’t really exist in my part of the world (unless you trespass on county land). The Hammer may still live up to its name and thump once more.
Sinclair C5 - the Personal Electric Vehicle
The concept of 'personal electric mobility' has been around for almost 150 years. In fact, the very first patent for a motorcycle (1871) specified an electric motor, from an era when both motors and the batteries to power them had to be built by hand, and were hardly reliable. Give a read to our History of Electric Motorcycles article for some background. While the legacy of electric vehicles in mass transport and industrial use is a century of success (think electric buses, trollies, trains, forklifts, etc), the mass-production of personal electric vehicles has a far spottier and more problematic story. Only in the past ten years has the electric vehicle become truly popular for personal use, but that doesn't mean clever folks haven't tried.
The Sinclair C5 was assembled from major components by different contractors: the plastic body by Linpac, the chassis and gearbox by Lotus, a Phillips motor, Oldham lead-acid battery, etc. A deal was negotiated with a Hoover washing machine facility in Wales to assemble and test the C5, with production slated for 200,000 units/year. Before the January 1985 launch of the C5, 2500 had already been built to deal with anticipated demand.
The Sinclair C5 was launched at a lavish press reception at Alexandra Palace, featuring Stirling Moss. As it was cold, most of the C5s refused to run properly, and ran out of battery very quickly. Press testers taking the C5 out on the road were terrified when they encountered trucks, which could not see them and belched exhaust directly in their faces. There was no weather protection, so testers froze and got wet. In short, the launch was a disaster. And the bad news kept coming, with magazines and newspapers expressing concern about the lack of any safety equipment, the invisibility of the C5 to many drivers, and the lack of training/licensing/helmet requirement for young riders. The 250W electric motor was insufficient for any hill, and the battery ran flat between 6-12 miles, far below the 30-mile claimed range.
Samuel Aboagye - A Promising Update
We'll expand on this story soon, but much has happened since we installed Samuel Aboagye's Solar Scooter and Solar Taxi in our Electric Revolutionaries exhibit at the Petersen Automotive Museum. The Motor/Cycle Arts Foundation sent team members Dan Green and Greg Hatton to Accra, Ghana, to make a short documentary of Sam's world, which you can see here. Our team was invited to present the story our relationship with Sam at a design conference in Marrakesh, Morocco, by Safir Belali, who teaches at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. Two of our team were able to participate in person - Greg Hatton and Nadia Amer - and Paul d'Orléans participated by Zoom. We shared our film of Samuel, and discussed our developing relationship with him, and were then joined by Samuel himself by Zoom, who answered questions from the professional designers and students in attendance. It turned out to be quite a moving presentation, as Samuel has basically has nothing and lives in a very poor community, but created something amazing solely from his ingenuity and resourcefulness.
[Dan Green]
Albert Menasco: Pirate of the Sky
If you were asked to define a swashbuckling life, what would that include? How about motorcycle racing, wing-walking, car racing, working an international carnival circuit, piloting experimental planes, and manufacturing the winningest aero racing engines of the 1930s? There’s only one man with such a resumé: Albert Menasco. And yet, I’d never heard of him until Dr. Robin Tuluie (see our article 'Actually it IS Rocket Science') introduced me to the name via the 1928-ish aero-engine race car he’d built using a Menasco engine, but more on that anon. Curiosity about Menasco revealed he was a quintessentially adventurous American in the ‘Teens, a motor-showman when a cocktail of unbridled enthusiasm, innocence and technical know-how would typically end with you famous, dead, or famously dead. Menasco somehow walked the middle way, and ended as neither, while his legacy and impact continue to this day, nearly unheralded.
[This article originally appeared in The Automobile magazine, the July 2021 edition. Special thanks to the San Diego Air & Space Museum for permission to dig into the Albert Menasco archives, and reproduce many of the remarkable photos used here.]