It's the new year, and a time to take stock of the new series of motorcycles that has been trickling out of the gate over the past few months. It’s also the nadir of our Canadian winter here in Calgary, so of course this is the perfect time to attend a flashy, disappointing motorcycle show to examine this year's newly minted cash grabs and dull rehashes in the hopes of finding a few gems in this post-Economic Apocalypse era.


For some sadistic reason all the major Canadian motorcycle exhibitions are held in the middle of our bitter winter, when we are at least three months away from turning a wheel in anger. It's a chance to admire shiny new contrivances of the two wheeled variety to briefly distract ourselves from the misery of our cold, cycle-free season. Really it seems idiotic. Despite optimistic displays loaded with the latest (and leftover) gear and temporary finance offices throughout the show floor, this isn't the time of year when you are going to be buying bikes. Even taking delivery of them is a chore, shuttling them home on a trailer or pickup just so you can wistfully gaze at them in your garage for 4 months, then take your first wobbly, familiarizing ride on sand and salt caked roads the moment the snow recedes... Test rides are virtually out of the question at Canadian dealerships any time of the year, outside of heavily regulated demo days where you’ll have to sign up well in advance to ride the latest base model at 5 under the speed limit for 30 minutes.


Calgary seems to get the short end of the stick when it comes to the show circuit. I've attended the Montreal and Toronto shows in the past, and they are usually well stocked and exceptionally well attended (i.e. crowded as all fuck). This in spite of the significant anti-biker sentiments and associated legislation (not to mention obscene insurance/registration fees) in Quebec and Ontario. Alberta is one of the most free and accommodating provinces in the Confederation and exhibits precious little meddling with its motorcycling population. From my perspective in the industry, motorcycle sales here are fantastic given the population size, with a perpetually booming oil economy feeding an amazing level of disposable income in the general population – rig pigs like their toys. Not only that, but we are less than an hour away from the Rockies and a lot of beautiful motorcycling routes, and not that far away from British Colombia where you can find some of the best roads in North America. Unlike out East, sales of shitty cruisers don’t dominate the market and colour the entire industry with a faux-badass chrome and leather sheen. Here capital-A Adventure bikes are king, along with pure off road machines and a good smattering of tourers, standards and sport bikes. Metric cruisers are sales floor deadweight. People out here appreciate bikes that are versatile and can go around corners, though there are plenty of dorky hipster gangs with unrideable choppers and café-poseurs to keep things balanced.



This should be an epicenter of Canadian motorcycling. But it isn't. And consequently the Calgary show sucks.


But I digress. My seasonal vitamin-D deficiency is manifesting itself in undue bitterness. You try being a passionate motorcyclist in a land where your riding season is six months long, on a good year, in a city where you've witnessed snowstorms in the middle of September.


I was curious to see some of the new offerings, though in general I've found this year to be quite disappointing in terms of new models. Conservatism seems to be rampant outside of a few high-profile aberrations that have (rightfully) grabbed the public's attention. This probably shouldn't come as a surprise – the fact that there are neat machines getting built at all should be the shocker. We are still in the midst of a slump and plummeting oil prices are screwing with the market, despite misplaced optimism that maybe the economy is really picking up (for real this time, honest, dear God please), and most of the models that are being released now had their design briefs finalized during the depths of the recession.


Star of the show was undoubtedly the Kawasaki H2R. This thing, despite all criticisms, is amazing - the best kind of batshit lunacy you can buy over the counter with a factory warranty. The mere fact that Kawi had the balls to build something so utterly, ridiculously over the top nearly makes up for the atrocious styling and handbag liner seat of the Z1000. We need more off-the-wall engineering exercises like the H2R to spur on an arms race in what has become a terribly boring industry that has been chasing points in worthless magazine shootouts for far too long. It doesn't matter that the H2R is ugly, exorbitantly expensive (55,000$ here in Canada), not street legal, or that the H2 street version is detuned and overweight to the point of being eclipsed by the latest batch of superbikes before it even left the factory. Kawasaki engineers have built something impressive, pointless, and excessive, a fantastic display of engineering prowess born from the mere act of leaving the bean counters out of the equation. The finish and quality of the prototype on display was superb and it is clearly ready for mass production.


Three H2Rs have already been sold in Canada, along with a handful of H2s. I wouldn't say it is better than an equivalently priced Bimota, but it's undeniably cool and the fact that the Japanese have built it marks, for me, a return to form. The Japanese are at their best when they are given the freedom to exercise their engineering prowess, not when they are busy chasing Joe Average’s bottom dollar by making budget knockoffs of more interesting machines. The former is what inspires action and pushes the industry forward, the latter is what gives accountants a hardon.


Yamaha brought along a lone YZF-R1M for the masses to drool over, and truth be told it is quite a nice looking machine. Quality appears to be higher than usual for a production Japanese machine, with glossy carbon-fibre, a brushed alloy fuel tank, sharp TFT dash, and tasty electronically adjustable Ohlins goodies on both ends. If anything the styling is dull, and it looks weird by lacking a "face" due to those minimal lights up front, but the specifications and technology on display more than makes up for it. It's a handsome machine when you see it in person. The only major gripe I can muster is the idiotic projector beams tacked under the nose like an afterthought. The LED running lights set into the nose look cool as balls, but those main beams look like streetfighter cast offs bought from the AutoZone discount bin. On the plus side they are easy to take off for trackdays, which is probably the whole point.


Whatever the specs, the new R1 will naturally deliver obscene levels of razor-sharp performance... Just like every single other superbike on the market. No matter what the those contrived magazine comparos would lead you to believe, every single one of these machines is ridiculously overpowered and has capabilities so far beyond your conception that calling one better than another and putting together absurd score cards based on press release drivel is some of the most pedantic bullshit you can engage in as a quote-unquote “journalist”. As far as I’m concerned, if you are a mortal human street rider your entire experience aboard one of these time-space disruptors should be reduced to shrieks of euphoric delight punctuated by moments of abject terror, with an overwhelming sense of relief at the end of a not-fatal ride. If you aren't gibbering like an idiot after twisting the throttle to the stop on a clear road, then you are have no soul. Only seasoned racers have any right to comment on the superhuman capabilities of these machines, which is why you should be reading the reviews in Road Racing World for accurate summaries of what is and is not good on these brutes. Otherwise ignore ALL of it and just buy whatever tickles your prostate and fits your budget.


There was a pleasant surprise found at the Yamaha booth, one that is likely going to get overlooked by everyone drooling over the R1: the FJ-09. Forget all the pretenses of it being an “adventure tourer” – it's not, and never will be. It's far too light, slim, nimble and handsome to fall into that category, and it comes with 17 inch wheels shod with honest-to-God street tires. Like the Kawasaki Versys, it's a neat little everyday middleweight that fills the gap left by the wholesale abandonment of the sport touring category. Unlike the Versys, it's good looking, has some really nice quality components, and uses the awesome little 847cc triple pulled straight out of the FZ-09 but with the shitty fuel injection and garbage suspension sorted out.


If the FJ-09 has any major flaw it is that it is innocuous to the point of being invisible – it turned out that we had two of these sitting in the showroom of the dealer where I work, and I hadn't noticed them for over a month. Oops. I hope that doesn't discourage buyers, because this is a sweet little machine that fills a niche that has long been neglected – a proper lightweight sport tourer with a fun motor and good handing that weighs under 500 lbs and isn't a BMW GS knockoff. It’s also 11 grand (CDN), which is probably the bargain of the year, though they will charge you a fair bit extra if you want the factory hard bags... Not that any company throws in free luggage on anything smaller than a Goldwing. If I was in the market for a touring bike of any description the FJ-09 would be first pick on my list.


Between the R1, the FJ-09, last year's appealing FZ-09, and the class-leading FZ-07, I think Yamaha is on a roll making good stuff for the common rider.

    
Continuing with the Japanese contingent: Honda had nothing notable on display. The most interesting thing they brought along was a clean, first generation GL1000, to give you an indication of how boring the lineup was this year. There was the updated VFR800, which looks more dated than the outgoing Interceptor despite being a fair bit lighter and more modern under the dull exterior. There was the goofy and expensive (12,499$, a mere 100$ less than a 2015 CBR600RR) NM4 Vultus, which is what happens when a company collectively forgets one their failures (DN-01) so hard that they repeat it verbatim a few years later.


Then there was the CBR300 and the latest versions of the 700 twins and… oh God I can't even muster the slightest bit of interest in any of these catastrophically tedious appliances.


Moving on.

Suzuki rounded things out by showing almost nothing new. The 2015 GSXR differs from the 2014 only in paint, they brought back the DRZ400SM virtually unchanged from when they discontinued it in 2008, along with the SV650S which is also unchanged - yes, American readers, they still sell the semi-faired SV up here right alongside the overcooked SFV. The company hasn't been doing so hot lately, what with their automotive arm imploding, so it's probably not a surprise to see they are rehashing the same ol' to save money. They did bring two of the new GSX-S750 models, which proved to be a handsome little standard and a welcome addition to a category that has been neglected for years in North America. Mercifully they didn't bring the budgie-faced GSX-S1000F, which has to be the most comically styled motorcycle I've seen since Buell went tits up.


Speaking of Buell, Erik Buell Racing was notably absent. Despite having Parts Unlimited as their, uh, parts distributor in the United States, there has been no word whatsoever about bringing EBR up into the frigid tundra, which would be presumably done through PU’s poor Northern brother Parts Canada. Motovan, a major rival to Parts Canada up here, acts as the distributor for MV Agusta so it would make sense for Parts Can to get into the game with EBR.


Or maybe it wouldn't. I don't care. I just really want them to be sold up here, and I really genuinely want them to see them succeed.


I've been quite impressed with what Erik Buell has accomplished in the years since Harley-Davidson shuttered his company. I had the opportunity to examine the new 1190RX and SX in detail while visiting the Barber Vintage Festival this past October, as well as attend a charity dinner that had Erik as the guest of honor. I had the chance to talk to Buell briefly. He is in a great position; Hero MotoCorp provides the funding and the stability, while his team in Wisconsin provides Hero with R&D. He was quite proud of his team's work for Hero, which has largely been ignored – EBR has built 13 concept vehicles for Hero since their partnership began, all of which have earned Hero quite a bit of acclaim. It might not go over so well in India if word was spread that the high-profile concepts of a local company were designed and built in America, a curious turn of circumstances in a world where Harley-Davidson is quietly putting together bikes in Bawal.


The RX and SX are nice looking motorcycles, and all signs point to them being a hoot to ride. Having had the opportunity to examine them next to the 1190RS, I can safely say that they share a lot more in common with that limited-production 46,495$ USD beast than even EBR has let on. The frame, subframe and swingarm are identical, the RX/SX have better looking bodywork, finish quality is equal (and quite good for a small startup), and power is up substantially while still meeting all the requisite emission and noise regulations. The only place the RX/SX lag the RS is in suspension components and their lack of carbon-fibre bodywork, which is acceptable considering they retail for less than half the price. Buell's trademark weirdness is still present with their fuel in frame chassis and perimeter brake, but aside from that the new frame and engine share nothing in common with the swansong 1125R– Harley still owns the rights to the Buell name and the 1125, so EBR set about reverse engineering the 1125 and making it better in every respect without infringing on HD's patents. The 1190 engine is made in-house by EBR and was heavily revised by their engineers compared to the Rotax-made 1125. The 1190 represents similar ideas to the 1125 but with different execution. I thought the 1125 was an awesome machine (marred only by some of the most godawful fuel injection subjected upon the buying public), so the thought of a highly polished successor with 40 more horsepower and far better styling is truly tantalizing to me. I want one, and I sincerely hope EBR does well, and is given a fair shake by our ever-skeptical market. They just need to get their act together and find a Canadian distributor.


Harley-Davidson was present, and laughably out of touch as would be expected. While the execrable "Urban. Authentic. Soul." Street 500/750s took centre stage alongside a couple of luridly awful custom jobs based upon them, two – count em'– TWOLivewire prototypes were relegated to a remote corner of the show.  They were setup in what looked more like a stand for a local bike club than a cost-no-object display of the forward-thinking engineering prowess of America’s  motorcycle kingpin. They proved to be an interesting distraction and the only electric machines present aside from some Oset kiddie trials bikes.

I apologize for not getting any decent shots of the Livewire. It was due to the huge crowd that was milling around the booth. The same could not be said about the Hipsterbait 500/750 display. Are you taking notes, Harley?

I poked through a tablet setup in the booth with a digital contest entry form… To win a Street model, and sign up for updates on the Street series. Sigh. They could not have missed the mark more if they tried, but this wasn't a surprise. Despite a throng of curious onlookers crowding the Livewire display, where they were letting people run up the bike on a set of rollers to get a feel for how the electric motor behaved, Harley is horny to push to their entry-level Street onto young, beginning riders who they are desperate to lure into their fold. The terrible custom jobs on display at centre stage were clearly aimed at budding chop and hack artists (and appeared to be put together by them as well).

Check out the Picasa album for more detail pictures from the show.

A chipper 20-something salesperson misinterpreted my gaze of pained disgust as a sign of interest and tried to corner me to tell me all about this cool new Street model and how these custom bikes were built by… Before he shut up and moved on to other targets when he realized I didn't remotely give a shit. The demographics are getting older and Harley is looking to seduce the youth with what looks like their budget interpretation of a Honda Shadow... Built in India (sorry, “Assembled in Kansas”) with component quality that would cost a Honda employee their head.      

Harley-Davidson's marketing strategy.

Meanwhile, the Europeans are busy doing their own thing. Ducati brought along several Scrambler models and a stage dedicated to them alone, replete with faux-woodsy motif and astroturf to complete the illusion of rugged individualism for the flannel-and-beard set. A single 1299 Panigale S (identical to the 1199 outside of the motor and some subtle chassis tweaks) was shunted into the opposite corner; long gone are the days when Ducati used their magnificent sportbikes as flagship models, apparently. There were more Diavels present than anything else, a sure sign of the apocalypse if you are a die-hard Ducatisti. I walked away from the stand with zero desire to own another Duc, a sentiment I've felt for a few years now – the 1098R or 1198SP would be the latest Ducs I'd consider owning, everything that has followed those brutes has left me cold. That's why when it came to adding another bike to my stable, I bought a used Aprilia Tuono to supplement my 916.


The Scrambler is clearly Ducati's new golden boy, and at a glance you'd be forgiven for thinking they've thrown all their eggs into that particular basket. The hype and marketing has been ridiculous, in scope and in content. In terms of the bike, it is clearly a tarted-up replacement for the discontinued Monster 696/796, a fact that most reviewers appear to have overlooked – it is thus the last Ducati to use the evergreen air-cooled 2-valve Pantah engine, which has been steadily phased out of the company's lineup due to increasingly tight emissions regulations. The fact the Scrambler uses the 2V engine came as a bit of a shock to us pundits who been anticipating this model for several years – we expected them to dump the Pantah architecture after the Monster series took on the liquid-cooled Testastrettas across the board. Whatever the grim realities of emissions laws, it serves for a cheap platform to slot into a new model, and it suits the target market – the 803cc is a good “little” motor and has a nice friendly powerband, and is stone-axe reliable and well developed as far as Ducati engines go. Also, the tooling was paid off sometime 30 years ago so Ducati should make a tidy profit on the Scrambler despite it being a brand new entry-level model.


The Scramblers are cheap, and they will sell a ton of them. They have them aimed squarely at the Triumph Bonneville/Scrambler/Thruxton, Hipsterbait Street, and Moto Guzzi V7 in terms of price and image – and in this crowd they likely won’t have much trouble kicking ass. The initial reviews have been incredibly vague, apparently pawned off onto the newbie journalists (because it's an entry level bike?) who have been so wishy-washy in their impressions they might as well be reviewing a Toyota Camry from the backseat. That being said they appear well put together and are more than likely fun to ride - they won't have much trouble burying their asthmatic competitors. Styling wise I’d call them a miss, though plenty of people seem to like them. To me they look like cartoony, toy-like facsimiles of the original bevel-head Scramblers.


I had the opportunity to sit down with Pierre Terblanche while visiting the Confederate factory last year and spent a while talking bikes, in particular about his work on the SportClassics and the design of the new Scrambler. He dug around on his computer and pulled up a photograph of a studio mockup he had made around the mid-2000s. It was clearly a “Scrambler”, but one that was far more handsome and mature than the Fisher-Price caricature that Ducati has seen fit to release. To get an idea of what he showed me, picture a Sport 1000 with taller suspension, high bars, repro Scrambler tank, and knobby tires. It was a relatively simple series of changes that would have been easy to put into production, and it looked good. It would have fit right into the whole street scrambler fad... And he had it ready to go 10 years ago. But of course at the time the SportClassics were completely under-appreciated and came out too far ahead of the explosion of the neoclassical retro motorcycle craze; with sales of the SC in the toilet Ducati took the short-sighted path and made the knee-jerk reaction of choosing to abandon the lineup instead of developing it and amortizing the costs to remain competitive. Terblanche wouldn't say “I told you so”, so I’ll say it for him: I’ll bet the management at Ducati was mighty embarrassed when they realized what they had fucked up after they unceremoniously dumped the whole SportClassic line.


I'll also say that I was once a Terblanche-hater, but time has proven him to have remarkable foresight and his designs look better today than they ever did when they were current – nevermind that he had several popular designs under his belt that his critics are frighteningly quick to forget about, including the 888, the Supermono and the Hypermotard. After having had the chance to hang out with him and talk shop and design, I’m happy to admit I was wrong and I have earned a new found appreciation for his work. How he will fare now that he is moving to Royal Enfield remains a mystery to me; there are only so many ways you can restyle a Bullet, so I hope for Pierre’s sake they are working on something new and modern upon which he can really flex his abilities.


Over at MV Agusta the latest models were present, though the long-announced (but not terribly anticipated) Turismo Veloce was AWOL. Continuing their milking of the tre-pistone architecture appeared to be the order of the day. The Brutale and Dragster RR were hogging the limelight, with flashy paint and impressive tubeless spoke rims on the Dragster - which look far better in red/black than the red/white/black. The white rimmed machine looks like the motorcycle equivalent of a pair of white Nike pumps and a sideways baseball cap. The Stradale was also on display, which has got to be one of the least anticipated successes of the past year. Somehow taking the Rivale, which was noted to be the least suitable MV for riding further than the nearest Starbucks, and slapping on some tiny bags, an ugly windshield, and a bigger fuel tank transformed it into the most streetable MV in the lineup. It's a sport tourer that should not work, but somehow does and it has been defying all expectations. It also looks like a mess, like someone vomited the contents of the Vespa accessory catalogue onto a Rivale.


The unfortunate side of this multiplication of the lineup (in the three-cylinder line alone there are six distinct models) are some signs of cost-cutting, stuff that has traditionally been beneath MV who have always been notable for their superb build quality. The triples are inexpensive as far as MVs go and they have begun to suffer when compared to the F4, which was always a benchmark in terms of component quality and tidy finishing. Cheap castings, exposed wiring and connectors, and bits made of zinc-plated pot metal are starting to pop up on the newest bikes. Not a good sign, but one that is unfortunately understandable considering they are slapping these out for thousands less and in far greater quantities than anything in the F4/Brutale 4 lines.


On the plus side, word on the street is that MV’s fuel mapping and electronics packages have been refined a lot since their introduction - meaningful progress, because according to some reliable sources they were virtually unrideable in their initial setups. Not that that is unique to MV in our ride-by-wire age – the first maps on the FZ-09 had awful throttle response, though most reviewers were happy to downplay the problem in favour of parroting the launch hype. Take note of how many reviews of the FJ-09 mention how improved the fueling is compared to the FZ.

Note the cheap zinc-plated pieces bolted on the centre of the bar clamp.

Quality gripes aside, these MVs are still exceptionally pretty motorcycles (except for the Stradale) and I still want one (but not a Stradale), all flaws be goddamned. The F3 and F4 remain benchmarks of how a sportbike should look, and will endure for a long time as mouth-watering examples of why Massimo Tamburini was one of the finest motorcycle designers of our generation.        


Nothing notable was new from Moto Guzzi aside from some new colour schemes, as you'd expect from Piaggio's perennially neglected brand. At the other end of the spectrum the new Aprilia RSV4 and Tuono 1100 were absent. The only bikes on display were 2014 models from dealer stock. The Piaggio group always has a magical way of making great motorcycles look exceptionally dull and under appreciated by way of their special blend of neglect and a complete lack of effective marketing... Especially here in Canada, where Aprilias and Guzzis seem to be slightly less common than Vincents.


Over at BMW, the boys from Bavaria were showcasing their newly revamped boxer line which included the new R1200R and R1200RS. These, in my mind, represent a move in the wrong direction for one reason alone: they dump the Telelever front suspension in favour of cheap, non-adjustable telescopic forks. I don’t care if they are excellent bikes, and have superb handling in spite of this; I don’t even care if the upside down forks they share with the R Nine T perform better than the outgoing Telelever setup. I’m sure they are great bikes and will work perfectly well. However, to me, a deranged blogger who values oddities and unique features in a sea of conservative design, BMW’s move away from their signature funny front ends represents an abandonment of the admirable cost-no-object risk taking they exhibited when they adopted those weird-ass suspensions in the first place. It is also, in my mind, a clear case of tightwad cost cutting.


The new S1000RR was nice but not particularly noteworthy outside of the usual class-chasing tweaks to put them back at the top of the spec sheet wars. The only comment I can really muster is it looks slightly less ugly with its softened face, which has abandoned its Cubist interpretation of a headlight. The updates will surely please the chicken-strip and carbon-fibre set who seem to gravitate towards them.


A pleasant surprise at the KTM booth was the inclusion of the Duke 390 and RC390. They represent a smart move towards genuinely good entry level machines that will appeal to new riders without the stigma surrounding the shitty entry-level crap that has been pawned off on North American riders for years. Sure, we haven't appreciated anything under 600ccs and our open licensing system has kept sales of sensible machines in the low-to-nonexistent range, but continuing to offer nothing better than unsexy antiquated crap like the Ninja 250-300-400 hasn't helped matters. One of my first bikes was a Japanese import Honda NC24 VFR400R, which proved to be about the most fun you could have with less than 100 hp and a fantastic introduction to sport riding with something that was cool, desirable, and not dumbed down in any way. I was totally sold on the value of high-quality small sportbikes and I've since been disappointed by how this category has been completely ignored outside of the Japanese home market.


That being said I'm not delusional - those JDM 400s and 250s would ever achieve any success beyond a cult following here because they are too small, too expensive, and will never appeal to the bigger-is-better and fastest-is-best crowd.


The 390s represent something quite special, a tentative first step towards bringing that kind of small-bore fun to the Americas – and unlike the JDM imports, they have an extremely accessible price tag while still looking like proper machines. However, the efforts to get the price down are clear at a glance – quality appears to be middling. They still look better than anything in the category right now; the Yamaha R3 was also present and looked half-decent with perhaps slightly better build quality (reviews are still pending), but they didn't exude quite the same cool factor as the 390s. And that's where KTM has a potential winner on their hands: the 390s are cool and people want them.


KTM has been on a roll lately, and had their latest 1190 and 1290 Adventures on hand (but not the Euro Regulation Special 1050). The 1290R Superduke was also present, and has been making everyone go weak-knee'd for several months. We've had a few pass through the shop already and they are truly an exceptional machine - one of the finest, maddest streetfighters of all time and a fantastic throwdown that KTM's competition had better heed. It looks amazing and the motor is apparently one of the greatest motorcycle engines of all time: owners report that it if treated gently it is docile and smooth, and easy to ride in traffic, but one stiff twist of the wrist and it will rip your goddamned face off and make you thankful for the comprehensive traction control package. 100 mph power wheelies are available. This thing is ridiculous in the best possible way. It also sounds apocalyptic with a decent pipe - the hot ticket is an Austin Racing slip-on (be sure ride it at least once without the baffle).

You've already seen plenty of pictures of the 1290R. I also may have forgotten to snap any shots of it. So here's more of the 390s!

The original Aprilia Tuono showed the way to achieve motorcycling nirvana – take a sportbike, remove the fairings, put high bars, then leave the rest the hell alone. No detuning, no dumbing down, no diluting the experience. The Superduke takes this to the next level by building a vicious naked sportbike from the ground up – it isn't based on anything pre-existing and it sure as hell hasn't been softened up because it lacks clip-ons and a fairing. It’s everything we lunatic sport riders have ever wanted, while still being entirely usable every day, and I sincerely hope it inspires other brands to follow suit. The current competition got caught with their pants down, and now they are going to have to work hard to reach the new high water mark. Yes, the retail price is high (18,999$ up here), but damned if it isn't worth it in this case.


It’s funny that the Superduke has gotten so much good press and rabid attention, because Ducati had the same kind of machine in showrooms not that long ago – the Streetfighter 1098 was a ridiculously fast, vicious, no-compromise naked sport bike that everyone claimed they wanted but nobody actually bought once they released it (see also: SportClassic). Unlike the KTM it lacked civility in daily use, which ended up being the major gripe against it, along with a high price tag. Despite giving the people what they wanted, reviews were whiny and gave the SF1098 middling marks, often making the unfair comparison between the SF and the full-fat 1198 and then concluding that the 1198 was a better sportbike (...duh?). Sales suffered for a while before Ducati finally gave up, dropping the SF1098 while leaving the far duller SF848 in production. Then, shortly after it was axed, the SF1098 earned a dedicated cult following and secondary market pricing has remained very high (see also: SportClassic).

Somehow the equally (perhaps more) nuts Aprilia Tuono V4 ended up becoming a darling of reviewers despite being worse as a daily rider than the Streetfighter - the thousands-less price tag probably contributed to it becoming the poster boy for the category while the Duc got damned with faint praise. Ducati gave up and went on to build the fat and fluffy Monster 821/1200. Rumours are circulating that they might, maybe, should build a naked Panigale, but given how they got burned on the Streetfighter I'd currently give those rumours as much credence as the imminent return of the Supermono... Unless they take a look at the Superduke and decide they want a piece of that sexy, sexy pie rather than shitting out another Diavel variant.

So long as the Superduke avoids the fate of the Streetfighter, it might be just what we need to wake up the naked sportbike market and inspire a new generation of bonkers, undiluted streetfighters. I for one welcome our new brutal overlords.


Of course you already knew that, because the Superduke has been getting praised and hyped ad-nauseum via every possible venue. I hate to propagate the myth, but damned if I don't want to get a ride on one. It won't happen though, because up here the 1290R is being treated like an exotic, unobtainable superstar. Nobody is getting seat time unless they have cash in hand or are a quote-unquote “real” journalist.

So, overall impressions for this year are that most companies appear to be erring on the cautious side. Outside of a few exceptional diversions most everything is terribly boring and barely noteworthy, much every year since the economy took a dump in 2008. We are barely out of the depths of the recession and it has really taken its toll on the market - when companies like Ducati and Harley are pushing their budget, entry-level models to the point of overshadowing their flagships, you know priorities are getting skewed in the wrong direction. Blindly chasing the consumer’s bottom dollar is never a good sign, particularly if you desperately want to see some innovation. There are, however, a few bright points - Yamaha is making good, appealing, accessible stuff, Kawasaki is making the bonkers H2 series, KTM is kicking ass and taking names at the top while also bringing in some sexy entry level machinery at the bottom, while south of the border EBR is showing that the folks in Wisconsin can build some world class sportbikes. Let's hope these stellar examples inspire some more innovation and competition: the rest of the industry should be taking note of what KTM, EBR, Yamaha, and Kawasaki are doing and ignoring the bullshit from everyone else.

Complete Picasa photo album

         

It's the mantra of the Canadian test pilot, the phrase ingrained into our collective consciousness through years of steady conditioning. We can rattle off the rules as if they were our name, rank and serial number. Anyone in this country who dares to be so self-entitled as to request a test ride aboard a motorcycle they are considering for purchase will be subjected to the bane of our existence: the heavily regulated demo ride.


Canadian dealerships are notoriously strict when it comes to lending out bikes. Unless you are a good friend of a high-level employee, or frequent the sort of time-capsule mom-and-pop bike shops that are rapidly disappearing, odds are you will never be allowed to test ride a machine outside of a tightly controlled, fully supervised, predetermined demo route. Riding a bike that you haven't bought yet is a virtual impossibility when you are dealing with big-box dealerships. There are liability issues, don't you know. They could get sued. One moron wrote off a bike on an unsupervised test 10 years ago and they haven't let anyone so much as sit on a bike in the showroom without a salesperson being present and a waiver being signed since then.

So if you want to try out a bike before you sign the paperwork, you'd better sit tight and sign up well in advance for the one demo day that marque is hosting sometime in the next four months. Or do like most of us do: say "fuck it" and buy the thing anyway and deal with the disappointment of the moto rag reviews not matching the reality later.





So it is that I'm straddling the Harley-Davidson Livewire on a cool Calgary afternoon, feigning my full attention as a grizzled Milwaukee employee, who looks like he is about 108% percent done with this shit, rattles off the rules of the ride we all know. It still didn't stop the over eager squid behind me from jumping the gun and initializing his bike into ride mode before we were instructed to do so, which has brought forth a cringe worthy admonition from Mr. Done. I hate demo rides and generally avoid them like the plague, even if I'm genuinely interested in trying out a particular machine - there is no possible way you can glean any meaningful conclusions from the experience, which generally will be limited to a not-at-all-scenic tour of the city blocks immediately surrounding the dealership led by an orange-clad marque representative who will always be riding the slowest and dullest machine they brought along, with 20 wobbly dolts on unfamiliar machines boxing you in on all sides.


Normally I'd leave this sort of pedantic bullshit to the folks who think a controlled demo ride is a worthy use of one's time. But this time is different. I'm aboard a prototype machine that represents a sea change in one of motorcycling's most conservative marques, and the mere fact I have the opportunity to ride it is something special. I don't want to pass up the opportunity to be on the ground floor of Harley thoroughly pissing off its traditional clientele in the pursuit of their future.


I first saw the LiveWire in person at the Calgary Motorcycle Show, where it was presented in the precise manner you'd expect Harley to showcase something modern and interesting: setup in a low-rent booth stuffed into a less travelled corner of the exhibition, as far away from the HD main stage as possible (you couldn't even see one stand from the other if you tried). The focus of HD's gleaming, candy-coloured display, aside from the usual selection of chrome-addled Sportsters and Twin Cams, was the new line of execrable Street models that they were pitching to everyone with a pulse who wandered within 10 feet of the display. Chipper young career salesmen (and they were all men) circled the stage looking for unsuspecting victims to barrage with buzzwords and cringe-inducing press release hyperbole about the new Street models. There was a desperate, palpable hope lingering in the air that these pieces of shit will lure young blood into the Motor Company's clutches while they desperately try to penetrate a new segment of the market before all the Baby Boomers drop dead and stop buying Road Kings.


Meanwhile, across the hall, a pair of LiveWires were surrounded by a crowd of curious onlookers. The small staff present was overwhelmed by showgoers asking questions and snapping photos as they ran one of the bikes up on a set of rollers, filling the air with the shrill whine of a high-powered electric powertrain. It was clear to anyone present that Harley could not have missed the mark more if they tried. These two prototypes stole the show and received far, far more attention than the dull beginner bikes taking centre stage over in the main display.


If Harley was looking to seduce a new market, the LiveWire was the ticket - not the made-in-India (erm, sorry, "assembled in Kansas") Streets that they were pushing on anyone who would dare humour them.


Now, several months on, the tune is gradually changing. The LiveWire now appears destined for production at some undetermined point in the future, though nobody seriously believed they weren't given the level of publicity surrounding their introduction last year. A multi-billion dollar juggernaut like Harley-Davidson doesn't make waves without a good reason. The LiveWire is fast becoming HD's key to appealing to a younger market. The high level of finish on these "prototypes" and the sheer number of them they apparently have kicking around for media tests suggested the project was a lot further along than they were originally letting on. Now Harley is pulling out all the stops and rotating a squad of LiveWires through the USA and Canada for public demos to gauge interest and canvas for feedback, with an upcoming tour through Europe seeing generating so much interest that they have been setting up lotteries to determine who will get the chance to ride them.


And you know what? After having ridden one of the damned things, I think the project just might succeed - if Harley is smart about it.

This is probably not the perspective most of my followers would anticipate from me. I'm supposed to hate Harleys and all the ass-backwards populist conservatism they represent. I'm a sport rider who has a penchant for vicious, uncompromised Italian superbikes. I'm supposed to shit all over these machines and call them stupid and ugly and throw around a bunch of analogies about leather-clad dentists roleplaying badass motorcycle outlaws on the weekends based on the sales brochure bullshit concocted by a bunch of suits on Madison Avenue. This is the company that tuned aerodynamics to reduce "beard lift" for chrissake.


But you want to know the honest truth? I respect Harley-Davidson.  Some days, when I'm suffering either from sleep deprivation or a surplus of Coors in my system, I even like them. They are the prototypical cruiser and remain the only authentic one in a sea of shamelessly cheesy knockoffs that can only aspire to steal scraps from the dominant market share owned by the boys in Milwaukee. Believe it or not I wouldn't mind owning one - preferably a FXDX Dyna Sport, or a XL1200S, or if I was feeling particularly masochistic a XLCR.


So I approached the LiveWire with an open mind. I've never had the opportunity to ride an electric bike so I was looking forward to the introduction, and the prospect of riding a prototype machine that isn't for sale is always tantalizing even if I'm one of several thousand people to do it.

Harley isn't the only big name eyeing the two-wheeled electric market. As you've no doubt heard by now Polaris recently bought out Brammo and in the process have secured a turn-key entry into what is a small but increasingly viable (and valuable) niche. So far all they've done is slap some Victory logos onto an Empulse and badge-engineer their way into the market, but it is a start and it is one that will benefit the cause by offering the support of an existing dealer network to what had hitherto been a tiny niche product. In theory, with Polaris' money and clout behind them, Brammo can refine their work in electric powertrains and battery technology. Given enough time they may even bring the price down to a more palatable level, so that decent electric machines can compete with ICE bikes on equal footing.  


That is the issue that Harley is apparently facing with the LiveWire. The cost per unit of these "prototypes" is supposedly way beyond what any sane person would pay for what is otherwise a pretty ordinary, unexceptional motorcycle with a really limited range and their design is tailored to suit the purposes of a short demo route. Unlike Polaris, HD is designing and building these things from the ground up, and their bill of materials and R&D costs are likely astronomical given they have no history of working on electric powertrains. It will take several years of development and steady sales to amortize those costs, as well as develop a driveline/battery pack that is efficient enough to offer something better than the laughable 50-ish mile range and 3.5 hour recharge time the LiveWire is currently saddled with. Press releases and public statements from HD brass reflect a cautious attitude, with conservative estimates pegging production as being at least several years away while HD works on getting the price down and improving range.


Some analysts have noted that this "done when it's done" approach might hurt Harley's chances in the long term, if they allow their competitors to get the jump on a nascent market while they refine a product that might be obsolete by the time it is released to the public. Of course these pundits don't offer a solution to this conundrum. Does Harley sell them as is and get their foot in the door with an overpriced, under-developed product? Do they take a massive loss on each unit to keep the price competitive? Either method would be quick way to kill the project in short order. Harley isn't in the business of losing money and if LiveWire sales were either A. nonexistent or B. incurring massive losses you can bet that they'd dump the whole damned mess and double back on their core products. We'd be back to square one, with Harley profusely apologizing for offending the traditionalists with an expensive diversion.


The market that the LiveWire is targeting is an ephemeral one, shifting quickly as technology progresses and startups come and go. While we've certainly progressed beyond the humble and humiliating electric scooter being the sole production option for electric moto enthusiasts, the current electric motorcycle market is all over the damned map and nobody seems sure how to sell these things. Halo products, electric bikes that threaten the hegemony of high-powered gasoline burners, are few and far between.  Mission seemed poised to conquer with their wicked fast and quite appealing One and R/RS models, but they appear to have evaporated into that black hole that swallows every overly ambitious motorcycle startup (incidentally, Mission apparently contributed some design work to the LiveWire's powertrain). Lightning and Energica are trying to claw their way into the void left by Mission's vapourware but face an uphill battle against traditionalism, price points, and expectations of performance and range.


The only apparently viable contenders are Brammo and Zero, which have done reasonably well producing machines that are a reasonable approximation of a middleweight standard. They aren't exactly sexy, but they represent the first generation of legitimate motorcycles powered by electric motors with acceptable range. They don't offer superior performance to anything bigger than a 650 twin, nor are they cheaper than their conventional alternatives (in fact they command a significant premium), but they do fill a miniscule niche for younger buyers who find alternative powertrains appealing, or the odd veteran rider who wants something different, and even a few fleet buyers who want green alternatives to the limited options in authorities-package motorcycles. It's the conservative approach to entering the electric market, and so far it has been the most successful. The safe approach is slow and steady with a humble product benefitting from constant refinement to improve range and performance. At this point their offerings are legitimate alternatives to real motorcycles and not just high-tech playthings for people who commute 5 miles to work.


The LiveWire's design is biased towards the Brammo/Zero side of the electric bike continuum, but packaged in a way that is reasonably original - a sort of sport cruiser that would make a good inner city commuter (mainly because its piddling range wouldn't allow much in the way of highway use) with enough performance to satisfy most riders.


If we ignore the whole electric powertrain, one thing nobody seems to mention regarding the LiveWire is that this is the closest thing to a modern sporting bike Harley-Davidson has ever made. That's significant. I could say something about Buell, but they were always a distinct entity operating outside of HD's factory (though that didn't mean they were free from HD's meddling, of course). You've got a stout cast alloy frame and swingarm, Showa big piston forks, light alloy wheels, and the whole package weighs less than 500 lbs. This is the first bike with a cantilever monoshock rear suspension Harley has knocked out since they stopped racing the VR1000.


Of course there are still some odd little elements that seem out of place, like HD was trying to put together a sporty bike but kept grabbing bits out of the wrong pile of parts. The 18 inch front wheel is one. So is the belt final drive. The deeply dished saddle with a super low seat height is another. As are the absolutely useless mirrors that are completely invisible while riding - unless you are wearing an open face helmet. Meanwhile the twin-piston sliding caliper and master cylinder for the front brake are pulled straight out of the corporate spares bin, complete with their HD-signature Oakwood feel.

It's not a cruiser and it's not a standard. Throw the electric powertrain into the mix and it is something entirely new. Somehow it works.  


The real strength of the LiveWire, as it stands today, is that Harley has polished the design to the point of it being apparently ready for production, if not ready for sale. There is nothing to suggest it is a prototype with an experimental drivetrain. They are put together perfectly, they function flawlessly, and everything feels fully thought out. Best of all, the technology is there but it is presented in a way that isn't jarring or demanding of some great conceptual shift. It's not a hardcore machine or a dorky, dull commuter. It doesn't scream greenwashed tax subsidy cash grab targeted at tech geeks. It's just a motorcycle, and it feels totally normal to ride aside from the lack of a transmission. In this category, with Harley's traditionally rabid fanbase, that's an important hurdle to clear.


The corporate spokespeople who were present were quick to share stories about how they "converted" quite a few greybeards after giving them the chance to ride one of the things.  Clearly they are trying to hype up the project and encourage good feedback, as you'd expect them to. But that attitude is a significant move away from HD's traditional corporate attitude, one that speaks of a perceptible shift away from those old farts who think liquid cooling is the tool of the devil. Harley is betting on a new generation of riders before their diehard customers start dropping off. This is the future, so embrace it or blow away in the wind.


This contrasts with the attitude they presented when the LiveWire was first unveiled, one that was along the lines of "deny it is a serious project until the critics shut up". It was a smart move on Harley's part, even if it meant that the LiveWire suffered a lack of credibility. The purists were assured that there were no plans for production. It was just a concept, a technical exercise to appease those young’uns and their fear of climate change with a toy that surely was not and would never be a "real" Harley sharing floor space with pushrod twins. It wasn't taken seriously, which meant HD could sneak it into the world without suffering a wall of vehement opposition from their core customers. Ain't brand politics fun?


Back to our dreary demo ride. A caveat: given the context of my test ride ("No slingshotting!") my impressions of the LiveWire are to be taken with a grain of salt - I'll admit to the limitations of my time aboard the LiveWire, limitations that everyone who has ridden it have been subjected to. The test route was a short inner city loop through some industrial areas, with no highway portion, so I wasn't able to ride the thing above 80-ish km/h. I barely had time to adjust to the "throttle" response of the machine, let alone begin forming a conclusive verdict about the dynamics.


The size of the LiveWire is the first thing you'll notice. It's smaller than you'd imagine, and quite a bit lighter than most electric bikes at around 460 lbs claimed "dry" weight (dry having a different meaning when there is no fuel or oil to lug around). The seat height is low and the handlebars nearly flat, allowing the Livewire to disappear beneath you - to the point where the mirrors and touchscreen dash are completely invisible, and thus useless, while you are riding. Footpegs are rear set but low enough to not feel cramped, even though the seat is so low I could flat foot with my knees bent despite my 30 inch inseam. Slow speed manoeuvrability is commendable, with the weight carried low in the chassis.

You get your choice of two riding modes selectable during the "startup" procedure, a process which is accompanied by a gentle hum from the liquid cooling system for the motor so you can perceive when it is "on". One mode is labelled Range and displays about 50% more miles to empty than the one labelled Power.

Given that this was going to be a brief test ride, and I'm not an idiot, I selected Power mode. With about 80% charge showing, the theoretical range was 37 kms. Ouch.  


The performance is surprising, particularly given that this is a single-speed machine with a just a bevel gear to transfer power from the longitudinal motor to a belt final drive. That intermediate gear gives the LiveWire its characteristic turbine whine soundtrack, one that is pleasant enough to keep you entertained and inspire fantasies of piloting a Tie Fighter around the block. Torque off the line is stout and the power builds in a totally linear way that is hard to describe. Imagine being in the lower midrange of a 1000cc-ish bike, all the time, without shifting. You have instant power anytime you twist the grip, and it pulls pretty hard, more than you'd think a single-speed bike with a mere 74hp and 52 lb/ft has any right to. Harley claims 0-60 mph in around 4 seconds and a governed top speed of 92 mph, which seems about right. The ample torque makes it feel even more muscular than the entry-level-middleweight performance would suggest. The power characteristics of an electric machine need to be experienced to be understood, and don't translate well into the metrics we are accustomed to - ignore your base desire to revert to spec sheet bench racing because it truly isn't worth much in this case.

Roll off and you are greeted with some significant regenerative braking, so strong that it makes the wooden brakes a moot point at low speeds - most of the time you don't need to use the brakes at all. In fact it's a pain in the ass. With no way to freewheel, you'll come to a dead stop in short order if you roll off, pogoing around like an idiot until you learn to always keep the throttle open slightly even when decelerating. I would think that the regen could be tuned better; my solution would be to have full strength above 50 km/h and then back it off in a linear way below that until it freewheels slightly around a walking pace. As it is, it doesn't feel natural and it takes some getting used to - and you need to be aware that you are slowing down considerably without a brake light to warn tailgaters. It's not a deal breaker by any means, just an irritating quirk you need to adapt to. A pretty small one considering this is an otherwise entirely new machine with an experimental drivetrain.

The cast alloy frame and swingarm look pretty stout, and the level of feedback suggests everything is pretty taut. Suspension feels like it is set up on the softer side of firm, with nicely controlled damping and a spring rate that seems to be in the ballpark for someone my size and weight (a rare thing given that I'm on the lighter side of the median at 5'7" and 140 lbs). Of course aiming for manhole covers on sidestreets is hardly a proper evaluation for suspension control and compliance, so take my comments for what they are worth: not much.


A scant few minutes later, we complete the loop and roll back into the safety of the semi-trailer awning as a menacing thunderstorm rolls across the horizon. I scarcely have time to form any meaningful impression of the LiveWire. There is one thing that is lacking from my notes taken after the ride - any sense of excitement. It's a motorcycle, one that goes from A to B without drama. That's a success given we are talking about a prototype with an all-new, unproven, alternative energy drivetrain produced by a manufacturer that has no track record in the field. The problem is the LiveWire goes about its business without any appreciable character. I didn't dislike it, and I enjoyed it more than I expected I would, but I didn't come away buzzing with the exhilaration I get from trying… anything else. At the end of the ride I thought it was a pleasant commuter that would be more interesting to ride to work than some dorky scooter. I noticed a few of the people present politely complimenting the experience to the staff, before adding that they prefer the sound and feel of a "real" motorcycle.  

Maybe this is more of a condemnation of the electric motorcycle than it is the LiveWire in particular.


Whatever the case, Harley has a long way to go before the LiveWire becomes an accepted part of the model range. Aside from concerns about the price and range, there is the small matter of selling the LiveWire through Harley's notoriously fickle dealer network. The same network that shunted Buell into the darkest corners of their showrooms, only agreeing to have them on hand due to HD strong arming and the promise that they might serve as entry-level machines to bring bodies in the door to look at/trade up to a "real" Harley. The same dealers who make their margin selling HD branded ice cube trays and providing 150$ an hour labour to those aging core customers that Harley is just about ready to alienate. Are they going to be happy carrying a weird, new-age product that attracts punk kids who won't buy a bunch of chrome bolt-ons? Worse yet, with virtually no maintenance requirements the LiveWire will be a losing proposition for dealers in the long term, unless they get crashed or break outside of the warranty period.

It sounds pessimistic, but keep in mind that dealerships are out to make money and they sure as shit don't make it selling new units off the floor. Not in the traditional dealer/distributor hierarchy, anyway. Tesla has been smart to toss all that shady bullshit straight out the window and establish a direct-to-consumer model, then use their R&D capacity to develop shared technology and improvements to infrastructure that has direct benefits to their consumers. Obviously that's a moot point when we are talking about Harley-fecking-Davidson, capitalists among capitalists, but it serves as an example of how a premium electric vehicle can be developed into a viable proposition.    


It seems Harley themselves are unsure of how to sell the LiveWire. The travelling show was heavily biased towards advertising products HD can sell you right now - more floor space was dedicated to pushing the Street and HD riding apparel than to actually showcasing the goddamned technological marvels they were demoing. Are you interested in the specs? How the technology was developed? What kind of powertrain is being used? What drove Harley to develop the LiveWire in the first place? What the plans are for the project and when might it see production? Tough shit. Buy a Street. Please. They are assembled in Kansas, don't you know.


There was a distinct emphasis on us, the public, being the carriers of marketing hype - we were explicitly instructed to share photos and tweet impressions with a predetermined hashtag. Somewhere, someone decided that manufacturing a viral marketing campaign was the cheap and easy solution to drumming up interest in the project - and in the process they abandoned the very important need to, you know, actually shill the fucking product you are trying to introduce to a conservative market.


If Harley hopes to conquer the electric motorcycle market, they'd better crank up the propaganda and start taking the effort seriously rather than using the launch of the LiveWire as an excuse to sell leather jackets. They've got a solid, if a bit boring, next-gen product that is nearly ready for primetime. They'd do well to get it onto the market before the greybeards wake up to the fact that their beloved Motor Company is eyeballing young blood to sustain them in an uncertain future.

Incredulity, followed by a comment on the size and metallic composition of my testicles. That is usually the immediate reaction I receive when I tell people I use a Ducati 916 for touring duty. I’ve never seen it as that exceptional. Sure, 916s have earned a reputation for being cantankerous and uncomfortable mounts that are certainly ill suited to cross-country adventures. But reputation and reality are two different things.

Actually I’m lying: the reputation is well earned and quite accurate. I’m not a Ducati apologist who sugar coats the truth in favour of rosy nostalgia or blind brand worship. Riding a 916 any great distance is an exercise in zen-like concentration and meditative pain control, always haunted by the remote but present possibility of mechanical disaster. Spend any time on a Ducati forum and the stories of horror, and the photos of shattered alloy that were once engines, will instill an irrational but justifiable fear into the heart of any Ducati owner.
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I have a strange relationship with motorcycle riding. I have an absolute, unmitigated passion for the sport and I’ve been riding since I was 17, but I still get pangs of apprehension every morning before I hit the road. You would think I should be accustomed to it by now, and yet each journey is preceded by intense bouts of anxiety. It’s not the danger or the risk, which has never factored into it for me. I simply don’t worry about such things. It’s something else, like an intense excitement that builds into this climax of fretfulness and physical discomfort. When I learned that Formula 1 legend James Hunt would often throw up right before a race, I immediately understood. Contrary to what you might think, it wasn't because he was scared, though he had a healthy appreciation for the danger involved in his sport. It was the energy and intensity of the coming event building up inside him to a literal bursting point.

Once I am on the bike, this unease and discomfort immediately melts away and I become part of the machine. My mind settles and my body relaxes. The act of riding becomes soothing, in spite of the fury of the machine and the heightened awareness necessary to pilot it. It’s an addictive routine – your body vibrating with anticipation, followed by a wave of intense calm and serenity washing over you.

If you've spent any amount of time here on OddBike, you’ll be aware that I tend to favour independent thought and unique approaches to the design and construction of motorcycles. The mandate for this site, such as it is, is to profile rare and unusual machines – with a particular eye towards unique technical qualities.

One element I have touched upon in the past is the proliferation of unique front suspension designs that are arguably superior to the “traditional” telescopic fork. There are a few brave engineers, designers and inventors who have dared to question the hegemony of the fork and propose a better solution. One of the most prominent, and perhaps the most misunderstood, is James Parker. Parker was one of the first inventors to achieve what many backyard tinkerers only dream of – to have his design adopted by a major manufacturer and put into mass production. His efforts are thus one of the best-known contributions to alternative front suspension design. Unfortunately Parker learned the hard way that the difference between conception and production can be significant, and that the design process within a major manufacturer is far from straightforward.

Read the rest on Silodrome.com

Image Source

Photo credit R. David Marks

DKW SS 250 at the Barber Museum

There is a saying that used to be shared in history circles, with a wry smirk, which has since become a minor cliche: “History is written by the winners”. Hackneyed though it may be, there is a great deal of truth in that old platitude. Be it in politics or in motorsports, odds are the story you know is the one that has been informed by the success of those who came out ahead. In the case of DKW and their series of once-dominant supercharged motorcycles, the company's successes have been drowned out by the tides of history. Some of the fastest, most advanced, and technologically interesting two-strokes of the 1930s have nearly been forgotten due to the company's unfortunate national ties – the once-famous Ladepumpe and supercharged “Deeks” became victims of historical circumstances beyond their control.

Des Knaben Wunsch 18cc stationary engine circa 1919 Image Source

The DKW story begins in 1916 when Danish engineer Jørgen Skafte Rasmussen founded the company in Zschopau, Germany. At this early stage Rasmussen was producing steam machinery fittings, the latest of several industrial business ventures he had worked on since immigrating to Germany in 1904. The resource shortages and rationing experienced in Germany during the First World War had inspired Rasmussen to develop a steam-driven automobile as a more economical alternative to gasoline-powered machines, hence the company's name: Dampf Kraft Wagen, the "steam motor vehicle". While the steam car venture failed to take off, the fledgling company found success in an unlikely avenue: a tiny, high-quality 18cc two-stroke stationary engine designed by engineer Hugo Ruppe. Des Knaben Wunsch, as it became known, was sold as a toy engine and soon took the place of miniature steam engines on the tabletops of well-to-do children across Germany.

Das Kleine Wunder 118cc auxiliary motor Image Source

DKW entered the two-wheeled fray in 1921 with another Ruppe design, this time a 118cc two-stroke auxiliary engine that could be installed on a bicycle. This humble machine was dubbed Das Kleine Wunder, once again preserving the DKW moniker despite the change of tact and presumably allowing Rasmussen to re-use the company letterhead.


It wasn't long after this tentative first step into the two-wheeled marketplace that DKW built its first complete motorcycle, the 142cc Reichsfahrmodell of 1922. The timing proved to be fortuitous as the company was able to ride the wave of newfound popularity for inexpensive two-wheeled transportation following Germany's bout with extreme inflation in the early 1920s. Such was the success of DKW motorcycles that by 1928 Rasmussen purchased a controlling stake in a little automotive manufacturer by the name of Audi Werk AG in Zwickau. The Zwickau factory would subsequently became the site of DKW automobile production, while motorcycle manufacturing continued at Zschopau. By the early 1930s DKW was one of the world's largest motorcycle manufacturers with over 20,000 employees. Two-strokes remained the company's speciality, and DKW became well regarded as a manufacturer of high-quality 'strokers in both two- and four-wheeled applications –  it seems unusual today, with four-stroke automotive engines having been the norm for the latter half of the 20th century, but there was once a time when you could find smoky ring-ding mills under the hood of a variety of cars competing with their (admittedly heavier and more complicated) four-stroke counterparts. Through the 1930s DKW produced a series of fascinating forced-induction two-stroke V4s that used a pair of integrated cylinders to pressurize the intake charge– the resulting motor appeared to be a V6 but only had four “functional” cylinders, the extra pair of pistons serving as compressors.


With their explosive growth at the end of the 1920s checked by massive debt and the beginning of the Great Depression, DKW needed to re-organize to remain solvent. The solution came in 1932 when DKW and Audi were merged into Auto Union along with Horch and Wanderer. The current four-ring logo used by Audi was the symbol of Auto Union, each ring representing the four manufacturers.      

Bekamo Ladepumpe single Image Source

Success in two-wheeled endeavours inevitably results in competition, and DKW was quick to begin producing racing machines to compete in small-displacement categories. During those early days of racing DKW encountered a formidable competitor from rival German marque Bekamo, who produced a series of highly refined two-stroke singles that became famous for being the first "supercharged" production motorcycle. They were designed by (drumroll) Hugo Ruppe – the same Ruppe who had designed Des Knaben Wunsch and Das Kleine Wunder before leaving DKW to found Berliner Kleinmotoren Aktiengesellschaft (Bekamo) in 1922. The Bekamo piston-port 129cc single used a dummy piston and cylinder that was placed opposite the functional piston at the base of the crankcase. It appeared to be an asymmetrical flat twin at first glance but the supercharging cylinder, dubbed the Ladepumpe (charging pump), had no porting or spark plug.

Bekamo single Image Source

The engine operated on the Bichrome supercharging principle where the swept volume of the crankcase was reduced as the supercharging piston moved up, thereby compressing the intake mix as it swirled through the crankcase. The piston doesn't compress air directly, it dynamically reduces the volume of the crankcase as the intake port opens. The upward movement of the pumping piston was timed to match the downstroke of the main cylinder so it compressed the intake mixture just as the port opened, forcing the charge into the cylinder. This is an effect that is only possible in a two-stroke, where the crankcase serves as the intake plenum. The deflector of the piston-port design angled the intake charge upward into the combustion chamber, preventing the pressurized mixture from being blown straight out of the open exhaust port on the opposite side of the cylinder (a problem called "overscavenging" in two-stroke parlance). The Bekamo also featured a novel adjustable air-assisted scavenging system where an extra port fed fresh air into a chamber inside the piston, after which it would be fed into the cylinder to help push exhaust gas out before the fuel mixture entered.

Replica DKW 175 ARe Image Source

DKW began developing their own Ladepumpe engine designs, resulting in the liquid-cooled 175 ARe and 250 ORe singles and the 500 PRe twin in 1928. These were similar in principle to the Bekamo, using piston-port induction and featuring the same layout with a Ladepumpe cylinder set 180 degrees opposite the functional piston(s). These early machines achieved some successes and had a significant performance advantage, albeit at the expense of fuel economy. The ARe and ORe advanced the DKW racing effort and proved to the be the first of a series of supercharged two-strokes that would become a signature of the marque in the 1930s.          

DKW 250 ORe Image Source

Around the same time that DKW and Bekamo were experimenting with their Ladepumpe engines, German engineer Adolf Schnürle introduced a revolutionary new porting design while working on two-stroke marine diesel engines. Where previous piston-port engines used a deflector cast into the dome of the piston to angle the charge upward and prevent overscavenging, the Schnürle porting used carefully angled ports that would direct the charge upwards into the combustion chamber. Because the scavenging was controlled by the porting and not the shape of the piston, a lighter and less heat-soak prone flat-top piston could be used, which allowed the use of higher compression ratios. DKW was the first company to adopt Schnürle principles in a production motorcycle engine, purchasing the rights to apply the technology to gasoline engines in 1932. Schnürle porting, when combined with carefully tuned exhaust expansion chambers, would prove to be the most efficient two-stroke scavenging principle and one that would dominate two-stroke design right into the present day.

ARe and ORe layout Image Source

ORe engine Image Source

However in these early days DKW continued to focus on supercharged designs to improve the performance of their Rennmaschinen and make the humble two-stroke a formidable competitor against the four-stroke designs that dominated the European racing scene of the 1930s. This was a time when the four-stroke single was the king of European circuits, when big thumpers from the British and Italian brands were the machines to beat on the track. Multi-cylinder machines were just beginning to enter the scene and become competitive against the well-developed singles, but competitive two-strokes were virtually nonexistent in the larger categories. This was a time when the two-stroke was considered noisy, smelly and cheap – they were dirty, smoky engines better suited for lowly commuter machines than they were for fast sporting bikes.      

In terms of supercharging, Schnürle designs were at a disadvantage. Because of the flat piston and port-controlled scavenging, boosting a Schnürle engine simply resulted in significant overscavenging – the pressurized intake mix just blew straight through the cylinder and out the open exhaust port. But piston port designs, while better at handling boost, were limited in their efficiency and were hitting a wall when it came to tuning. DKW needed to take a step forward to remain competitive while continuing their supercharged racing programme. With piston-port being old hat and Schnürle designs still in their infancy, they turned to a third way: the split piston design.

SS 250 Ladepumpe engine Image Source

Split piston two-strokes were not a new idea. Garelli introduced the concept in 1912, and Puch had been building simple split-single engines (sometimes referred to as “Twingles” after they were marketed under that name by Sears in the 1950s) since 1923. Puch in fact won the 1931 German Grand Prix at the Nurburgring with a liquid-cooled and supercharged 250cc split-single ridden by Swiss rider Elvetio Toricelli, something that may have been a significant influence on DKW's subsequent racing programme. The basic principle of a split-piston engine is to separate the intake and exhaust ports by using two distinct cylinders with their own pistons, rising and falling in unison and sharing a common combustion chamber. The intake ports are cut into one cylinder, the exhaust ports into the other. The fuel mixture is pulled into the first cylinder and compressed into the bathtub-shaped combustion chamber. After ignition, on the power stroke, the exhaust is pulled out through the second cylinder and the process starts anew. Because there is only one combustion chamber and the intake and exhaust as split between the two cylinders, the split design is considered a single unit for racing purposes, the displacement calculated by combining the bore and stroke of each cylinder. Two pistons were thus considered equal to a single cylinder of equivalent displacement.

URe (or SS) 250 internals Image Source

The Puch design, a later version of which would become somewhat famous in the post-war period when it was rebadged and sold in the USA under the Allstate brand by Sears, used a U-shaped forked conrod with a single crankpin controlling both pistons. It was a curious but not particularly efficient design: while it was an improvement over the old piston-port engines, the added complexity and weight of the dual-piston setup and circuitous scavenging arrangement making it less efficient than the much simpler Schnürle design. But for DKW it had a distinct advantage: you could supercharge it without blowing the intake mixture straight out the exhaust.

DKW SS 250

The Puch U-shaped conrod was heavy and unsuitable for the sustained high revolutions expected of a racing engine, so in 1931 DKW engineer Arnold Zoller refined the concept with a master/slave conrod design. There was a single crankpin for both rods, with the exhaust piston connected directly to the crankpin by the “master” rod, while the intake side piston was controlled by a “slave” conrod. The slave rod was offset slightly and connected to the main rod with a pivoting pin. The timing between the two cylinders was offset by about 15 degrees to close the exhaust ports ahead of the intake, to maximize the supercharger effect and preventing overscavenging.

DKW SS 250 Image Source

The first of the Zoller-designed machines was the URe, which was a thermosyphon liquid-cooled “single” with three pistons. The URe was supercharged with a massive 120mm-diameter Ladepumpe piston, driven off the crankshaft by two conrods, mounted at 90 degrees to the main cylinders and protruding out of the front of the crankcase between the downtubes of the frame. The bore of each of the split-single's pistons were the same (47.5mm), but the strokes were slightly different - 69.7mm and 70.5mm. Total displacement was 248.4cc and power was in the neighbourhood of 24hp at 4500 rpm, later revised to 30hp at 5000 rpm. A separate four-speed transmission was used with a chain final drive. The prototype chassis featured a duplex cradle steel frame with rigid rear suspension. Subsequent versions added a swinging-arm rear suspension suspended by a sprung hub with a separate hydraulic damper (despite looking much like a plunger rear suspension, it is in fact a full swinging arm). Experiments were made with a unique front suspension that used a girder fork sprung with three massive rubber straps instead of springs – yes, a rubber band suspension on a racing machine. Aside from the suspension experiments the chassis was very conventional and not particularly noteworthy. Some accounts point out that handling was always the DKW's weak point, and in general they were heavier than their competitors - problems that were overcome by the application of copious amounts of horsepower from their supercharged mills.

DKW SS 250

Offered alongside the URe in 1935 was the SS 250, a production racer offered to the public at the cost of 1550 Reichsmarks. The SS was supposedly sold to the public at a loss and early versions were painted in the same silver and grey paint scheme as the works URe racers, albeit with simpler rigid rear suspension chassis with pressed steel downtubes until a 1938 update offered the same chassis design as the factory machines. That same year the silver paint scheme became reserved for the factory machines, with all privateer-bound SSs being painted black with red accents – supposedly this was to better distinguish privateer entries from works machines on the track, where the highly-competitive DKWs were becoming a common sight.

DKW SS 350 Image Source

1938 saw the release of the UL, an updated 250cc machine that moved the Ladepumpe in front of the cylinder, inline with the engine and operating on its own crankshaft that was geared off the main unit. Two versions were developed which differed in their induction systems: the ULd featured a rotary valve while the ULe used a reed valve. Both were supercharged directly with the Ladepumpe force-feeding the intake ports. Power was now 35 hp at 7000 rpm, top speed 110 miles per hour. These machines were an unusual sight, with twin Amal carburettors jutting out either side of the motor ahead of the main cylinder, with the twin high-mounted exhaust pipes (being nothing more than long and unmuffled megaphones) exiting at the rear. Legend has it that the side-mounted carburettors made wet weather races a challenge, with rain water easily getting sucked down the unfiltered intake trumpets.

UL/SS Twin Image Source

For larger capacity classes a twin cylinder version of the UL was developed, and these motors were available in 350, 500, 600 and 700cc displacements, with the three latter capacities (some with multiple Ladepumpe pistons) reserved for sidecar racing. Unlike the ULe and ULd 250, the Ladepumpe was once again moved to the 180 degree position and driven off the main crankshaft with a pair of conrods. Thus these “twins” had five pistons: four 39.5mm items, plus the 100mm supercharging piston, all held together around a common crankshaft by six conrods. The cylinder block had the appearance of a square-four, and were distinguished from the 250s by their finned water jackets and the 180 degree placement of their Ladepumpe cylinders. A SS 350, which was virtually identical to the works UL machines, was offered to the public and sold in limited numbers.

ULd 250 Image Source

ULd 250 Image Source

It was the 250 ULd that served as the mount for one of DKW's most famous victories at the 1938 Isle of Man Tourist Trophy. It was not the first time the Deeks had been fielded at the venerable TT; the factory had been participating with their supercharged machines since 1935, and had taken third place in the 250cc Lightweight category in 1936 and 1937. The DKW team was a formidable force, one of the best organized works efforts at the time with a racing department that exceeded 100 staff members. It was no secret that the DKW team was part of the Nazi push to dominate motorsports across the continent, a pet project of Hitler and the Nazi party to prove the supremacy of German technology in every category. Riders and team members often held positions in the National Socialist Motor Corps (Nationalsozialistische Kraftfahrkorps, NSKK), a curious offshoot of the Sturmabteilung that endured after the SA was violently purged in 1934. The NSKK was ostensibly a paramilitary organization, but was comparable to a motoring advocacy and training group in terms of its mandate. Imagine the AAA with a quasi-military structure and questionable political affiliations and a tank driver training program.

Ewald Kluge at the 1938 Isle of Man TT Image Source

In 1938 the DKW team returned to the Isle of Man with 29 year old Saxon rider Ewald Kluge, a fast rising star in the continental racing circuit who was on his way to becoming one of the top riders in Europe. Kluge meteoric rise was all the more surprising given his humble background and relatively recent entrance into motorsport. Kluge had endured a difficult childhood and the loss of his mother at a young age. He had a keen interest in two- and four-wheeled machines that he inherited from his father, and apprenticed with an automobile mechanic. Unfortunately his apprenticeship coincided with the severe German economic downturn and inflation of the 1920s, which forced Kluge into a career as a taxi driver in Dresden. He scrimped and saved for years before purchasing his first racing motorcycle in 1929, a British-built Dunelt single. Success came quickly for the young rider and by 1934 he had been hired by DKW was a race mechanic and back-up rider. His success with the DKW team began in 1935, when he rode with the DKW team at the International Six Days Trial and helped earn the German effort the top team prize of the event. Kluge was known for his smooth, precise and fast riding style that earned him the enviable nickname of “Panther”. From then on he was a formidable competitor in the German racing scene, joining the works DKW team in 1936 and dominating the German 250cc championship for the following four years.    

Kluge on the ULd 250 at the 1938 TT Image Source

Kluge made his TT debut at the 1937 event riding a factory-backed 250 URe. He performed well, leading the Lightweight category for a period, but faced stiff competition from the Italian contingent. When a broken throttle cable sidelined Kluge, Moto-Guzzi rider Omobono Tenni became the first Continental European rider to win the Lightweight TT, 37 seconds ahead of the second place finisher Stanley Woods.

Auto-Union DKW record machine Image Source

In October of 1937 Auto Union prepared several modified, alcohol-burning versions of the URe singles and twins to contest several speed records. Kluge and teammate Walfried Winkler rode the highly tuned machines: the 250 produced 49 hp, while the 350 shrieked out 60 hp. Special streamlined helmets and highly aerodynamic fairings were employed, the most impressive being a “sidecar” (minus the passenger accommodations) that featured a fully faired closed canopy. Speed runs were held on a stretch of autobahn between Frankfurt and Darmstadt, where Auto Union secured 14 class records with their alcohol-fueled DKWs.

Auto-Union DKW solo streamliner Image Source

In 1938 Kluge and DKW returned to the Isle of Man with the new rotary-valve 250 ULd. Kluge set a commanding lead in the event, the thundering crackle of his megaphone-equipped machine becoming the stuff of legend – even today the Ladepumpe DKWs are remembered as some of the loudest machines to ever turn a wheel at the TT, and their staggeringly loud exhaust note could be heard some 10 miles away. In the decades since the 1938 event those pummelling exhaust pulses have been exaggerated somewhat - at some point over the years 10 miles became 20, then 30, 40, maybe 100 miles, the distance growing with each subsequent pint. Some grizzled old veterans share tall tales claiming the racket emanating from the German steeds could be heard clear across the Irish Sea on the British mainland. Whatever the reality, the Ladepumpe Deeks were spectacularly goddamned loud and still shatter eardrums around the world when the machines are dusted off and paraded around at classic events.



Despite some spectacularly terrible fuel consumption (to the tune of around 15 miles to the gallon) and the associated fuel stops, the ULd dominated the field and Kluge won the Lightweight TT with a staggering eleven minute lead over the second place finisher, with a total time of 3 hours, 21 minutes and 56 seconds at an average speed of 78.48 miles per hour. He became the second continental European to win at the TT, and the victory became a feather in DKW's cap. Kluge would go on to win 12 of the 14 races he entered in 1938, taking second in the remaining two, making him the European 250cc champion. At the end of the season he earned the title “Champion of Champions”, an accolade only given to riders who earned the highest possible number of points in European events.  

ULd 250 Image Source

DKW's moment of glory in 1938 would quickly become overshadowed by the events of the following year at the so-called “Nazi TT” when state-sponsored German teams arrived on the Isle displaying none-too-subtle support for Hitler's government and a mandate of conquering the Manx event to showcase the supremacy of German motorsports efforts. The German contingent, represented by entries from BMW, DKW and NSU, would turn the 1939 TT into a political event that would leave a bad taste in the mouth of many who were involved. German riders had Nazi standards sewn onto their black leather outfits. Well-connected Nazi party faithful were present. The NSKK was in control of the scene, orchestrated by the organization's leader Erwin Kraus.

URe 250 Image Source

During the leadup to the 1939 TT there was some heated wrangling playing out behind the scenes. George Brown, a Manx newspaper editor and BBC race commentator, was fired from his BBC post (supposedly following a complaint filed by Kraus to the BBC) after Brown had prophetically declared “Of course we don't want German or Italian riders to win and still less do we desire a victory for a British rider using a German of Italian machine… There is more than a chance that the countries these famous British riders represent will be at war with Britain before the year is out.”

DKW UL 600 racing sidecar Image Source

It's not that surprising that in the decades since the Nazi TT (the nickname itself a derisive jab that downplays the entire event and the accomplishments of all involved) the British have developed a revisionist view of the event and the people who came to the Isle that June. This can take the form of trivialization or snide derision. The riders became sinister figures, described by one MCN summary as “stormtroopers in a paramilitary organisation run by the Nazi party” - that organization being the NSKK, the stormtrooper jab referring to the junior rank of the Corps (Sturmmann). The same summary refers to Ewald Kluge as an “assault leader”, referring to his rank as a mid-level lieutenant (Sturmführer) in the NSKK.* Much like any other scenario involving Nazi-era Germans exaggeration runs rampant and biases are reinforced by subsequent events in history. Revisionism is the rule rather than the exception. The German teams are dismissed as nothing more than dirty rotten Nazis who spoiled the TT for everyone.

US 250 Image Source

DKW continued to refine their supercharged machines for 1939. The ultimate evolution of the company's forced-induction split-single formula were the 250 and 350 US, which dispensed with the Ladepumpe in favour of a centrifugal supercharger mounted in front of the engine feeding pressurized mixture into the crankcases. Power was now up to 40 hp at 7000 rpm for the 250, 48 hp for the 350.

US 250 Image Source

Despite the death of BMW rider Karl Gall during practice, the German teams forged ahead and BMW took first and second place at the Senior TT, the first overall TT victory by a non-British machine. DKW performed well in the smaller categories but failed to secure a win, their efforts ultimately overshadowed by the high-profile Senior victories. Ewald Kluge took second place in the Lightweight TT aboard the 250 US, finishing behind Benelli rider Ted Mellors. Siegfried Wünsche took fifth for the team in the same event, while British DKW rider Ernie Thomas placed eighth. Heiner Fleischmann took third and Wünsche sixth in the Junior category aboard their 350 USs.



Georg Meir, winner of the Senior TT on the formidable 500cc BMW RS 255 Kompressor, infamously gave a one-armed Nazi salute on the podium. It was a perfect piece of propaganda for Hitler's Germany, a victory at the highest level of European competition. Subsequent history turned the 1939 TT into an embarrassing episode that was hoisted high as an example of Nazi hubris. The final insult was the loss of the Manx trophies given to the Axis teams which would be spirited away and lost until the end of the war. After some sleuthing the Lightweight trophy given to Benelli was dug up from under a chicken coop in Pisaro, while the Senior trophy was seized from a BMW distributor in Soviet-held Vienna.

UL 600 Sidecar Image Source

Once the war was underway and competition had been suspended, DKW shelved their racing programme to focus on wartime production of NZ 350 and RT 125 models for the Wehrmacht, which would become popular among dispatch and reconnaissance riders as lighter and nimbler alternatives to the four-stroke BMW and Zundapp military motorcycles. DKW would be one of many German companies to use forced labour during the war - this included at least 500 Jewish women taken from Auschwitz, most of whom did not survive a supposed “evacuation” attempt in open railcars following an Allied bombing raid of the worker's barracks outside the Zschopau factory. Kluge would serve as a Unteroffizier in the Schule für Heeresmotorisierung (“school for army motorization”) in Wünsdorf before being released to work for Auto Union as a test driver in 1943.    

SS 350 Image Source

At the close of the war the Zschopau works was seized by Soviet forces. The entire factory was dismantled and transported into the Soviet Union, where it was reconstructed in Ishewsk. An attempt to revive the DKW factory by a worker's collective in 1946 failed and the remains of the factory were converted to production of IFA automobiles and motorcycles by the Soviet leadership, eventually becoming the site of MZ motorcycle production. The operation was referred to as the Industrieverband Fahrzeugbau Werk-DKW until 1951, when the DKW moniker was dropped.

The 250cc IFA-DKW/ Kurt Kuhnke KS-1 supercharged opposed-piston machine Image Source

The interwar DKW racing department, the surviving works machines, the tooling, and the records were seized and effectively disappeared into the maw of the Soviet Union – it is at this point that the history of DKW's supercharged machines becomes extremely murky. There were apparently a centrifugally-supercharged opposed-piston twin-cylinder racer in development before was broke out in 1939. This remarkable machine would have been an evolution of the 250/350 US, but details on this design and the fate of any prototypes are scant. Only a few sketches and photos remain. The design featuring twin cylinders with four pistons and geared-together dual crankshafts. Once the Soviets had discovered the plans for these "Gegenläufer" twins, they set about developing the concept and producing several prototypes. From 1946 to 1949 one 250cc and four 350cc machines were built. IFA-DKW engineers Kurt Bang and Karl Kluge, under the supervision of former DKW race department engineer August Prüssing, were tasked with developing the engine. The IFA-built machines were lost to history after being transported into the Soviet Union, never to be seen again... But one 250cc engine was secretly spirited to the West by racer Kurt Kuhnke and installed in an interwar DKW chassis. That particular motorcycle, dubbed the Kuhnke Sport 1 (KS-1) was raced in Germany until the 1951 ban on supercharged machines, at which point it disappeared for several decades. It was eventually recovered and restored in 1991, at which point it produced a remarkable 55 hp at 8500 rpm. Today the KS-1 resides in the Augustusburg Castle Motorcycle Museum in Augustusburg, Germany.

IFA-DKW opposed-piston two-stroke Image Source

IFA-DKW opposed piston machine. Note that the engine is laid out transversely ala BMW in the IFA design while it was mounted longitudinally in the KS-1 Image Source

Ewald Kluge was arrested by Soviet forces in 1946 and charged as a Nazi, an accusation reinforced by his party membership since 1937, his ties to the NSKK, and his service at the Wünsdorf motor school. He would be imprisoned in the infamous NKVD Special Camp No. 1 near Mühlberg, setup in the formerly German Stalag IV-B prisoner of war camp.

DKW, along with the surviving elements of Auto Union, relocated to Ingolstadt in West Germany. It was there that Auto Union GmbH was formed in 1947, initially servicing military vehicles and producing spares for pre-war machines. The first DKW machine to re-enter production following the war was the humble RT 125.

URe 250 Image Source

In the austere environment of post-war Germany the simple, cheap and rugged RT became a smash hit. While DKW was producing their RT 125W (“West”) in Ingolstadt, IFA began producing their own RT 125 in Zschopau in 1948. Repatriation agreements following the war led to the design of the RT being produced by numerous companies around the world, including numerous Soviet copies that were being produced in Kovrov (called the K-125), Moscow (M1A Moskva) and Warsaw (SHL 125). Copies were made in the West by BSA (Bantam) and Harley-Davidson (Hummer). The RT was even reverse-engineered and put into production by a certain Japanese musical instrument company in Hamamatsu in 1955 – the YA-1 would be the first product of the Yamaha Motor Company. The RT would prove to be one of the most copied motorcycles of all time, and the machine that would establish Schnürle porting as the prototypical two-stroke design.

SS 350 Image Source

Motorcycle racing restarted in Germany shortly after the end of the war, and interwar racing machines experienced a short renaissance while German companies regained their footing. In 1946 the FIM banned supercharging in motorcycle racing, but in the immediate postwar period Germany operated independently of the FIM with its own set of motorsports regulations that retained the interwar rules. While many of the works DKW machines were lost forever, be it due to destruction of war or their being whisked away into the vast expanses of the USSR, a few survived and were re-entered into competition after 1945. Ewald Kluge was freed by the Soviets in 1949 and immediately returned to racing as a way of making a living in the difficult postwar era, rejoining the Auto-Union team in 1950. He raced Auto-Union liveried DKWs for several years until a crash at a 350 race held at the Nurburgring in 1953 left him seriously injured. He retired from racing after the accident, and passed away due to cancer in 1964 at age 55.  

URe 250 Image Source

Germany was re-admitted into the FIM in 1951 and thereafter supercharged machines became a relic of an earlier era, never again to be fielded in official competition. DKW renewed their racing program with naturally-aspirated two-strokes, including some well-developed RT 125 racers and a successful series of air-cooled 250 twins and 350 triples. While the Schnürle-ported “Singing Saw” two-strokes were competitive machines by the mid 1950s and eventually eclipsed the specific outputs of their supercharged predecessors, they simply couldn't hold a candle to the technology offered by the remarkable interwar machines. The DKW racing programme would come to an end after the 1956 season. By the end of the 1960s DKW would be no more, its respective motorcycle and automobile arms absorbed, bought out, and merged into oblivion.

SS 250

As the decades pass the accomplishments of the DKW racing department are becoming progressively forgotten and memories of their work increasingly hazy. DKW and the German riders of the interwar period have become the victims of history, their accomplishments tainted by their association with the Nazi push to dominate motorsports competition during the 1930s. The destruction of the war and the subsequent plundering of the DKW factory have all but erased the mark of their once dominant supercharged two-strokes from racing history. The technical details of these singular machines are becoming misunderstood and misrepresented as the decades roll on, making the preservation of their heritage increasingly difficult. The Volkswagen Audi Group has attempted to preserve their Auto-Union heritage by restoring and maintaining several of interwar DKWs, remanufacturing spares to keep these exceptional motorcycles running for future generations to appreciate. While their efforts are admirable, they are insignificant in the face of decades of neglect, or the deliberate ignorance of those who prefer to trivialize the accomplishments of the Nazi-era German marques. Audi's attempts at preserving their company history is overwhelmed by many years of inertia, and glosses over many of the important (and sometimes unpleasant) details. The DKW Ladepumpe and supercharged split-single two-strokes were some of the most fascinating and technologically advanced motorcycles of their era, and despite their once-dominant position on the European racing stage they are slowly being forgotten.

DKW supercharged engine layouts: 1. URe 250 2. ULd 3. SS 350 and URe 350 4. SS 250 5. US 6. Kurt Bang's opposed-piston prototype Image Source

Editor's Note: This topic has been, without a doubt, one of the most difficult subjects I've researched for OddBike to date. The details about the interwar DKWs are scant, convoluted, vague, contradictory, and generally properly screwed up. Even the best sources I was able to find were so full of holes that I had to carefully patch together a rough timeline and technical history to try and make sense of the development of these machines. I mention this because I am certain that I am getting some of these details wrong, and I welcome anyone who knows better to please share their knowledge. I'd like my humble attempt at preserving and sharing the history of these machines to be the impetus to dig up some additional information and correct years of misinformation. If you have anything to share, be it fact or conjecture, please feel free to leave your comments below.        

Leo Steinweg on his ORe 250 Image Source

*The same MCN summary refers to Jewish racer Leo Steinweg as a DKW rider who was forced out of Germany in favour of “Aryan” riders, flippantly reducing him into a footnote used to paint DKW in a negative light. I felt I should add some further details to do Steinweg some justice:

Leo Steinweg started riding for DKW in 1924 on the ARE and ORE series of machines, and ran a motorcycle and bicycle repair shop in Münster. His racing career ended in 1934 when the renewal of his racing license required proof of Aryan heritage – Jews were barred from renewing, a ban which was extended to all driver's licenses and vehicle registrations in 1938. Steinweg fled to the Netherlands in 1938 and lived in hiding with his Catholic wife Emmy Herzog until 1942, when he was captured and sent to a series of concentration camps, including Auschwitz. He died in Flossenburg in early 1945. Emmy Herzog survived the war and published a memoir of her life with Steinweg in 2004.

Interesting Links
Bonhams auction of a US 250 ridden by Kurt Kuhnke
Sale of a 1936 DKW SS250 that is claimed to have been one of Kluge's practice machines
Phil Aynsley's photos of the 1936 Kluge SS250
Motorrad Online profile of the SS 250 and 350
"Rosie" the SS 350 on The Vintagent
Audi profile of Ewald Kluge
Ed Youngblood's Motohistory featuring lots of useful info about German two strokes and supercharged DKWs
Mick Walker's European Racing Motorcycles
Mick Walker's German Racing Motorcycles
Mick Walker's MZ

Seeing as how I've recently been dealing with a particularly hardy case of writer's block and a few stalled articles, it is probably an appropriate time to delve into one of my trademark in-depth reflections on my somewhat unexciting existence. Yes, it's time for another rambling editorial here on OddBike, at least until I can clear the fog out of my head and start writing meaningful profiles of weird motorcycles again.

As some of my loyal readers will note (those who slogged through my epic USA Tour Travelogue, anyway) I recently announced my intention to bugger off and pack my ass off to Calgary, where I would start my life anew with a post in the motorcycle industry. I did indeed follow through on my threat, and this major moment of transition is what has kept me tied up and limited in my writing capacity in recent months. On reflection it seems a good opportunity to look back on how things have evolved in my life, and how OddBike has grown in the previous year. It was, as really loyal readers will note, the one year anniversary of this site in November 2013, so it seems appropriate to take this belated opportunity to address the development of this here experiment in quote unquote "motorcycle journalism".





At the close of the USA Tour I was filled with an intense wanderlust, a deep longing for a measure of instability in my otherwise dull and routine existence. This was a desire that wasn't satisfied with a few weeks spent on the road, however memorable those weeks may have been. With winter upon me and the Ducati tucked away in the garage, I was desperate to escape, my life turned upside down by the revelation that an entire world was open to me if only I took the opportunity to break away from my dreary and repetitive life. I lived in one of the most vibrant and culturally interesting cities in North America and I felt completely stifled. I was going nowhere, I was doing nothing, my friendships were fairweather and superficial, my career was sliding into miserable repetition, and all around petty politics were conspiring against my personal well-being. I was becoming a shy and withdrawn creature of habit, an inner-city variation on the dull suburbanite existence I despised so much. I felt trapped and I needed to do something about it.


I fielded several wishy-washy job offers from numerous motorcycle related businesses in Calgary. I had no real concrete offers in hand, just a few vague promises and some maddeningly tantalizing “come see us when you are in Alberta” statements. For any sane and rational person it was nothing worth giving up a stable job to pursue, particularly when it involved moving to the other side of the country.

I am not a sane or rational person.

I gave notice at work and started giving away my furniture. I financed a used car and bought a motorcycle trailer. I arranged a sublet in my apartment to take care of the remaining months of my ironclad lease. The announcement that I was giving up my life in Montreal to resettle out West was met with shock from my friends and family, usually followed by a verbal pat on the back for making the effort to move forward with my life. Even my boss of three years was understanding after the initial shock of my resignation passed – he knew well enough that Quebec wasn't the place for me, and that I would have more opportunity to grow in Alberta.

Most people seemed to assume my move was for economic reasons, to pursue the almighty dollar in Canada's oil-rich heartland. Truth is I chose Alberta because it offered the greatest degree of personal freedom, jobs were easy to come by, and my best friend had moved there the previous year. It didn't hurt that it was something new and unknown, far away from anything I had experienced before: I'd never been west of the Great Lakes. What better way to see the rest of the continent than to pack your shit into a car and drive out there? It would be a shift that would herald the beginning of a new attitude and a new stage of my life.        

On January 3rd I hitched a trailer carrying my Ducati to a Civic loaded to capacity with my most prized possessions and set out across the country to restart my life 2500 miles away.


This wasn't the first time I'd given up my existing life to reset the clocks. I've often found myself in these moments of renewal, usually following a period of intense soul-searching spurred on by either some trauma or my constant fear of complacency. My time on Earth has been a string of compartmentalized lives, a series of personalities developed and then abandoned in the process of self-improvement. I've struggled with my personal demons and social anxieties since I was a child, and I often found that when all else failed the best recourse was to stop, cut the ties that were holding me back, and start things over. It was often as much about rebuilding my psyche in a new environment, free of pretensions, as it was about escaping my real or imagined failures. Dramatic move aside, Calgary was just the latest reset: a place where there was no reputation preceding me, no skeletons from my past to haunt me. It was an opportunity to remake myself once again, and add another layer to my personality as I shed another life.


I was brimming with confidence and bravado, the uncertainty of my resettlement relieved by the prospect of a clean slate awaiting me in Alberta. I was filled with a happy anxiety, a sense of anticipation for the promise of the unknown. As I eased the car out of my Montreal garage for the last time, I felt alive once again.    


I drove across Quebec and Ontario and then crossed into the United States for the majority of the journey, bypassing the treacherous Northern Ontario route in favour of the clean highways and cheap gas south of the border. I passed through Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana, and then crossed into Alberta. Aside from the withering Midwestern cold and some icy roads my journey was uneventful and refreshing, a good chance to ease my mind of the stress of the chaotic transition. The soothing act of being on the road and the uncertainty of tomorrow's destination is something I've always loved but rarely had the opportunity to exercise, given the realities of being a lower middle class retail lackey with more debts than assets. I was anxious to get to Calgary, but I didn't want my journey to end. I wanted to keep driving until I ran out of road.      


I recently stumbled onto the latest travelogue by Dennis Matson, aka Antihero. As you might recall I met Dennis in Montreal on the northernmost stop of his more-or-less unplanned 15,000 mile adventure by Ducati Panigale across the USA and Canada. More recently Dennis has been riding along the West Coast of the United States and publishing his usual brilliant musings when he dropped this magnificent bit of insight:


Then at some point in the travelogue this picture of Peter, a Dutch rider passing through the Pamir mountains in Central Asia, was shared:

Image Source

I experienced a minor crisis after reading those words and seeing a photo of a man who could only be me in a parallel universe where I lived a far more adventurous life (while maintaining my masochistic penchant for using the most inappropriate Italian machinery for the job). I had kindred spirits across the globe and their actions were beckoning me to join in their maintenance of glorious chaos, where tomorrow remains an unknown and that's the whole point. The weight of my sedentary life slammed into me with all the force that only a twentysomething's existential dread can conjure up. I desperately desired the ability to let go and simply ride wherever the wind took me without any regard for my future. The idea was now firmly planted in my mind and my desire to ride aimlessly was renewed in a most terrible way.    


Reality and financial obligations intervened before I was able to have a breakdown and take off for the horizon.


I was now in an unfamiliar city with only the contents of a car to my name. I was fortunate to have a place to crash at my best friend's house in the city, until his girlfriend revealed in no uncertain terms that I was to get the fuck out at the soonest opportunity. Tensions were high and I was forced into panic mode to find an apartment and settle into a job. My fantasies of escaping my obligations were promptly curtailed by the slightly hostile environment I found myself in. I was being pressured to get out, my lack of funds and omnipresent debt threatening to bankrupt me, and I was in a strange city with no income and few contacts.


After canvassing a few potential posts, I accepted an offer to work a parts counter at a large dealership in Calgary. Nothing exceptional or exciting, nothing noteworthy and groundbreaking - certainly nothing that was worth moving across the country for. It is a job. I have the good fortune of working with an excellent group of people and I'm in an environment where I can meet passionate motorcyclists on a daily basis, but the work itself is just another position in just another company for just another middling paycheque – it is a post that offers nothing more in the way of personal fulfilment than any other job I've had. It is an anticlimactic result to my dramatic attempt at renewal but one that was necessary given the circumstances and my fear of spending any amount of time in a state of unemployment.


I recalled some advice JT Nesbitt's had given me prior to my move. He assured me that I had no need to impress anyone by taking a job in the motorcycle industry, noting that I was “already there” with my work on OddBike. He had a point, one that was quickly dawning on me as I settled into yet another safe but unfulfiling stage in my life. JT was referencing his concept of the Bohemian “secret life”, where you accomplish greatness on your own terms, on your own time, outside of your daily grind. He's a man who would be content tending bar as long as he was able to fulfil his true aspirations in his free time - it is a reality he lived for most of his life, his tenure at Confederate and his work with the ADMCi excepted. It isn't cynical or defeatist, it's just a realistic view of the world and an attempt to reconcile one's talent with the reality of existence. The fantasy of the dream career born of passion and sustained by your shining talent is admirable, but barely tenable in the real world. If you hold our passions up and demand to be paid and recognized for your talents, you are corrupting the purity of your accomplishments and risk sliding into the realm of the mundane – a passion can quickly become drudgery if you do it for a paycheque. I can think of few good examples of this, none of which I will share outside of a conversation over a beer lest I alienate some potential future contacts.


Not everyone agrees with this sentiment, and I've been told as much by some who wish a degree of success upon me, but the fact remains I am an ordinary person in an ordinary life and I deserve nothing. I feel that this is the best way for me to operate. OddBike is my creative outlet, my diversion and evidence of my ongoing education – it isn't about making money or catching the attention of some benefactor who will swoop in and save me from my dull existence with a big fat cheque and promise of greatness. I write simply because I enjoy it and because I appreciate weird motorcycles. Somehow that ideal seems incompatible with writing as a career, or at least it would seem that way if you read the drivel being published by “professional” motorcycle journalists who just shovel shit onto the page to meet a deadline.


Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I could make money with my writing without compromising my ideals or losing my drive. Won't know 'till it happens, I guess. In the meantime this seems an appropriate moment to reflect on how OddBike has developed over the previous year.

I began this site without any real direction or modus operandi. I just found unusual motorcycles fascinating and I wanted to share my interest by writing about the strangest machines I had come across. I began by drawing up a master list of every odd motorcycle I could think of, pouring over the books and magazines I had littering my apartment for inspiration. I began with cursory research and simple articles written using the information that easily fell to hand, but soon my work became more involved and my investigations more in-depth. I developed my own style of telling a story that blended my background in history with my technical knowledge and my passion for bikes. I began contacting designers and owners for more information and ended up conducting impromptu interviews in my own strange way - this usually involved doing the research first, writing the article until I hit a blank spot or vague area, then seeking out the truth from the source. Before publishing I always submit a draft to my interviewees for fact checking, something I doubt most journalists bother doing (I suspect there is some rule against it to maintain objectivity, or some such nonsense).


Soon I noticed that many existing articles were filled with factual errors, contradictions, and outright bullshit - so I stepped up my research to reconcile these details and tell the correct story. What started as a series of rambling little blog posts became an exercise in straightening out the history of these machines.

As time went on, the process became increasingly involved and my subjects increasingly obscure, which has meant a significant slowing of my output. While I used to be able to hammer out an article once a week, I now need at least a month to properly research and edit a full length article. Quality over quantity, or something like that. Keep that in mind if you are breathlessly waiting for me to churn out an endless series of articles.

Throughout my process I have maintained a degree of levity, honesty and opinion to keep things interesting. I write like I think – my thought process is manic, obsessive, and constantly flitting off on tangents. I think this personal touch and erratic writing style is what makes my work unique and appealing, but it is also what puts me at odds with “traditional” journalism. My lack of formal training keeping me within the arbitrarily determined borderlines probably doesn't help. Not that traditional journalism is any more impartial or accurate than what I do – it simply puts on pretences of integrity and objectivity while continuing to fuck everything up.



The response I've gotten from OddBike readers has been completely unexpected and absolutely wonderful. I'm always stunned to get positive feedback from my followers, because I still treat OddBike as my own little fiefdom where I am effectively talking to myself and learning about cool motorcycles along the way. I sometimes forget other people are actually reading this stuff. There is a reason I refer to myself as OddBike's benevolent dictator, stealing a phrase from one of my university political science professors.

In spite of this subjective angle to my work, I've received fantastic words of encouragement and praise from all over the world as well as some really fascinating information and anecdotes about the machines I cover (and some great ideas for future articles). This feedback is what drives me to continue doing what I'm doing. Without it I probably would have let the site wither on the vine many months ago. The knowledge that people care about what I'm doing and are interested in what I have to say has kept me going and continues to inspire me.



I've been stunned by the fact that I have somehow become an authority on the subjects I've covered. I constantly monitor the sources of my site's traffic to see who is reading my work and what they have to say about it. I'm always happy to see that forumites share my articles and these average folks start discussing otherwise completely obscure machines that they hadn't heard about until they stumbled onto my article. Sometimes they show great appreciation for my work and these weird motorcycles, other times they are snide assholes who put down my writing and turn up their noses at these unconventional bikes. In either case I'm pleased that my work has started discussions all over the world and maybe even saved a few topics from complete obscurity. I had no intentions for this to happen, but I'm extremely happy that it has turned out this way – I love weird motorcycles, and I am glad that my work has inspired people to take an interest in these otherwise under-appreciated contraptions.



This position of “authority” on these subjects can also be scary. The first time I discovered I was being cited as a source on Wikipedia inspired a moment of simultaneous joy and terror. The terror comes from the fact that I don't consider myself an expert by any stretch and my work certainly isn't perfect or free of errors. The reality that I'm gradually becoming a trusted source of information is a daunting prospect, but one that drives me to do better work. Hence why I'm putting much more effort into my research and fact checking. I won't be publishing as many articles in 2014, but you can be assured what I do come up with will be far more accurate and more in depth than anything I've published up to now. And when all else fails I'm happy to issue corrections, provided someone out there is willing and capable of pointing out my mistakes. I aim for accuracy and balance in my work, even if it sometimes comes off as opinionated and subjective.
 
All that to say: a happy belated first anniversary to OddBike, I never expected it to go this far.



Speaking about life as much as about motorcycles, as I grow older and the more I learn, the dumber I feel. I have the sense that as I build my knowledge, I am moving towards the edge of a massive precipice overlooking an endless plain. The plain below is the sum of what I don't know and what I have not experienced. It is beautiful and awe inspiring but threatens to overwhelm me. As I learn more I feel less intelligent because I am increasingly aware of the scope of my ignorance. It is a bit frightening, but if I can control my descent into this landscape I have the possibility of learning more and developing myself as a person and as a writer.

The tempting prospect of travelling and experiencing the world on the back of a motorcycle also inspires an overwhelming sense of inadequacy in the face of what I haven't yet been able to do. Since finishing the USA Tour in October the gravity of the trip has been weighing heavily on my mind and I've been mulling over what will constitute the OddBike USA Tour Part II. Seeing how my first adventure was along the East coast, and I've now moved to the opposite side of the country, it is only natural that I'd head West through the Rockies and then down the Pacific Coast Highway until I hit the Mexican border. After that it is a nice straight route back up north through Nevada and Utah... Where the Bonneville Salt Flats just so happen to be right along my imagined route. So a stop at Speed Week would be in order. Given that I am unable to book enough time off work to accomplish this trip in 2014 (and I already have plans to visit the Barber Vintage Festival this October) I anticipate Part II will happen in fall 2015.

I have been eyeballing the local classifieds, scoping out the prospects of a second bike to use for the ambitious amount of touring duty I anticipate would be necessary to satisfy my insatiable wanderlust. This, of course, is an idle and desperate fantasy given my current financial situation. My desperation at my lack of funds was made worse when a clean, extremely low mileage Moto Guzzi V11 Le Mans was traded in at the shop and promptly dismissed as an Italian piece of junk by the staff, its presence seen as nothing more than a blight on the inventory list. I desperately wanted to rescue it from its unappreciative captors, to release it from its neglect in the backlot. It begged to be ridden. It would be the perfect touring mount for a masochistic Italophile like myself.


Then I recalled that damned photo of Peter the Psychotic Dutchman riding through the Pamir mountains and I was struck by a pang of intense realization – I had to keep using the 916 for touring, and I had to use it for the next OddBike USA Tour. That bike is my signature and it is a part of my personality. If I did Part II on anything more rational it would take away the magic of the journey, and diminish some of the wonderful insanity of the whole endeavour. Showing up at an event 2000 miles from home on a comfy, long legged machine doesn't have quite the same impact as rolling in on a bug-addled, luggage laden, capital-S Superbike that has a reputation for crippling ergonomics, a cantankerous disposition, and nonexistent reliability. That thought of once again inspiring looks of disbelief from candy-assed riders south of the border makes me fiercely desire the arrival of warmer weather so I can blow out the cobwebs and start piling on the miles once again. I've established my own particular brand of insane touring and I should stick to it.

I still want that Guzzi in my garage though. It deserves a good home.  

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For the purpose of today's article I'm going to make a broad generalization: the cruiser is a relatively recent invention that was concocted in the boardrooms of at least one major manufacturer. There was once a time when Harley Davidsons and Indians were simply styled in the manner of their era and were just as susceptible to being stripped to their bare essentials and ridden in anger as anything coming out of Europe. Their styling was once current, their performance once competitive, their function never intended for weekend warriors escaping office drudgery in leather-clad road pageants. The overwrought modern cruiser and the carefully cultivated image of its riders were but a distant glimmer in the eye of a clever marketing maven.

It could have been different. It should have been different. The cruiser wasn't born in the boardrooms of Harley-Davidson in the 1980s. It was the product of a man with a singular vision, whose work would prove to be under appreciated and his skills as a remarkable designer and craftsman virtually forgotten. These prototypical cruisers weren't created by tacking tassels onto nostalgic throwback machines – they were an optimistic vision of the future welded out of steel tube and beaten out of sheet metal in Orley Raymond Courtney's workshop before being rolled out into an ignorant world in the mid-1930s, and once again in the early 1950s. Courtney's work was bold, innovative, and without peer in the United States, or anywhere else in the world. Above all, it was beautiful. And it is now virtually forgotten, his stunning and forward-thinking designs contributing to a future that never happened.

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Today we benefit (or, depending on your viewpoint, suffer) from a proliferation of increasingly specialized motorcycles tailored to specific functions. If you want to go slow and munch miles on the Interstate, you buy a cruiser. If you want to go fast, you buy a sport bike. If you want to go fast and ride more than 50 miles at a time, you buy a sport tourer. If you want to go fast and ride more than 50 miles at a time and pretend you can go offroad if you wanted to but you probably never will, you buy an adventure tourer. Categories are so prolific that each year we are introduced to a new type of machine that we never even knew we needed, until this shiny new “super-middleweight-naked-sport-standard-retro-street-tracker” hits the showrooms and we carve yet another useless and short-lived niche into the catalogues. Having a single motorcycle to do it all is a laughable exercise - and that niche of the do it all bike is well served by an impossibly large gamut of disparate machines built to suit every taste.

It wasn't always so. Once upon a time you had a motor cycle, a simple formula served by simple contraptions: a machine with a frame, two wheels, and an engine stuck in the middle. This motorcycle could and would do anything you might ask of it – you could use it to commute to work, to cross the country, to pick up the groceries, to bounce through dirt trails, to compete in racing, to do pretty much everything you needed of it. It was a utilitarian transport that was adapted to the needs of the owner. Re-purposing a motorbike was just a matter of adding or shedding a few components. Add a sidecar and you have an economical family vehicle. Strip off the brightwork and hot up the motor and you can go earn some extra money flattracking at the fairgrounds. In these early decades motorcycles were blue-collar, utilitarian devices that were adapted to various duties as circumstances or desires dictated. The industry was a long way away from turning motorbikes into recreational vehicles for yuppies and adrenaline junkies like you and me.

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Orley Raymond Courtney was a motorcycle enthusiast who joined the sport during this period, a man who started riding when motorcycles were still crude and brutal devices that lacked specific purpose or any degree of refinement. Born in rural Indiana in 1895, Courtney developed a penchant for riding in his teenage years aboard a single-cylinder 1911 Indian. When he turned 21 he bought a 61 cubic inch 1916 V-twin Excelsior - apparently a three-speed Big Valve X. The Excelsior twin was marketed as “The Fastest Motorcycle Ever Built” - it was popular among law enforcement, it served as rapid transport for the American military overseas and in Mexico, and it was a formidable competitor on the legendary board track circuits. It won the 1916 Pikes Peak hillclimb with the fastest time overall, with a young rider by the name of Floyd Clymer (yes, that Clymer) at the helm. Courtney's choice of an Excelsior was perhaps not surprising for a young rider with visions of speed and excitement filling his head, and Courtney was known to dabble in the amateur racing of the day.

The Excelsior was a machine that fits well into our framework of a single motorcycle serving many purposes – daily rider, utility vehicle, high-performance racer. Lacking a certain degree of refinement, machines like the Excelsior could be a bit difficult to live with. It was the nature of motorcycling in these early decades, and Courtney began to lament that high-performance motorcycles such as these required the talent of a racer to ride properly.

Courtney was the prototypical American craftsman, a gifted builder with a blue collar upbringing and hands-on skills developed over years of manual labour. Courtney was a quiet genius in his own way, and his position in the world gave him a unique insight into the design of a motorcycle. He began his career as a labourer in a Jefferson Township glass works in his teens, progressing to power hammer operator at the Central Manufacturing Company in Connersville, Indiana in the mid-1910s. The Central Manufacturing Co. specialized in the production of automobile bodies for various domestic manufacturers, eventually becoming renowned for their work on the incomparable shapes of Auburn, Cord and Duesenberg automobiles. He would remain with the company into the 1920s, excepting a brief stint at the Nordyke & Marmon automobile company in Indianapolis in 1917, and a year of service in the US Army Air Corps in 1918.

At some point during the 1920s Courtney and his young family moved to Lansing, Michigan where he continued to ply his trade as metalworker for Oldsmobile and Kaiser-Frazer. It was during this period that he apparently helped develop some part of the styling of the 1933 Oldsmobile models, but the details of his exact contributions are frustratingly vague, his work lost in the vastness of General Motors' corporate history.

It was around this time that Courtney began to develop his idea of a comfortable, stylish and relaxed motorcycle, a refined and luxurious machine aimed at the average rider who wasn't interested in going fast. It would have to be a machine designed to be ridden for pleasure, something that hadn't been properly addressed by motorcycle manufacturers in Courtney's mind. Perhaps there were motorcycles out there that would have suited Courtney's ideal of a civilized machine that could be piloted without stress by an ordinary man, but fortunately for us he hadn't encountered such a machine during his life in the American Midwest.


Sometime in the early 1930s Courtney began to build his vision. He purchased a 1930 Henderson KJ Streamline four-cylinder, one of the ultimate examples of the early American “super bike”, a design lineage that was lost during the Great Depression when most of the great American marques succumbed to the economic downturn. These were smooth, fast and elegant machines featuring longitudinally mounted four-stroke, four-cylinder engines laid out in a manner introduced by Belgian manufacturer FN in 1905. Built to increasingly high standards and graceful styling, the American four culminated in beautiful and powerful machines like the Cleveland Tornado and the Ace (later Indian) Four. Austerity conspired against the success of these superlative (and complex) machines, leading to their gradually replacement by the simpler twin-cylinder machines that we now take for granted as the prototypically “American” motorcycle.


Henderson had been one of the pioneers of American four-cylinder motorcycles, introducing the first of their fours in 1911-12. The KJ that Courtney chose as the basis of his prototype was the penultimate evolution of the Henderson line, introduced in 1929 under the leadership of ex-Harley-Davidson engineer Arthur Constantine. The KJ featured a freshly reworked version of the venerable Henderson air-cooled four, with an inlet-over-exhaust head and a displacement of 1304cc via a 68.3mm bore and an 89mm stroke. Power was 40hp at 4000 rpm, enough to make the 440lb KJ a genuine 100 mph machine in an era when that sort of speed was rarified territory for any vehicle at any price. The “Streamline” moniker referred to the use of a teardrop-shaped fuel tank that straddled the backbone of the frame rather than sitting within it – it might seem like a half-hearted attempt at aerodynamic styling by our modern standards but it was a significant step forward at the time, and an aesthetic element that would be copied by numerous marques in the succeeding decades.

Hendersons had long been renowned for their speed and refinement, beating out Harley Davidson and Indian in production machine performance, if not always winning on the race track. This made Hendersons, particularly the final 45hp KL models of 1931, the darling of police forces across the United States and the holder of numerous speed and endurance records from the mid-1920s until the company was abruptly shuttered by parent company Schwinn in 1931. Despite a healthy backlog of orders on the books, management determined that the writing was on the wall for expensive motorcycles if the Depression was to continue, and with a few words and the stroke of a pen Henderson was no more.

The KJ and its powerplant was a fine start to Courtney's ideal motorcycle, but it required a significant amount of reworking to satisfy his goal of building the ultimate cruising machine. Courtney's aim was to build a comfortable, smooth riding machine with ample suspension, easy handling, and adequate wind protection to shield the rider from the elements.

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The resulting machine was far beyond the sum of those basic tenets and a testament to the innovation and skill of Courtney as a mechanical craftsman. Courtney rebuild the chassis of the KJ to the point of it being unrecognizable. The central duplex cradle of the frame was unchanged, but front and rear ends were modified considerably. The leading-link springer fork of the Henderson was widened and the rake reduced. Long, wide handlebars with a integrated instrument panel extended rearward a considerable distance, set at nearly a 90-degree angle relative to the front fork. A massive, well sculpted solo seat was set as low as possible, riding directly on the frame. The rigid rear end of the KJ was ditched in favour of a unique swinging arm, suspended on a pair of coil springs and built using components liberated from the front suspension of an unidentified automobile.* Both ends were widened considerably to accommodate 10 inch wheels shod with balloon tires taken from aircraft landing gear to ensure a smooth, compliant ride. Hydraulic drum brakes were integrated into the tiny wheel hubs. The iconic teardrop fuel tank of the KJ was gone, replaced by a reshaped fuel cell that barely extended above the backbone of the frame.

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While the chassis was unique, the true highlight of Courtney's KJ was the astonishing bodywork. Hammered out of sheet steel by Courtney himself, the fully enclosed bodywork echoed the styling cues of some of the most radical automotive designs of the era. Many have noted that the curved vertical grille on the front was an unmistakable nod to the Chrysler Airflow, while at the rear a subtle boat tail shape tapered into a teardrop shape that echoed the Auburn Speedster. The awkward-looking balloon wheels were completely hidden beneath the streamlined and enclosed fenders, which were low enough to give the KJ the appearance of hovering across the ground. Teardrop spats at the four corners accentuated the effect of fluid speed. Fairings were integrated into the front fenders ahead of the large floorboards to shield the rider's legs from the wind. Wind protection was further enhanced by a curved windscreen mounted on top of the instrument panel. According to friends the machine was painted in a lustrous burgundy scheme - the exact colours are unknown, as it has been repainted several times since 1935, but several period photos show a two-tone scheme with a scruffy-looking lambskin seat. All told the incredible bodywork took nine months for Courtney to hammer out by hand.

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The overall aesthetic of Courtney's KJ was a product of the height of the Art Deco era, with soft curves and common-sense aerodynamic forms borrowed from the futuristic streamlined objects that would become touchstones for modern industrial design. The KJ was a design that hid the mechanical elements of the machine in favour of pure styling, the outer shell unconnected to the function of the machine below, predating (for good or ill) our current practice of hiding the oily bits beneath expansive fairings by several decades. The only hint that something mechanical lurked below the flowing bodywork was the kickstart lever poking through the left side of the fairing. Courtney's KJ owed some elements to the brief trend of fully-shrouded motorcycle designs of the 1920s, well represented by the French Majestic and the American Ner-A-Car, while eclipsing all of them in its beauty and the quality of its execution.

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The KJ was so cleanly style you might be tempted to think the elements were appropriated from the streamlined designs that were becoming popular in the mid-1930s. It certainly looked like the two-wheeled equivalent of the shapely automobiles and Streamline Moderne objects of the era. Attempts to relate Courtney's styling to the work of Raymond Loewy and other well-known 20th century industrial designers are inevitable. But there is one problem with that comparison –  Courtney's KJ, the product of a blue-collar Michigan metalworker, predated Loewy's best design work by several years.

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Courtney's work in manual trades and the automotive industry allowed him to approach the development of his motorcycles from a fresh perspective, unhindered by conservative notions of what was or was not acceptable in designing a two-wheeled machine. He had the mechanical aptitude to craft a machine from scratch, developing his own peculiar and fascinating chassis design. He had the creativity and metalworking skills to drape his creations in the shapes he envisioned, concerns of mass production be damned - and damned they were with the extremely complex, labour intensive, hand-formed bodywork of the KJ. Courtney came to the process of building a motorcycle like an outsider, tossing aside convention to build his machine the way that made sense to him. He had all the marks of a great designer, and he may well have become one had he lived in another era or had more favourable circumstances shine upon his creations.  

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Courtney filed a patent in July 1934 for the design of his bodywork and the associated support structure, with details of his unique suspension design included in the document. The KJ, however, was not to be the beginning of a production machine. It was a labour-intensive one-off, a personal exercise that fulfilled Courtney's desires. While Courtney's precise motivations for filing a patent aren't known, there is some evidence he hoped that his innovations might be adopted among mainstream motorcycle manufacturers. Unfortunately for Courtney there was not much demand for a complex, futuristic and highly unorthodox motorcycle body design at the height of the Great Depression.

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His second patent, filed in July 1940, was for a much more modest streamlined body that took the styling of the then-recently restyled Indian Chief to its logical conclusion. For that year Indian introduced the now-iconic skirted fenders that would forever be associated with the brand's big twin offerings (and countless cheesy imitators). Courtney took the idea and extended the skirting to encompass the entire wheel and suspension, front and rear, with aerodynamic spats flanking the skirts that echoed the soft shapes of his own KJ design, but in far more conservative and production-minded fashion. Shortly after, in 1941, he copyrighted the name “Courtney Aero Squadron”. It's been suggested that Courtney patented this “ornamental” design in the hopes that other companies would follow Indian's lead and have to reference his patent should they try to develop fully streamlined wheels, but unfortunately for him the trend didn't take off and the entry of the US into the Second World War would soon interrupt American motorcycle production.

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Courtney continued working for General Motors during the wartime period. Following a brief stint with REO in 1940 Courtney took a job at the Pontiac Motor Division, where he would help produce a variety of wartime components ranging from anti-aircraft guns, to truck engine blocks, to tank axles. Following the end of the war he went to Kaiser-Frazer to work in the company's pre-production body shop. Courtney's motorcycling ambitions were put on the back burner, his Aero Squadron project never progressing beyond the patent drawings. Despite this lack of progress, his enthusiasm for motorcycles never waivered. His KJ saw extensive daily use and was a familiar sight in his Michigan neighbourhood, racking up considerable mileage despite having awkward ergonomics, with far too little leg room for the average rider – this being an element that Courtney apparently failed to account for in his quest for the ideal cruising machine.

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Courtney left his post with Kaiser-Frazer to open an independent metalworking shop with his son, Ray William, in 1950. Courtney-Enterprise was opened in Pontiac, Michigan and offered general metalworking and bodywork services. The newly-independent father and son outfit now had the opportunity to return to Orley Ray's dream of building the ultimate cruising motorcycle, this time designed with series production in mind.

The new machine would refine Courtney's idea for a usable, comfortable machine by having a more conventional riding position, with provisions for a passenger, as well as modern bodywork that would be much easier to manufacture than the hand-beaten panels of the KJ. The suspension and frame would be of Courtney's own design, with power provided by off-the-shelf motors – in the case of the prototype, an unmodified 45 cubic inch, 40hp Indian Scout V-twin with three-speed gearbox.

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To provide the long and low proportions and ample seating Courtney desired, a unique chassis was developed for the new machine. A chromoly steel cradle supported the engine, with a horizontal backbone running beneath the rider and passenger seats. The steering head was set behind the handlebars and connected via a drag link to the unique front suspension, which was comprised of a wide U-shaped leading link fork suspended on a pair of progressively wound springs with a crude snubber damping system. The front subframe used a large diameter spine extending above the front wheel to support the steering mechanism and the internally-baffled fuel tank, which was hung over the front of the bike. Out back was a relatively conventional swinging arm suspension with dual shocks. Courtney used small diameter wheels with tall, supple tires, in this case 9x6.00 inch rims mounted with fat whitewall tires that appeared to have been yanked off the nearest pickup truck.

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As with the KJ, this new machine was styled unlike anything ever seen before (or since). The story, shared in a March 1953 Popular Science article, was that the styling came to Courtney in a dream in 1950, when after several months of fretting over the aesthetics of the machine he had a vision of a futuristic motorcycle gliding across a serene landscape. Upon waking up he sketched out the vision and this drawing was faithfully recreated to build his dream machine, which Courtney christened the “Enterprise”.

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Where the KJ had been bulbous and smooth, the Enterprise was sharp, sleek and elegant. It was perfectly in tune with the aesthetics of the 1950s, with a hint of an optimistic vision of the future in its chrome-trimmed bodywork. There were cues from American consumer and automobile design, though executed in a far more elegant fashion than the average be-finned yank tank or atomic age toaster. The Enterprise looked like a late 1950s or early 1960s vision of the future, a two-wheeled interpretation of the jet-age styling that characterized that golden era of American automobile production - except it was unveiled to the public in 1952, well before sharp creases and slab sides became the norm in Detroit designs. The Enterprise was supposedly revealed at the Detroit Motorama in 1952, and brochures were prepared to announce the new company that were apparently intended to be handed out at the show. This is entirely plausible except for the fact that there was no Detroit Motorama held in 1952, so the true nature of the public unveiling is a bit murky.

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Once again Courtney proved to be well ahead of the design curve. As it was with the KJ, it is tempting to relate the Enterprise directly to some particular influence or a school of design. Just as it was unfair to compare the KJ to some Loewy-esque streamlined Art Deco refrigerator, so too is it unreasonable to simplify the Enterprise as an example of some greater design trend. It wasn't a cribbing Exner or Teague, who only came into their element years later, and it made Harley Earl's chrome-addled work look instantly dated. It was styled unlike anything else on wheels, never mind comparing it to the stodgy looking motorcycles of the era. The Enterprise was a truly unique and forward-thinking design that made contemporary vehicles look old fashioned. Hindsight sometimes clouds our appreciation of innovative design, where our current perspective causes us to lump a decade of progress into a single blanket category. It's also hard to believe that a ordinary man like Courtney could concoct something so pitch-perfect and forward thinking in his spare time with his son, so we fall into the trap of relating it to something bigger than Courtney and his vision, trying to explain away design as part of something that is better understood. The truth is there was nothing like it at the time and Courtney managed to hammer out something special that would embarrass a lot of the well-known designers of the era.

As on the Henderson the engine and wheels were fully enclosed by the bodywork, but this time the fairings were far simpler in their construction and far easier to produce. The panels were secured to a steel support structure with quick-release fasteners. The Indian twin was fully enclosed and fed cooling air through a pair of slatted inlets in the front fender, with only the shift lever and kickstart pedal poking through the fairings. A pair of saddle trunks were integrated into the rear fender spats. Full length floorboards ran between the fenders, with ample leg room for the driver and passenger who were positioned directly above the engine. The whole machine had an overall length of 112 inches and a 58 inch wheelbase, with a comfortably low 28 inch seat height. Weight was around 580 pounds, heavy for a motorcycle of the era but not nearly as porky as you'd expect given the fully enclosed sheet metal body and the complicated chassis.    

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The Enterprise was featured in several magazines including Popular Mechanics and Cycle, where Courtney revealed his desire to craft a stylish and comfortable cruiser for the everyman:

“ This wasn’t Ray Courtney’s first poke at convention. Being one of the gifted few who can not only pierce the veil of the future, but reach behind it and withdraw actual proof, Ray has purposely concentrated on one phase of cycling: that done by the pleasure rider. Asked why he had spent so much time and money on his latest ‘Enterprise,’ Ray, who has been saddle-bound since 1913, replied that he felt the pleas of the most important guy of all. ‘Average Joe Rider.’ Had long been drowned in the roar of racing machines and that it was about time that someone listened. ‘Anyone can ride for pleasure, but only a few have the talent to race.’ ”

The admirable concept of building a machine for the average rider was diminished somewhat by the price tag of the Enterprise. The cost of the hand-built prototype was quoted at an eye-watering $5,000, with built-to-order machines using customer-supplied engines available for a mere $2,500. To put these numbers into perspective a series of unfair comparisons are in order. A contemporary Vincent Rapide would have run you around 1,100$, a Black Lightning ringing in at $1,800 at the end of production in 1954. The average British machine would have been in the 400-700$ range and the big-twin offerings from Harley and Indian retailed for under $1,000. A flagship Cadillac Fleetwood 75 sedan was $5,360. At a price of $2,500 for the production version, plus the cost of the engine that you were expected to supply, the stately Enterprise was hardly going to fly off out of the showrooms.

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The price tag likely diminished the novelty of Courtney's accomplishments to the average reader, who wouldn't have paid attention to anything said after noting the obscene price tag. To make matters worse the articles specifically noted that Courtney's aim was to build a slow, serene cruiser, and Courtney himself admitted to never taking the machine over 65 mph – hardly the stuff that would make adrenaline junkies reach for their chequebook. Courtney wasn't in tune with the fast-developing cult of speed and the outlaw motorcycle culture that was taking hold in the US after the war, with cheap thrills on two wheels available to young men who craved excitement. He was a gentleman rider, and he would have scoffed at the scruffy hooligan “bikers” immortalized by American pop culture during the 1950s and 60s.

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Given the exorbitant sticker price and radical design it is not surprising that only three Enterprises were built before Courtney moved on to other projects. Aside from the Indian-engined prototype at least one BSA-powered machine was built around 1956 for Ray William, possibly using a 646cc A10 twin, but the whereabouts of this example remain unknown.

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While the BSA-engined Enterprise has been lost to history, the prototype appears to have lived an interesting life. Painted in aqua green and white, the original Enterprise became a fixture at the Hard Rock Cafe in Orlando, Florida, having been apparently sold to the Hard Rock by Courtney's family at some point in the 1980s or 1990s, the last family owner apparently having been one of Orley Ray's sons or grandsons. The motorcycle was exhibited as an alleged “James Dean” motorcycle, with an apocryphal story attached about it having been ridden by Dean in a scene filmed for Rebel Without a Cause that was left on the cutting room floor. With no photos or film to back up the claim, the story smacked of fanciful bullshit concocted by a fast-talking seller who likely also had a few Elvis Presley Harleys cluttering up his garage. Regardless of the reality the Enterprise was exhibited in the Hard Rock for several years and was immortalized by a Chinese-made enamel souvenir pin. It has since disappeared into one of the vast Hard Rock memorabilia warehouses, perhaps after the management decided that James Dean probably never straddled it and the novelty of a remarkably advanced and innovative American motorcycle wasn't enough to entertain tipsy patrons who came to eat overpriced burgers while oogling Jimmy Hendrix's underwear.**

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A second Indian-powered machine was built at some point, with revised bodywork that exposed the front wheel and the lower part of the engine. This machine also featured a radical chassis design, which was patented by Ray William and Orley Ray in 1956. The front wheel was held by a pair of L-shaped arms, with a similar design at the rear. These arms acted on a coilover monoshock, with steering controlled indirectly by a drag link attached to the base of the steering stem. The rear suspension was also a monoshock, with a cantilevered swingarm working a straight rate linkage, the base of the shock mounted above the rear wheel. A revised version of this suspension was patented in 1978, with a steeper rake on the rear suspension, a simplified direct steering design, and swingarm beams that could be unbolted at their midpoint to expedite wheel removal.

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Curiously, Orley Ray's grandson Rick (now deceased) claimed that only one Indian-engined machine was built, and that the other two Enterprises featured BSA mills. This is in spite of the fact that the Hard Rock machine is the well-documented Indian-powered prototype, while the second surviving example currently has an Indian motor installed, and the associated patent drawings for the revised suspension design depict a V-twin powerplant.

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This final suspension design was adapted to the second Indian machine that Courtney kept in his possession, along with the KJ, until his death in 1982. Both machines were then purchased by an acquaintance of Courtney's by the name of Ron Finch. Finch cared for the machines and kept them in as-purchased condition before selling them in the 1990s to Mike Gaglioti. Gaglioti moved the motorcycles to New York, eventually selling the pair to Frank Westfall in 2001.

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Westfall took possession of an intact and well-preserved Enterprise and a basket case that was once the KJ, as well as a collection of documents related to the machines from Courtney's estate. While the Enterprise was left in its original state, and is currently exhibited at the Northeast Classic Car Museum in Norwich, New York, the KJ was well beyond a sympathetic restoration and required a total rebuild. Westfall noted that the Henderson was well used, apparently ridden regularly by Courtney. He contracted Pat Murphy to perform a full restoration and the rebuild of several of the hand-crafted body panels, an enormous undertaking that took the better part of a year and nearly 700 hours of labour. Murphy noted that the craftsmanship exhibited by the KJ's bodywork was astonishing, and that it was no mean feat to recreate Courtney's work. The finished machine was painted a deep black and embellished with a few new details, including a leather saddle, fishtailed exhausts, and a mesh opening peeking into the engine bay, before being unveiled to the public at an Antique Motorcycle Club of America show in Rhinebeck, New York in 2010.

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Since the restoration was completed the KJ has earned accolades and disbelieving praise from all who have seen it. Most onlookers assumed the machine was a production motorcycle from a bygone age, or a long-lost concept produced by a manufacturer, or perhaps a modern custom built machine put together in recent years. Few realize that it was built by a single man in early 1930s, and that it features some fascinating chassis details beneath its shapely bodywork. Courtney's craftsmanship has earned a new following in the internet age, and a level of appreciation that he never experienced during his lifetime. Unfortunately this has lead to coverage of the KJ overshadowing Courtney's later work and his numerous patents. Worst of all is that the newfound attention has lead to ridiculous and demeaning comparisons to modern machines like the Victory Vision, as if Courtney's largely forgotten work somehow led to a modern Harley knockoff with goofy bodywork from a snowmobile company.

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Courtney's talents as a designer and craftsman deserve better than strained comparisons to modern production machines, and his concept for a stylish cruiser deserved a better fate than obscurity. Courtney was a man out of time, a gifted motorcycle builder who looked to a future that never occurred. The modern cruiser should have begun with the Courtney Enterprise, not with a series of contrived cookie-cutter behemoths inspired by rose-tinted nostalgia and sold with heavy-handed marketing. Like many forward-thinking backyard builders lacking the benefit of public recognition or manufacturer's support, Orley Raymond Courtney revolutionized motorcycle design without anyone ever knowing it.      

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*The current form of the KJ, described here, may not be the original design of the suspension. The patent filed in 1934 illustrates a very different layout that includes a unique leading-link front suspension apparently patterned on the geometry of the Henderson fork. The rear is a multilink sprung hub with unequal-length arms connecting the wheel to the frame, the lower arm only a few inches long. Whether the cantilevered suspension now found on the KJ is original to the machine or was modified at some point over the course of Courtney's ownership is unclear. In any case the design was (and is) unique and highly innovative considering the crude rear suspension designs of the time. 

** I sincerely hope I'm wrong and if anyone has evidence that James Dean ever planted his cheeks on the Enterprise I'd love to see it. I'd also appreciate some photos of the machine from when it was on display at the Hard Rock in Orlando if anyone has any leads.

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Interesting Links
Coachbuilt.com profile of Orley Ray Courtney
Ed Youngblood's Motohistory profile of Courtney's work
March 1953 Popular Science article featuring the Enterprise prototype
The KJ on display at the Frist Center for Visual Arts in Nashville, Tennessee
Knucklebusters' photo gallery of Courtney's Henderson KJ
Brief Hemmings profile of the Enterprise
Patent for a "Streamline motorcycle body", 1934
Patent for a "Design for. a motoecycle(sic)", 1940
Patent for a "Airplane wing construction", 1942
Patent for a "Cowl for a motorcycle front wheel or similar article", 1953
Patent for a "Motorcycle body", 1953
Patent for a "Motorcycle front wheel suspension and steering arrangement", 1956
Patent for a "Wheel suspension system for a vehicle", 1978

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Considering our recent inundation of overweight, overly-complicated, quasi-enduro hair shirts produced by every manufacturer and their Chinese knockoffs, you'd be forgiven if you were to think that the overwrought poseur offroader (sorry, “Adventure Tourer”) was a recent innovation. If you thought these “should-be-an-uncompetitive-road-bike-but-it's-a-class-leader-because-we-made-the-suspension-too-tall” machines that clutter up showrooms and spend most of their time outside the nearest Starbucks - or beached on logging road ditches by weekend warriors - were concocted by the marketing gurus of the motorcycling world who sought to add yet another saleable category to our ever-growing gamut of useless niches, you'd only be half right. The improbable off-roader has been around for decades, gradually evolving into the two-wheeled barges we enjoy today, and few of these fauxduros were as unusual as the V-twin mud pluggers that rolled out of the Moto Guzzi works in Mandello del Lario.

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The story of Moto Guzzi's off-road efforts begins in the mid-1980s, when the venerable Italian marque decided to take a stab at building a large trailie based around their new Lino Tonti-designed small block V-twin engines and frames. The decision to build a twin-cylinder off roader during this period wasn't pure happenstance or the product of some particularly good weed making the rounds in the design department – BMW had been cleaning up in the showrooms and in competition with their rugged Gelände/Straße series, introduced in 1980 with the R80G/S. The formula was as simple as it was weird – take a well-proven and rugged engine, strip away the cosmetic baubles, put on some long-travel suspension and skinny rims, and bam: a new category of on/off road machine that was neither fish nor fowl. It was too heavy and cumbersome to be a proper dirtbike, and too biased towards off-road riding to be a proper streetster, but somehow the combination just worked well as a do-it-all machine that could munch miles on the freeway and function well enough offroad to win the Paris-Dakar and the Baja. Against all odds BMW was fast developing a cult following for its unusual machine, powered by its perennial airhead boxer twin. And Guzzi, like many manufacturers, wanted a slice of the G/S success pie.

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The irony was that BMW claimed to be bucking the trend of increasingly specialized Asian machines by producing a deliberately mixed bag that would function well as an all-rounder. Faced with a slow slide into nostalgia-driven conservatism, and some rumours of the automotive side of the business shuttering the stagnant motorcycle division, something fresh was needed to kickstart sales. Using existing parts-bin bits - a slightly reworked R80/7 engine, a R65 frame, some R100/7 forks and brakes - was an expedient solution that would keep costs down. Despite the basic elements being standard BMW fare, the resulting G/S was unlike anything else on the market. BMW's answer to the proliferation of specialized niche machines was... to build a new specialized niche machine. And never mind that off-road oriented “scramblers” had been around for decades, even if they had never been runaway sales successes. Don't think too hard about that, you might piss off the copy writers in the BMW marketing department who have worked hard to build an image of iconoclastic and innovative success spearheaded by their goofy parts-bin-special boxer dirtbikes.
Regardless of the motivations behind the design, the G/S was a trendsetter and performed remarkably well offroad as well as on, spawning a new category and a series of imitators. Moto Guzzi was a little late to the G/S copycat party, but when they did put pen to paper they introduced a series of machines that were so brilliantly executed that nobody outside of the Guzzista forums remembers they ever existed.

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After decades of producing a line of well-regarded horizontal singles and a variety of small engines in various configurations, not to mention some stunning racing engines, Guzzi introduced their now iconic air-cooled transverse V-twin in the 1967 V7. Designed by Giulio Cesare Carcano, famed for his work on the legendary 500 V8, the twin was initially developed as a larger engine aimed at winning an Italian police motorcycle contract, some claiming it was intended for use in a three-wheeled military tractor. The rugged 90-degree overhead valve motor would prove to be one of the most enduring engine designs of all time, and would establish Moto Guzzi's unwavering commitment to the unusual engine layout, which (curiously) has always been viewed with far more consternation than the equally distinct BMW boxer. The Carcano engine became the genesis of what has become known as the “big block” Guzzi architecture, which has maintained the same basic layout into the 21st century: air cooling, one-piece crankcase, overhead valves actuated by pushrods, and a separate transmission with shaft final drive. The only aberration of the formula has been the eight-valve engines introduced in the Daytona series in the early 90s, featuring a belt-driven pair of high cams acting on short pushrods controlling four valves per cylinder. Current 8V models use a modified high-cam layout with chain-driven camshafts, but otherwise still retain the basic characteristics of the big block engines that have endured since 1967.

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The success of the big block formula continued until the mid-1970s, but despite the quality and performance of their V7 series Guzzi faced a waning market. Following a record year of sales in 1971 (which remains unsurpassed for the company) things began to slide downhill. Following yet another period of financial instability (name an Italian motorcycle company that hasn't, repeatedly), (in)famous industrialist Alejandro de Tomaso stepped in and purchased the ailing company in 1973, adding Guzzi parent company Società Esercizio Industrie Moto Meccaniche (SEIMM) and its assets to his stable of brands under the De Tomaso Industries Group, which included Benelli, Maserati, Innocenti, and his namesake automobile company.
Under de Tomaso's leadership Moto Guzzi focussed on the production of twin-cylinder machines, discontinuing production of the long-in-the-tooth Falcone horizontal singles in 1974. De Tomaso felt that a move into the middle range with a cheaper, smaller displacement offering would aid the faltering company. Engineer Lino Tonti was entrusted with creating a new machine that would fit the bill for a lighter, cost effective, more refined competitor which would aim to steal shares from the middleweight machines from Asia that were dominating the motorcycle market.

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Tonti was well versed in Guzzi twins, and had reworked Carcano's motor for the legendary V7 Sport in 1971, his revisions becoming the basis of all subsequent big block twins. He also introduced a new frame in the Sport, a stout backbone design that would serve as a template for most future Guzzi chassis designs into the 21st century. Tonti's solution for the new series of machines was to retain the transverse layout and 90-degree Vee, but miniaturize and lighten the package considerably, while improving efficiency and moving Guzzi into the midrange category with a smaller twin that would fill the gap in the line left by the now departed Falcone.

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Tonti's new “small block” engine debuted as the 45hp, 490cc, 74x57mm mill slotted into the new V50 unveiled in 1976, introduced alongside a downsized 346cc, 66x50.4mm Italian home-market displacement tax dodging version dubbed the V35. On the whole the new models shed a slightly obscene amount of weight compared to their bigger stablemates – there was over 100 lbs difference between the new small blocks and their big block counterparts. While sharing a general visual similarity to the big block motors, and retaining pushrod actuated valves and a separate transmission with shaft drive, the small block engine was an entirely new design, as was the straight-cut five-speed gearbox. Production initially began at the Mandello factory, moving to the Milan-based Innocenti automobile works (which was also part of de Tomaso's empire) in 1979 to increase production capacity of the Tonti twins.

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The new engine featured horizontally split crankcases, while the cylinder was of a Heron head layout with two valves per cylinder. More common in automobile engines than in motorcycles, Heron heads use a flat combustion chamber with vertical valves. The combustion chamber is carved into the crown of the piston, which is far easier to cast/machine into a complex shape than the cylinder head, reducing production costs. The Heron head was favoured by a select few motorcycle companies – aside from the small block Guzzis, the design was shared by the 72-degree air-cooled V-twins produced for many years by Moto Morini. It remains a hallmark of the modern small blocks, a lineage which persist in the current V7 range of throwbacks, which are never to be confused with or directly compared to the big block V7s of yore lest you incur the wrath of some grizzled Goose enthusiast who doesn't take kindly to bearded espresso-sucking Rocker rejects bastardizing the heritage of Mandello's historic machines aboard wheezy, emissions strangled small blocks.

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Fast forward to the mid-1980s, after BMW's G/S has taken the motorcycling world by Sturm and proved its critics very wrong by performing extremely well in the showrooms and on the trails. The new niche of the big road-based trailie has suddenly become an appealing formula to rival companies, and Moto Guzzi is no exception. At the 1981 Milan motorcycle show the company unveiled a prototype Tutto Strada machine based on the V50 which was in the vein of street scrambler motorcycles of the 1960s and 70s, but had not followed through with a production version. It wouldn't be until 1984 that someone in the Guzzi skunkworks eyed the V65, an upsized V50 that had been in production since 1982, and thought to themselves that could surely be turned into a dirtbike. A slight restyle, some taller suspension and a set of knobbly tires later the unholy Tutto Terreno 650 / 350 (also referred to as the V65 / V35 TT) was born.

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The TT shared the (admittedly very good) Tonti frame with the V65, which suspended the motor as a semi-stressed member. It retained the dual-shock suspension and swingarm of the V65, with the swingarm pivot supported by the transmission cases. The bodywork was squared off and given a distinctly 1980s off-road flair, with a thick foam seat, boxy high-mount exhaust, abbreviated nacelle around a rectangular headlamp, and a useless 14-litre fuel tank that would have been better suited to a motocrosser. The front suspension looked the part with lanky leading axle 42mm right-side-up Marzocchi forks and a 21 inch rim below a high mounted mudguard, but the rear looked like it had collapsed onto the 17 inch knobbly in a permanent squat. The 80x64mm 643cc motor was unchanged (or detuned slightly, depending on who you ask or what was on the shelf at the factory when final assembly came around) from the V65 donor, and produced something in the neighbourhood of 45-50hp at around 7000 rpm, decent performance from a small twin in a relatively lightweight machine that tipped the scales around 400lbs wet.

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The TT performed reasonably well, save for a few fatal flaws. The first was the worthless range offered by the weeny fuel tank, which limited the TT's appeal to globe-trotters or people who liked to ride further than the corner store. The second was the limited rear suspension travel which was hampered by the old-school dual shock setup and short swingarm from the V65. The third was a fragile final drive that wasn't suited to being pushed hard off the beaten track. The fourth was the utterly useless front brake, which might have been suitable for a featherweight off roader but not for a 400lb road bike masquerading as such. The fifth was the lack of support for the swingarm pivot, which led to a few instances of cracked transmission cases in hard use. The final nail in the coffin was the typical bugbears of anything slapped together by Italians: iffy quality control, substandard wiring, and crap electrics - complete with bad-old-fashioned contact breaker ignition, Guzzi having abandoned a previous attempt to convert its machines to electronic ignition when they were unable to cure a flat spot under acceleration. The TT performed admirably considering how ill-suited it should have been for offroad use, and was noted as being easier to handle than the porky G/S, offering smooth, tractable power from its little V-twin and a lot less weight to muscle around.

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One example was specially prepared by the factory for the 1985 Paris Dakar at the behest of Italian architect and amateur racer Claudio Torri, who rode the machine in the PD but failed to finish. Remarkably, Torri's 650 TT was not the first small block Guzzi to compete in the event. A privateer effort undertaken by French Guzzi importer SEUDEM in 1979 had taken five road-going V50s and modified them in haphazard fashion to compete in the grueling race, beating all expectations when one of the machines ridden by Bernard Rigoni finished the event in 48th place overall, the best result of any Guzzi desert sled to date. This result was all the more remarkable when you examine the cobbled-together details of these underdog machines. At the time no spoked wheels could be sourced to fit the final drive, so the stock cast wheel was used at the rear, looking quite out of place compared to the 21 inch alloy spoked wheel at the front (and proving to be the weak link of the machines when the alloy spokes began snapping due to the side loads imposed by riding through deep sand). The standard swingarm was retained with a pair of longer shocks to suspend it, along with magnesium Marzocchi forks up front. The seat was pulled off a V1000 Convert. The fuel tank was based on the V7 Sport shell, enlarged to 30 litres. The scrappy French underdogs returned to the PD with two new V50-based machines in 1980 and another three in 1981 but failed to finish in either event.

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Inspired by the near-success of the curious 1985 “kinda-sorta-but-not-really” works effort (Torri had funded part of the project personally) the French Moto Guzzi importer commissioned the factory to build 16 Dakar replicas dubbed the Tutto Terrena Competizione Baja. These were distinguished from pedestrian TT models by their hand-beaten 30 litre aluminum endurance tanks, long travel Marzocchi suspensions with relocated shock mounts, heavy sump skid plates, oil coolers, electric start delete (with a kickstarter fitted in its place), solo seats, lengthened swingarms taken from the big block Le Mans, and straight through two-into-one exhausts finished in white enamel. All examples were built in the factory's experimental workshop over a period of two years, with each machine exhibiting unique details due to their hand crafted nature.
The second generation of factory racers built in 1986 used the newly introduced 744cc, 84x74mm V75 engine with four-valve heads, and were developed and tested with the input of the French importer with the intention of once again competing in the Dakar. Two machines were built using lessons learned from the Baja series and extensive testing in France and Spain, both producing over 60 hp and weighing just over 350 lbs. Unfortunately neither machine finished the event.

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The four-valve heads introduced on the 1984 V65 Lario soon became notorious for snapping the heads off their valves, causing spectacular engine failures at random. The smaller valves used in the new heads were constructed in two pieces, with their poppets welded to the shafts, creating a weak point where they inevitably began to fail. Additionally these motors used overly strong doubled valve springs which tended to accelerate the valves too fast, especially at the higher revolutions that the new four-valve designed offered. Finally the changes in the cylinder head apparently reduced oil misting to the top end, this being quite a big deal as misting from the crankcases was the secondary means of top-end lubrication on the small block engines. The icing on the shit cake was a solid camshaft that self-destructed due to lack of lubrication, a problem fixed by a recall that installed a hollow cam with revised oil flow. All these factors came together into a perfect storm of mechanical destruction, with the four-valve motors fast earning a reputation for being grenades. It is a reputation that persists to this day, with many owners either significantly reworking their valvetrains to improve their chances, or just parking the pitiful things to gather dust rather than risking an expensive blowup.

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The final factory Guzzi off road racer was a 750 built in 1987 for the Australian importer to use in the Wynn's Safari event, with the problematic four-valve heads ditched in favour of the old two-valve setup. In preparation for the Safari this machine was given a trial by fire in the 1988 Peruvian Incas Rally, where it successfully finished (placement unknown). When it was finally campaigned in the Wynn's Safari by Aussie rider Allan Cunynghame it suffered a catastrophic front fork collapse and failed to finish. That particular machine, which would prove to be the last factory off-road racer, was repaired after the event and sold into private hands.

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On the production side of the factory floor the TT concept received a significant reworking in 1986 with the introduction of the Nuova Tipo Cross (NTX) 650 / 350, which would be sold alongside the TT until it was discontinued in 1989. The NTX addressed many of the weak points of the TT and aspired to be a more serious enduro machine, complete with a sizeable 32 litre fuel tank, taller seat, and Dakar-esque fairing. The rear suspension was reworked to improve travel, new 42mm Marzocchi forks suspended the front, and the Brembo brakes were mercifully left unlinked in defiance of longstanding Guzzi tradition. The engine was shared with the TT and 2-valve V65s, with a new camshaft providing extra midrange and a coat of black paint providing some cosmetic distinction. All told very little was shared with the TT. The overall effect was that of a purpose-built big enduro machine, much like the contemporary Pantah-powered Cagiva Elefant or the Honda Transalp.

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In 1987 (or 1986, depending on who you ask) the NTX was made available in a 750 variant, producing the same claimed horsepower as the 650 with an extra measure of torque, which would soon become the darling of the Italian polizia and scourge of Latin motorists. In police guise the NTX 750 was referred to as the X Publicca Amministrazione (X PA) and supplemented sales of the more traditionally styled V50/V65 PA, which had been the first of the small block police-issue Guzzis. The X PA had some key modifications to distinguish it from the civilian version, aside from the obvious addition of lights and a siren. The 21 and 18 inch alloy rims of the production NTX were replaced by steel 18 and 16 inch items fitted with road biased tires. The windscreen was taller, handguards were standard, and engine crash bars were fitted. A lower, more comfortable seat was also installed. A body-coloured hard luggage kit was also available. Aside from these modifications and accessories the X PA was mechanically identical to the NTX – no cop shocks or cop motor here. Production of the X PA continued until 2001, long after the civilian version had been discontinued.

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The NTX earned a small but loyal cult following over the course of production, which endured with only minor changes until 1995. In the press the NTX earned many of the same accolades and jeers that the TT had, with a poorly damped suspension and worthless front brake topping the list of complaints. The dual-shock swingarm looked downright quaint well before the end of production, and was well behind the times for an off-roader of any description from the git-go. The tall centre of gravity, exacerbated by the massive fuel tank, made slow manoeuvres and trail riding a bit dicey. American riders were largely oblivious to the NTX, with as few as 24 examples having been imported - which was still a better showing than the TT, of which only a dozen or so are thought to have been sold on this side of the Atlantic. But the sweet character of the flexible little V-twin and decent handling on- and of- road (wobbly suspension aside) won the NTX a few fans over the years, even if it never threatened to unseat the G/S from its perch as king of the quasi-enduros.

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While the NTX remained in production for the next ten years more or less unchanged aside from some cosmetic improvements, the competition had moved on. The BMW G/S had been significantly updated and punched out to 980cc in 1987, when it was rechristened the R100GS (no slash, with some sources claiming the new name meant Gelande-Sport, though BMW sometimes denies this). The bigger, badder, fatter GS was recast as a world-conquering adventure machine, gaining inches and pounds in every direction compared to its more elemental predecessor.  The new GS was modified with the express intention of turning the GS into a more road-oriented machine that would better suit the actual rigours most of the machines would face (contemporary surveys having determined that as much as 98% of G/S owners never left a paved road), marking a moment of transition that would lead to our modern glut of top-heavy tourers with laughable off-road pretensions. Meanwhile, Honda released the first 583cc version of their evergreen V-twin powered XL-V Transalp in 1987, with the 742cc XRV 750 Africa Twin following in 1989. Yamaha got into the game in 1989 with their parallel-twin XTZ 750 Super Ténéré. The market was gradually shifting away from big enduros to purpose-built twin-cylinder “adventure” machines that sacrificed most of their off-road ability for better long-distance touring manners. Like the new GS these were road-biased motorcycles built for occasional excursions off the beaten track, provided you had the skills to manhandle a tip-happy 500 pound-plus beast on DOT approved tires over rough terrain, and the strength to lift it up when you inevitably toppled it over.

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Guzzi joined the nascent adventure tourer festivities with the entirely new Quota 1000 IE, which was distinguished from their previous off-road efforts by using the Weber/Marelli fuel-injected 949cc, 88x78mm, big-block twin yanked straight out of the California III cruiser. First unveiled in 1989 but only reaching production in 1992, the Quota had a claimed 69hp at 6600rpm and 59lb/ft of torque at 6000, eclipsing the power output of the NTX 750 by a fair margin with a torque curve flat enough to make a Harley rider jealous. It also eclipsed the weight of the NTX by clocking in at over 560lbs (with the factory claiming a ridiculously optimistic 465lbs dry), a not insignificant 150-pound difference between the small block soft-roader and the new big-block BMW-beater. Twin 280mm discs grabbed by Brembo two-piston calipers up front addressed the braking complaints of the NTX and dealt with the added heft of the big block platform. Wheels were spoked 21 and 17 inchers, while the rear suspension was much improved by a rising-rate monoshock swingarm. Wheelbase was a long 63.4 inches, which offered better traction and compliance off road but did nothing to mitigate the shaft jacking effect of the solid drive shaft. By the time the Quota was introduced BMW had long since eliminated the jacking effect from their boxers via multilink rear suspensions with articulated Paralever driveshafts – Guzzi would introduce its own articulated shaft system, a parallelogram linkage dubbed Cardano Reattivo Compatto (CARC), in 1993 on their Daytona superbike.

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In spite of the soft-roader image, legend has it that the Quota was intended to be every bit as durable and capable off road as anything else in the hopes of securing military and law enforcement contracts in areas where severe duty was expected. The Quota had to handle some serious shit and was built to last. The Tonti frame was abandoned in favour of a new twin spar steel backbone frame with removable lower cradles to facilitate easy engine removal. A pair of massive rectangular box section spars, tucked up high above the engine and hidden beneath the bodywork (which reduced fuel capacity to 20 litres, despite the appearance of having a massive gas tank), connected the steering head to the swingarm support and offered a strong and rigid chassis to cope with the rigours of off-road abuse.

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An interesting aside – with the introduction of the oilhead R1100GS in 1994, BMW redesigned the GS chassis to minimize the frame and utilize the engine as a stressed member, with a subframe supporting the new Saxon-Motodd-designed Telelever front suspension and the swingarm pivoting through a reinforced transmission casing. Unfortunately this near-frameless design overtaxed the chassis and led to cracking mounts and broken subframes, especially on the few examples that were actually flogged off road or called upon to embark on cross-continental journeys like the BMW marketing department kept insisting the GS was designed for. The Quota had no such problems with its massive box section frame, and thus in a perverse way it could be argued that the Guzzi would be a better choice for gruelling excursions than the GS. Regardless of whether the Quota was intended to do duty as a military machine in the deserts of Africa or not, it proved to be a tough machine - wonky electrics and the usual Guzzi foibles excepted. BMW would completely redesign the chassis of the GS with the introduction of the R1200GS in 2004, significantly reworking the rear frame to better support the seat and swingarm pivot.

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Period reviews noted that the Quota was reasonably capable on and off road. Performance was improved over the NTX with better suspension, better brakes, and a stronger motor. There was no escaping the weight and tall attitude of the Quota (which, perhaps not coincidentally, translated to “heights”), but reviewers noted that despite the top-heavy design and 35 inch seat height the heft was easy to control and the balance was good once underway – this damning-with-faint praise coming from an era before all tourers and “adventure” bikes were expressly designed for (and exclusively reviewed by) 6-foot-10 200-plus pound Aryan supermen with 40-inch inseams who delighted in having absurdly proportioned motorcycles built just for them. To add insult to injury at least one Quota was delivered to a journalist without a sidestand, forcing every stop into a delicate balancing act while the rider dismounted and heaved the ungainly brute up onto the centrestand. If you were fortunate enough to have a sidestand mounted to your Quota, you were treated to the catastrophically stupid 1990s Italian trend of fitting a sui-sidestand that would automatically retract as soon as the weight was taken off it, a brilliant addition to a tall, top heavy machine with expensive engine parts jutting out on either side.

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Unwieldy at a rest though it may have been, once underway the Quota was a pleasant machine and the lazy, torque-addled California mill suited the laid-back character of a large quasi-off roader that was likely to be called upon to devour miles on the freeway than jump whoops on the back forty. Some complained about the agricultural and lazy nature of the softly tuned V-twin and its clunky five speed transmission, as Guzzi critics are often wont to do, but reviews were generally favourable and the Quota surprised in its abilities on the highway. The Quota was an interesting competitor to the GS, in other words, and comparisons to the Bavarian tractor were inevitable. But the Quota was not a volume machine intended to knock the GS off its perch, and nobody was expecting the boys in Mandello to build a world beater that would fly out of the showrooms - let alone go toe to toe with zee Germans. As such the Quota sold a few units and earned a few loyal fans, much like the previous Guzzi trailies, but never became anything more than a curious aberration in the model lineup to keep the California company.

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In spite of the presumably limited appeal of an oversized Italian enduro-slash-tourer, production of the Quota 1000IE continued until 1997, when the model received an update to become the Quota 1100ES for 1998. The engine was enlarged to 1064cc with a 92mm bore and 80mm stroke, a displacement bump introduced in the big block range by the 1100 Sport in 1995. A new lazy camshaft and updated EFI with a new Marelli ECU rounded out the engine updates, while the five speed transmission and final drive was pulled straight off the Sport 1100. Power was virtually unchanged from the 1000IE, but the torque curve was beefed up – put an 1100ES on a dyno and you'll find the horsepower matches the torque peak number-for-number, making for some seriously understressed motivation. The rear subframe was reworked to reduce the seat height to just over 32 inches, which was still on the “1990s Teutonic action hero” side of the ergonomic bell curve. In a curious bit of spec-sheet fumbling the dry weight of the ES was listed as 540lbs, 77lbs more than the claimed figure for the IE and still on the bullshit side of the scale, with the actual curb weight being as-near-as-dammit 600lbs. Brake rotors were upped to 296mm at the front to improve on-road stopping power. Aside from these detail updates and refinements the ES was little changed from the IE, complete with conservative styling that was beginning to look more than a little dated despite some minor restyling. While the 1000IE had been a European (and Australian) exclusive model, the 1100ES was imported into the US market from 1999 onward. It sold in ludicrously small quantities, likely barely more than a hundred examples, to an indifferent market until it was quietly dropped from the US lineup around 2000, not long after Aprilia purchased Moto Guzzi from De Tomaso. The final North American deliveries were apparently to Canada in 2001, with ES sales continuing in Europe until as late as 2002. Some have suggested that Aprilia didn't want another Italian V-twin powered enduro/tourer competing with their new ETV 1000 Caponord, but this gives the Quota a bit too much credit considering less than 1000 examples were built over the entire course of production, and most of them languished in showrooms.

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Off road machines remained absent from the Guzzi lineup for the remainder of Aprilia's ownership, and upon Piaggio's takeover of Aprilia and its subsidiaries in 2004 the Guzzi lineup was subjected to a significant reworking to increase sales. The iconic V11 sporting models were unceremoniously dropped, with only the uninspired Breva and American-pandering California carried over. In 2007 Piaggio greenlit the revival NTX name with the NTX 1200 Stelvio, which shared absolutely nothing in common with the original NTX and was more swollen, complicated and road biased than the Quota had ever been. Now Guzzi was fully intending to do battle with the boxers from Bavaria on their home turf, with an overweight, accessory-addled quote unquote “adventure tourer” shod with faux-knobblies and possessing zero off-road ability. Piaggio dropped all the sporting pretension of Moto Guzzi's heritage in favour of building the Italian equivalent of a BMW, and the Stelvio was (and is) one of the worst offenders in this regard. The Quota was quirky and unloved, but surprisingly capable and full of character. The original NTX was equally capable and admirably weird, while the TT was a curiosity that achieved far more success off road than it ever deserved to. The Stelvio, meanwhile, is a shameless knockoff chasing the latest dumb niche - much like how the asthmatic V7 retro-repops are attempting to unseat the Triumph Bonneville from the hipster hit list to become the sole source of revenue for manufacturers of exhaust header wrap.

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Moto Guzzi has come full circle. After apeing the BMW G/S with their half-baked but charming TT, they are now making a bloated faux-enduro tourer aimed squarely at stealing market share from that caricature of an off-roader that is the R1200GS. Long gone are the weird V-twin powered oversized enduros that could be coaxed into traversing the globe or running the Dakar: today Guzzi has joined the leagues of BMW knockoffs pandering to middle-aged riders with marketing-driven dreams of globe-conquering go-anywhere adventures in their minds - and hernia-inducing tipovers in the Starbucks parking lot in their reality. Moto Guzzi's previous attempts at off-roaders were the best kind of unholy abominations that have been forgotten in the rush to build the biggest two-wheeled equivalent of a sport utility vehicle that can turn a profit. The TT, NTX and Quota will remain obscure skeletons in the Piaggio corporate closet, relics of an era when Moto Guzzi was still weird enough to be interesting and dumb enough to be daring, and were happy to leave the dull profit chasing to the Japanese and German bean counters.

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There are rare moments of remarkable clarity and forethought in the realm of motorcycle design, when machines are produced with such innovation and beauty that they are scarcely credible as products of their time. These motorcycles can occupy one of two positions in subsequent conception: they can be held aloft as gamechangers, as the designs that pushed the goalpost forward and forced everyone else to catch up, or they can fade into obscurity only to be appreciated by a limited few who recognize how advanced they truly were. Many remarkable designs fall into the latter category, the genius of their creators only recognized long after they pass into anonymity once the rest of the industry has caught up to the future that was laid out well in advance. Appreciation of these machines is only possible in hindsight when we see how their details foreshadowed subsequent trends.

German motorcycle designer Norbert Riedel was one such forgotten innovator, and his Imme R100 proved to be a masterpiece of design that has only began to earn true appreciation in recent decades. Once a cheap and cheerful form of transportation that was designed and built within the restrictions of a postwar economy, the Imme became one of the most fascinating examples of motorcycle design to emerge during the mid-20th century – and would prove to be one of the most beautiful motorcycles of any era. They were a machine out of time, a vehicle that applied nascent principles that were still decades away from the mainstream, and a series of ingenious design elements unified into a coherent whole that has since earned the accolades of some of the world’s motorcycle elite. The Imme was not just a cleverly constructed motorcycle, it was one of the most beautiful pieces of modern industrial design that nobody has ever heard of.

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Norbert Riedel was born in 1912 in Jägerndorf, then a part of Austrian Silesia, to German-speaking parents who were among the significant majority in the region. Following the close of the First World War the city was ceded to the newly established Czechoslovakian state, under whose administration the region remained until it was claimed by Germany during the annexation of the Sudetenland in 1938. Riedel began a career in engineering which saw him join Ardie in 1935, where he cut his teeth working on various two-stroke designs produced by the Nuremburg company, eventually rising to the post of lead engineer. Powered by bought-in engines produced by various firms, mainly two-stroke, with some four-stroke models including some JAP powered singles and twins produced in the 1920s, Ardies were well respected and competitive designs during the interwar period. Riedel’s exact contributions to the company are vague (much like many details of this story), a fact compounded by the significant bombing the Ardie factory suffered during the Second World War that led to the destruction of most of the company records.

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What is clear is that in subsequent years Riedel would make a small but interesting contribution to the German war effort. Development of the modern jet engine began in Germany during the interwar period and eventually culminated in the production of the BMW 003 and Junkers Jumo 004 turbojet designs which would power the Heinkel He 162 and Messerschmitt Me 262, respectively. These early jet engines were fickle devices that taxed the metallurgy and engineering of the day, and required auxiliary engines to be fitted for the complicated multi-step start up procedure. At some point in the late 1930s or early 1940s Riedel, now working for Victoria-Werke in Nuremburg, designed a two-stroke, horizontally-opposed air-cooled twin which would serve as the starter for these production turbojets. This compact 270cc engine, named the Riedel Anlassermotor (starter motor), featured a remarkably oversquare design with a 70mm bore and 35mm stroke and produced 10hp at 6000rpm, with power transferred from the crankshaft through a series of planetary gears to a stepped gear which meshed with the central shaft of the turbine.

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This oversquare configuration was odd for a two-stroke, where longer strokes are favoured to provide more port area and longer timing, as the ports are cut into the cylinder wall. Common practice in two stroke design is the use of square (equal) bore/stroke ratios, or undersquare configurations with a stroke that is longer than the bore is wide. Short stroke engines are common today in four-stroke machines because in a four stroke cylinder port area is relative to the size of the bore, with a bigger bore allowing larger valves and bigger holes for the mixture/exhaust to flow through (and reduced piston speed via that shorter stroke, which means improved ability to safely rev higher and exploit the improved breathing characteristics of the large ports). The short stroke configuration of Riedel’s engine gave the device extremely compact dimensions, a feature borne of the necessity to allow it to fit within a cone-shaped nacelle fitted in the nose of the turbine while leaving space for a 3 litre fuel tank.

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Regardless of the peculiarities of the design, Riedel’s Anlassermotor proved to be a reliable and effective design that earned Victoria a contract for series production of the engine, beating out competing designs from BMW and Hirth. While all the initial designs were rejected by the Reichsluftfahrtministerium (RLM), Riedel/Victoria’s engine was approved and given a production contract following a second round of trials. Officially designated the RBA/S10, RLM design number 9-7034A, the engine could be started externally via pull cord (visible at the tip of the nose cone of the engine) or with an integrated 24 volt electric motor activated from the cockpit, accomplished in the Me 262 by a plunger on the pilot’s right hand side. The raspy, unmuffled unit would be fired and run to spin the turbine up to 800 rpm, at which point the pilot would activate the injection of the fuel/oil starting mixture and ignition systems on the main engine. Once the turbine hit 1800 rpm the starter motor would be shut off and the remainder of the starting procedure would be controlled by the pilot. The Anlassermotor would only be required to run for about one minute – a good thing considering the air-cooled engine was completely shrouded and would likely overheat if run for much longer, though an integrated fan was fitted at the forward end of the engine to improve cooling within the confines of the tiny nacelle.      

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Following the end of the war Riedel found himself a free agent with the benefit of some positive notoriety among the Allied victors due to his contribution to the Nazi jet program, which had been intensely scrutinized and reverse-engineered by the Allies during and after the war. Legend has it that it was the Allied appreciation of Riedel’s starter motors that earned him some favouritism that would enable him to establish his independent motorcycle manufacturing operation not long after the war, though concrete details outside of apocryphal statements are scarce. In peacetime Riedel Anlassermotoren found their way into other civilian projects, and some examples survive with sprockets attached to their output shafts to drive a chain in a homebrewed go kart. Ingenuity in the postwar period, fed by a steady supply of cheap military surplus, was often limitless in its potential despite the austerity present in a continent ravaged by a violent war, a reality that would inform many of the design ideas Riedel would adopt in his later work. Considering their particular application (and the limited number of jet turbines produced by the Nazis during the war), and the attrition rate you'd expect for surplus items from a losing nation, a surprising number of Anlassermotoren have survived into the present with a few caring enthusiasts restoring them to running order. You can even purchase an example right here for under 1000€.

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Victoria-Werke suffered significant bomb damage during the war and would not resume motorcycle production until 1946, making them one of the fortunate companies that managed to survive the conflict (and their association with the Nazi war machine) to resume civilian production. By this time Riedel was already formulating ideas for a complete motorcycle of his own design, and in 1947 he would set out on his own to develop his proprietary machine.

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In April 1947 the first contract documents were filed in the founding of Riedel Motoren GmbH, marking the genesis of Riedel’s motorcycle company as a private legal entity. Work on the prototype machines began in Muggendorf in 1947, with the first chassis hitting the road in December, but with facility space limited and production aims ambitious an expanded Riedel factory would need to be established in a new location. In June 1948 Riedel Motoren AG would be established in the Bavarian Alpine town of Immenstadt, encouraged by the support of the local government which wished to provide employment to the area’s skilled workers, who had previously been employed in the now defunct aero industry.

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Postwar Germany was, like most of continental Europe, going through the agonizing process of rebuilding their society after a disastrous conflict that left their industries in literal ruins, their economy in shambles, and their people starving and scarred by years of conflict. It was a time of austerity and small steps towards recovery, and in the years following the end of the war simple, inexpensive transportation was in high demand. This was the era when small, cheap motorcycles flourished as an economical alternative to cars, providing the modest beginnings for many nascent motorcycle brands across Europe. The existing companies that had survived into peacetime retooled their factories to produce goods that suited the new economic reality of Europe.

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Norbert Riedel had the foresight to recognize the growing demand for cheap and cheerful transport, and put his skills as an engineer to good use by designing a remarkably well-thought out machine that was as innovative as it was inexpensive to build. It was a masterpiece of good design. And it was beautiful.
His creation was dubbed the Imme R100, a colloquial German term for “bee”, and given a cheery mascot in the form of a stylized bee with windswept wings riding a motorcycle. The origin of the Imme name has been debated. While it would be obvious to see the name as an abbreviation of the factory’s home in Immenstadt, it has been noted that the name and bee logo had already been determined while Riedel Motoren was still based in Muggendorf. Some sources suggest that the name was provided by the workers who noted the little motorcycle sounded like a buzzing bee. Curiously an attempt was made to market the R100 in Belgium as the “Golbi”, but aside from exhibiting a Golbi-branded R100 at the 1949 Brussels Motor Show no evidence of a rebadged Imme survives.

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Whatever the case of the nomenclature of the company’s product, The Imme was a remarkably advanced machine that offered budget-conscious buyers an exceptionally handsome and cleverly designed motorcycle for their money when production began in mid-1948. The base model cost 775 DM, and that netted you a 99cc, 52x47mm, Schnürle-ported two-stroke single producing a healthy 4.4hp at 5800rpm with a 7:1 compression ratio – a modest figure by modern standards, but nearly double what the contemporary competition was squeezing out of their 100cc engines.

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The engine was stylized and streamlined, with an oval-shaped profile to the horizontal cylinder, the tiny Bing carburettor hidden behind a polished cover on the right hand side while the magneto resided under a cover on the left. The cylinder head and barrel were cast as one piece to simplify production. The unit gearbox was a simple three-speed unit that lacked a neutral position, saving some complexity but forcing the rider to keep the clutch disengaged at a stop or on startup, aided by a simple wire loop that could be flipped between the lever and perch to lock the lever in position. Riedel developed a linear-shifter “draw key” transmission to further simplify construction. Rather than having a shift drum operating forks within the gearbox, the main gears were hollowed out with detent balls set within their hubs. A shaft with wedges machined into it sat within the hollowed-out countershaft. When the shaft was moved in and out, the wedges spread the detent balls outward to mesh with notches cut into the hub of the gears, locking the gear and engaging the desired speed of the transmission. A twistgrip on the left bar connected to the gearbox via a cable linkage which pushed and pulled the draw key. First gear was in the central position, twisting down selected second while twisting up engaged the direct-drive third.

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The throttle was controlled as you would expect via the right hand grip, but doubled as the kill switch – pushing the grip all the way forward shut off the engine. One of the most interesting features of the engine was the asymmetrical crankshaft, which featured a single-sided crankpin mount and one counterweight. The big-end bearing was secured to the crankpin with a circlip and the whole bottom end was supported by a single main bearing on the left side – a clever bit of cost saving, but one that would ultimately prove to be the fatal flaw of the design.

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To keep manufacturing simple and material use minimal the frame, front fork leg and rear swingarm used the same diameter steel tubing. The engine was rigidly mounted to the swingarm – thus the power unit was suspended along with the rear suspension and moved in unison with the rear wheel, much like a modern scooter powerplant. An Imme on the move was a curious sight, with the engine bobbing up and down in harmony with the rear suspension.

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One of the most forward-thinking elements of the chassis was the suspension arrangement. Both front and rear wheels were suspended on single-sided arms, a single-sided girder fork on the front and a monoshock swingarm on the rear. This rather modern arrangement was a product of the material shortages in postwar Germany – the single sided design meant that half as much steel was needed to manufacture the front and rear arms. The front suspension is reminiscent of the unusual suspension fitted to the Gilera CX, which used a single-sided arm connected to a single telescopic fork leg – 40 years after the Imme was introduced. The rear swing arm doubles as the exhaust pipe, a unique element that would not be recreated until Confederate designer JT Nesbitt used the idea in his second generation Hellcat introduced in 2003, more than 50 years after the Imme hit the streets. The rear suspension uses a horizontal monoshock in a straight-rate configuration bolted to pressed steel mounts attached to the frame and fender, triangulated through the reinforced fender mount that supported the left side of the rear axle - a good 30 years before cantilevered monoshock rear suspensions came into vogue (if we conveniently forget the contemporary H.R.D Vincent chassis, anyway). Rudimentary adjustable friction dampers at both ends kept things under control. The front and rear wheels were interchangeable, and an optional spare wheel could be mounted beside the rear wheel on the mudguard support bracket.

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The whole package was clothed in simple, elemental bodywork that left the fascinating chassis and engine unhindered by flashy baubles or useless styling exercises. You had mudguards, a fuel tank, a headlamp nacelle, and sprung saddles for the rider and passenger (if so equipped). The curved backbone of the frame and the shapely engine took centre stage. It was simple and beautiful, a product of the limited means that determined many of the design elements - without looking like a cut-rate budget machine, despite its modest sticker price. The first examples were available in one colour only, a deep oxide red with the only ornamentation being that cartoonish riding bee taking pride of place upon the tank.    

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In 1948, the first year of production, a mere 80 machines were assembled. By 1949 the Immenstadt factory had 370 employees producing up to 500 Immes per month, for a total of 5000 examples by the end of the year. Margins were slim on the relatively inexpensive R100, and Riedel hoped to make up for the meagre profits with significant volume. Small changes were made throughout the production run, some to simplify production even further, such as a combination headlamp-rectifier which converted the alternating current of the magneto to direct current through the filament of the headlight bulb. Solutions like this would come to define the ingenious ideas behind the Imme, where simplicity was key and the often-referenced-but-rarely-executed engineering ideal of multiple uses for a single component was evident throughout the design. It is this purity of form and function, the result of the thoughtful consideration of practical details, that have earned the Imme a degree of appreciation that is completely disproportionate to its obscurity. The Imme was remarkable because compromises didn’t hinder the design – it was those very compromises that made it brilliant.

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In January 1950 a more upmarket “Export” version of the R100 was introduced, retailing for 850 DM. This upgraded Imme was available in green or black in addition to red, with hand-painted pinstriping to distinguish it from the base “Standard” model. For your extra 175 marks you received decadent luxuries such as a battery, a horn, a speedometer, a centrestand, an improved seat, and some chrome trim pieces. In May a “Luxus” model was introduced for 865 DM, adding some more chrome trim to the horn cover, rims and hubs in addition to the options present on the Export. The popularity of the Imme was such that 1000 machines were now being produced per month, with over 10,000 sold before the end of 1950. R100 powerplants were also sold to the Fritz Fend company to power their third generation of Flitzer three-wheeled microcar, a single-seat machine marketed as an “invalid carriage” - an unfortunate reality in a nation with an overwhelming number of citizens wounded and maimed during wartime.

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Aside from being beautiful and inexpensive, and backed by a successful marketing campaign, the R100 offered good performance and an extremely compliant long-travel suspension which was an asset in various forms of small-bore competition. Top speed was claimed to be better than 50 miles per hour, while netting up to 150 miles to the gallon. Immes successfully competed in European events on and off road across the continent and earned a reputation as reliable and sprightly little machines. Riedel was also notable for offering a manufacturer’s payment plan on the Imme  – with a minimum downpayment of 250 DM you could finance the balance of the purchase price for up to 12 months, which worked out to 50 DM a month for a Standard, 75 DM for an Export, and 90 DM for a Luxus. Everything added up to the Imme being a winner, a machine that should have propelled Riedel into the history books – but trouble was on the horizon.

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Work began on an enlarged R100 named the R150 and advertised as the Neukonstruktion Imme. This new design retained many of the characteristics of the R100 with the extra power of a parallel-twin cylinder engine; the chassis was unchanged aside from the fitment of slightly wider 2.75x19 inch tires, and prototypes were pictured in what appeared to be R100 Luxus specification, with only the position of the carburettor and the presence of twin spark plug leads giving away the new zweizylinder engine. The engine was heavily reworked but was still clearly an evolution of the R100 architecture. As on the R100 the cylinder and heads were cast as a single component, with the intake and exhaust runners placed between the two cylinders in a downdraught configuration, with the single carburettor placed above the engine. Bore was 48mm and stroke 41mm, with 6 claimed horsepower at 5000 rpm. A conventional four-counterweight crankshaft supported by two main bearings was used instead of the single-sided setup of the R100. Gear ratios were revised compared to the R100 but the gearbox was still a three-speed draw-key design shifted by twistgrip, and it was still devoid of neutral. Brochures and advertisements were printed to herald the arrival of the new, much improved Imme, but ultimately only three prototype R150s would be built.

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In an attempt to diversify the product line, a step-through scooter called the Till was developed in late 1949. While not as well-known as the Imme the Till offered several innovations of its own. Using an R100 powerplant with duplex chain drive and enclosed bodywork, the Till was notable for using part of the rear frame as the exhaust pipe and having an adjustable rear suspension that compensated for the weight of a pillion - a mechanical switch connected to the passenger pegs engaged an extra spring to support the load of a passenger on the rear suspension. Five examples were built in 1949-1950, along with a single prototype using the R150 twin cylinder engine with an integrated cooling fan. Interestingly a Till 100 was used as a prop in the 1950 West German film “Schwarzwaldmädel” (“The Black Forest Girl”), a sappy bit of romantic entertainment that was part of a genre of escapist movies made in postwar Germany.

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Even more obscure than the Till was the Zircon moped presented at the Brussels Motor Show in 1950, which used an R100 power unit mated to a bicycle-like chassis made in gents and ladies configurations – whether this machine made it past the prototype stage is unclear, with only a blurb and a drawing from the French magazine “Le Cycle” surviving to prove the existence of this unusual bastardization of Imme components.

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Despite all appearances of success there were problems brewing at Riedel. The single-sided crankshaft design of the R100 engine was proving problematic – it was fragile, and notorious for destroying its single main bearing. Engine failures while the machines were still within the factory warranty were becoming a major liability for Riedel, and the kickstart mechanism in the gearbox was also proving troublesome. The slim profit margins meant that any warranty repairs, particularly ones that involved major engine work, were incurring significant losses - enough to warrant a redesign of the bottom end of the R100 motor that dropped the single-sided crankshaft in favour of a conventional two-main bearing setup.

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It proved to be too little, too late for Riedel. The writing was already on the wall, and the company books were suffering under the weight of warranty claims. Mismanagement of the company finances compounded the losses. Despite healthy sales and a total of 12,000 machines rolling off the line Riedel Motoren AG was in receivership by the end of 1950. Norbert Riedel stepped down and company executive Fritz Philipps took control, continuing R100 production into 1951. The Immes produced under Philipps’ direction were christened the Neue R100/D and featured the updated twin-main crankshaft as well as an improved kickstart gear, but were otherwise identical to earlier R100s.

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While the R100/D addressed the major flaws of Riedel’s engine design it wasn't enough to save the floundering company. Debts in excess of 1 million Deutschmarks crippled the company and there was little that Philipps could do to keep the banks at bay. Production continued until November 1951, when Riedel Motoren AG was finally liquidated. Philipps purchased most of the tooling and founded his own company, Zweirad Motoren und Getriebe (ZMG), to continue limited production of the Imme and provide spare parts support for existing machines. The ZMG Immes used the same chassis as the R100 but introduced an enlarged version of the R150 prototype engine featuring a 174cc, 52x41mm twin-cylinder configuration with a claimed 8.5 hp. Only 25 complete R175s would be built over a period of several years, with a few examples put together in later years by combining R175 engine with R100 chassis. Production of spare parts and a few complete engines continued until 1956, by which point ZMG had produced fifty 125cc singles based on an enlarged R100 D engine, along with ten 195cc, 55x41mm, 12 hp “R200” twin-cylinder engines which would prove to be the ultimate evolution of Riedel’s design. Production of modified gearboxes continued after 1956, and ZMG became Philipps Getriebebau in 1958, which subsequently became Antriebstechnik Roland Schwarz GmbH & Co. in 1995. The company continues to operate today as gearbox specialist RSGetriebe GmbH in Sonthofen.

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After leaving his namesake company in 1951, Norbert Riedel returned to Victoria where he headed design on the KR 21 Swing motorcycle and Peggy scooter, both released in late 1954. Both were interesting and advanced machines that featured some elements that were clearly a product of Riedel’s design process, an evolution of some of the ideas introduced on the R100. Much like the Imme the Swing and Peggy had their power unit rigidly mounted to the rear swingarm, pivoting within the frame and bobbing up and down in line with the rear suspension - hence the name “Swing”, which was soon nicknamed “das schwebende Motorrad” (“the floating motorcycle”). Both machines used a 197cc 65x60mm horizontal two-stroke single mated to a four-speed transmission with a fully enclosed chain final drive, with the cast alloy chain housing doubling as a structural element of the swinging arm, but differed in their chassis designs – the Peggy had a step-through frame and fully enveloping bodywork (with a fan providing cooling to the enclosed air-cooled engine) while the Swing had a more traditional duplex cradle frame with a half-bathtub rear fender and an exposed powertrain.

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Both the Peggy and the Swing were notable for offering electric starting* long before the “electric leg” became commonplace in production motorcycles, as well as introducing a unique electromagnetic push-button gearshift integrated into a gearbox that applied the linear shift mechanism introduced by Riedel on the Imme. The system, dubbed Swing-Blitz-Schaltung (SBS), used a four-button gear selector switch mounted on the left hand handlebar which allowed the rider to select individual gears. Four doughnut-shaped electro magnets were arranged in line around the draw-key shaft. When a button was pressed on the selector, one of the four magnets energized and pulled a cylindrical barrel threaded onto the end of the shaft into the position needed to engage the individual gears. As on the Imme the gears were engaged by detent balls arranged within their hubs, pushed outward by a bulb-shaped wedge on the end of the selector shaft to lock the gear.  Neutral was selected by activating both the 1st and 2nd gear magnets, which would hold the wedge between the two positions and allow the gears to freewheel. While ingenious and unique, the system was fragile and prone to failure, easily accomplished if the rider selected the wrong gear at the wrong time.

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Details of Riedel’s career following his work at Victoria are scant. At some point he left the company to start his own business in Lindau called Amarturen GmbH. There have been suggestions that Riedel faced significant problems in securing royalties and recognition for his designs, with much of his work at Ardie being unrecognized and his draw-key gearbox allegedly copied by several companies, most notably cribbed by one Hermann Hagenmeyer - the founder of GETRAG, which has grown into one of the largest gearbox manufacturers in the world.

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Norbert Riedel was killed in February, 1963 in an avalanche while skiing at the Zürs alpine resort in Vorarlberg, Austria. He was survived by his seven year old son Steffen, who would go on to write a well-reviewed German-language biography of his father detailing the difficulties he faced as an engineer in postwar Germany.

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Following the closing of Riedel Motoren and the end of ZMG production, the Imme faded into obscurity. R100s were always cheap, economical transportation and were treated as such – which is to say badly. As the decades passed attrition claimed many of these unique machines, their delicate engines and advanced chassis’ succumbing to the use, abuse and neglect of uncaring owners. A small but loyal fanbase remained in Germany, where the Imme earned a cult following that persists into the present, but most of the 12,000 machines that rolled off the Immenstadt assembly line were lost to history and indifference. This has made the Imme a particularly rare and under-appreciated piece of design, a forward-thinking and beautiful motorcycle that often baffles oblivious onlookers who have never heard of this “bee” machine. Few are aware of the innovative design elements it featured decades before they were re-introduced by mainstream manufacturers.

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A few modern designers quietly uphold the Imme as a masterpiece of motorcycle design. Former Ducati (and current Confederate) designer Pierre Terblanche holds the Imme in high regard:


Bienville Studios JT Nesbitt is happy to expound the virtues of the Imme to anyone who will listen:

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The Imme received a significant boost in credibility and appreciation after it was featured as one of the centrepieces of the Guggenheim’s “The Art of the Motorcycle” exhibition in 1998, where it was displayed on the merits of its beauty, its design, and its historical context. Today the Imme remains relatively obscure but greatly appreciated by the few who are familiar with it, and the value of surviving examples has been steadily rising (if not threatening the traditional blue-chip hierarchy). Despite the recent rise in appreciation the history of the Imme has been largely lost over the course of decades of anonymity, and few are aware of Norbert Riedel’s contributions to modern motorcycle design. Thus the Imme is one of the greatest motorcycle designs that no one has heard of, a machine out of time and the product of a brilliant man who remains tragically underappreciated.

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*In 1953 Norbert Riedel patented a combination starter-generator, but it’s unclear if this system was utilized in his Victoria designs. If anyone has any experience with Swing or Peggy engines, feel free to chime in.

Photo Courtesy Richard James

There has been a remarkable amount of innovation in motorcycle design that has come from Down Under. Australian and New Zealander designers and tinkerers seem to have a particular penchant for crafting some of the most interesting and forward-thinking machines the world has seen, all in isolation from the existing networks. These clever displays of ingenuity often seem driven by a variety of factors – perhaps it is their distance from existing industries, or their down-home ingenuity brought on by that isolation from the rest of the world, and more than likely it is their strong fondness for all things loud and fast. One company came to the fore in the late 90s with the promise of putting an Australian-made motorcycle on the world stage, with a radical clean-sheet design that made the rest of the industry take notice. The Hunwick Hallam almost single-handedly kickstarted an Australian motorcycle industry that would have dusted the competition the road and the track, but the realities of the market would doom it to obscurity.

Photo Courtesy Richard James

Hunwick Hallam began as a partnership between Australian businessman Rod Hunwick and engineer Paul Hallam. Hunwick was well known in the Australian motorcycle market as the owner of the Action Motorcycles dealerships in Melbourne and Sydney, achieving notability for introducing in-house financing and on-site financial and insurance advisors. Rod achieved success after having moved to Australia from New Zealand in the early 1980s, building his empire of two- and four-wheeled dealerships beginning with the purchase of a Suzuki dealer in Sydney. Following the old cliché Rod would serve as the business end of the partnership while Paul Hallam would be the talent – Paul was a gifted designer and the son of Frank Hallam, a man famous for his work as chief engineer of the Repco-Brabham Formula One V8 in the mid-1960s. The senior Hallam would go on to found Frank Hallam and Sons Engineering in Geelong, where Paul and his brother Andrew would learn the trade and develop their abilities as engine builders. While the Hallam family was inextricably linked to automotive exploits, with the success of the Repco engine in the 1966 and 1967 F1 championships earning their place in history, Paul gravitated towards two-wheeled endeavours as well as two-stroke marine racing.

Photo Courtesy Richard James

Paul Hallam was not the first designer to be courted by Hunwick. The first design proposed in 1994 used a steel trellis frame built by New Zealander Ken MacIntosh housing a Ducati-like V-twin designed by Peter Smith (mocked up in wood but never built), though both ideas would be abandoned in subsequent development. The story goes that Hunwick had seen one of Hallam’s projects, a heavily reworked Harley-Davidson Sportster with a more sporting chassis and running gear, in a 1994 issue of Australian Motorcycle News and contacted him to discuss the possibility of designing a home-grown Australian machine. Another version has Sir Jack Brabham, who well acquainted with Frank Hallam from the Repco V8 project, recommending Paul as a candidate. Soon after a partnership was formed and work began in secret on a new design that would be the first all-Australian production motorcycle designed and built in the country.

Photo Courtesy Richard James

The initial brief proposed by Hunwick was to produce a street-legal design based around a proprietary V-twin engine. The first machine would be the Boss, a modern cruiser aimed at taking on Harley-Davidson with a high-performance muscle bike that would eclipse anything coming out of Milwaukee while retaining laid-back ergonomics. It was a curious choice of target market and one that seemed a bit naïve in hindsight, especially considering the technology and design principles that would be put on offer once Hallam was on board. Soon after the initial brief a second flagship machine was added to the roster – the X1R would be a 1000cc sportbike aimed at pushing the limits of Hallam’s engine and chassis design with a machine that would be eligible for competition in World Superbike. A few tweaks of the chassis would yield the geometry necessary to build a sportbike, while the engine would be reworked significantly to product competitive horsepower. A third design was also proposed: the Rage would be a semi-naked streetfighter with an 1100cc engine splitting the difference between the X1R and the Boss that owed a debt to the popularity of the Ducati Monster. The Rage would utilize the basic architecture of the Boss with modified suspension and bodywork and a different state of tune for the engine. Thus a single chassis and one engine design would serve three distinct purposes, each more extreme than the last, and all were hoped to be capable of blasting the competition away.

Photo Courtesy Richard James

Development of the machines was kept in strict secrecy for three years while the engines and chassis were built and tested. When the project finally broke cover in January 1997 Hunwick Hallam was already well established and the machines in a late stage of development, with production capacity claimed to be largely ready for setup. Initial press releases quoted HH motorcycles as being 85% Australian in their construction, a remarkable figure for a small company with no precedents in the market. At this stage no firm date was given for the commencement of production.

Photo Courtesy Richard James

The engine was a proprietary design developed by Paul Hallam. The basic architecture was relatively conventional at first glance, featuring a liquid-cooled 90-degree V-twin layout with four-valve heads and double overhead cams. The true genius was in the details. Despite liquid cooling the cylinders were heavily finned to improve heat dissipation, to the point where an oil cooler was deemed unnecessary. The cylinder heads were a three-piece design, with the combustion chamber machined separately from the upper and lower cam boxes. The combustion chambers were designed by Hallam based on his experience tuning two-stroke marine engines; dubbed the Axial Targeted Combustion Chamber, the heads and piston crowns were shaped in a manner that directed the fuel mixture towards the centrally placed spark plug. Details of the system are scant (and drawings are nonexistent) but the concept is sound.

Photo Courtesy Richard James

The idea behind ATCC seems like common sense but proper combustion and flame propagation within the cylinder has been an often overlooked element in engine design – if one blindly pursues the notion of flowing air through the cylinder as quickly as possible (the old concept of every engine being little more than an air pump) with no regard for actually burning the fuel mixture efficiently, you are losing power and tossing unburnt fuel straight out the exhaust. Swirling the fuel mixture past the spark source, combined with a shallow pent-roof combustion chamber with tight squish bands to force the mixture towards the plug on compression is the ideal in a multivalve head - a turbulent mixture always burns better than a stagnant one. A good example of the cunning application of fuel swirling is the recently released EBR (don’t call it a Buell) 1190RX. The hand-built limited production 1190RS produced a claimed 175HP and 97LB/FT, while the mass-produced RX puts out a claimed 185HP and 101LB/FT. The only difference between the two engines is a special staggered inlet camshaft that opens one valve slightly ahead of the other with both reaching full lift at the same time. This creates the swirling effect within the cylinder that improves combustion and gives more power, despite having a lower compression ratio than the RS, all the while lowering emissions via a more thorough burn.

Photo Courtesy Richard James

On the Hunwick Hallam downdraught inlet runners were fed by a pressurized airbox, with fueling via an electronic fuel injection system developed by MoTEC featuring single injectors on the Boss and a sequential twin injector setup on the X1R. A specially developed exhaust port with a cast-in “reverberation barrier” aimed to improve exhaust flow dynamics within the head itself. Valve sizes were 38mm intake and 34mm exhaust, set at a shallow 26-degree included angle. Belt-driven camshafts acted on shim under bucket tappets and conventional valve springs. Interestingly the timing system on the Boss engine was a non-interference design, meaning that a cam belt could snap or the engine could be assembled incorrectly without any risk of the valves hitting the pistons – ask any Ducati owner who has had a cam belt failure why this might be a good idea. Many elements of Hallam's design were catered to improving long-term reliability and ease of servicing/modification. HH projected a 15 year service life for their machines with an emphasis on quality and potential resale value in maintaining the customer's sizable investment, with retail pricing expected to be north of $30,000 AUD.

Special attention was paid to minimizing weight in the valvetrain to improve performance, with overall weight claimed to be half that of comparable production machines, but Hallam had bigger ideas: the X1R powerplant was intended to use pneumatic valves fed by gasses drawn from the cylinder, integrated into the cylinder head to keep the system compact and free of external pressure sources. Had this bleeding edge innovation made it to the production stage the Hunwick Hallam would have had the distinction of being the first (and so far only) production engine in the world to make use of the hitherto Formula 1 exclusive technology.

Photo Courtesy Richard James

While a 90-degree V-twin layout ensured excellent primary engine balance, it would still suffer from some rocking couple effects and secondary vibrations. As the engine was a stressed member and required rigid mounting within the chassis, Hallam sought to address this vibration by incorporating a torsional vibration damper on the crankshaft. Unlike a bulky counterbalance shaft, a torsional damper is far more compact and usually resides in line with the crankshaft, serving to dissipate vibration, harmonic resonance, and irregularities in the motion of the crank with a mechanical or fluid disc. The range of damping varying according to the design: hydraulic dampers having a wider range of damping while fixed mechanical items are tuned to lessen specific frequencies of resonance. They are semi-common in automotive applications to reduce perceptible harshness and vibration from passenger car engines, but are almost nonexistent in motorcycle designs. The exact details of the system used in the Hunwick Hallam engine are vague but it appeared to be a hydraulic damper fed by oil drawn through drillings in the crankshaft.    

Photo Courtesy Richard James

The first engine destined to be slotted into the Boss displaced 1350cc via a 102.5mm bore and 82mm stroke with a 8.6:1 compression ratio (confusingly some period reviews and the company website noted 105x80mm and 1385cc), while the X1R featured a 998cc 97x67.5mm mill with an 11.8:1 compression ratio (14:1 in race tune). An 1127cc, 102x67.5mm version was proposed for the Rage and was set to be released following the introduction of the Boss and X1R. Initial horsepower claims for the Boss engine were 109 HP at 7000 RPM, while the X1R pumped out an impressive 141 HP at 9500 RPM (some sources quoted 142 HP at 10,600 RPM), both figures measured at the rear wheel. With modern engine management and Hallam’s clever cylinder head designs these engines were claimed to be fully emissions compliant in Australia, Japan, the United States and Europe (though it was unclear if the X1R power figures were the result of a street-legal state of tune; with 14:1 compression power was supposedly in the 170 HP range). These figures would have placed HH well ahead of the competition they faced in the late 1990s – this was long before the Harley V-Rod would come along and slap a modern, high performance engine into a cruiser chassis, and no other V-twin in the power cruiser segment offered triple digit power in a modern chassis with reasonably light weight. If cylinder count was ignored the Yamaha V-Max could still claim to be king of the horsepower wars, but it was an ancient design that tied itself in knots at the first corner. Meanwhile the X1R engine had enough power to make the competition sweat.  The newly introduced crop of Japanese sporting V-twin like the Suzuki TL1000S and the Honda VTR1000 were knocking out around 110 HP on a good day, while the quickest Ducati on offer was the expensive and finicky 916 SPS pumping out a claimed 123 HP.

Photo Courtesy Richard James

The transmission was another unique element, featuring a removable gearbox assembly that remained in unit with the engine. The two gearbox shafts were stacked vertically to improve packaging, previewing the recent trend towards vertical gearboxes in production sportbikes. The first gearbox intended for the Rage and Boss was a five-speed design, with a six-speed reserved for the X1R. The transmission casing supported the swingarm pivot independently of the rest of the chassis, allowing the entire gearbox and rear suspension assembly to be removed without disturbing the engine. Plans were announced for an electro-hydraulic semiautomatic transmission that would use excess oil pressure from the engine to drive a hydraulic shift mechanism of an unspecified design, with semi and fully automatic modes and an integrated traction control system – heady stuff for an upstart company in the mid-1990s, and ideas that have only recently become production realities.  

Photo Courtesy Richard James

Both designs shared a remarkable chassis design that was largely underappreciated, even in the contemporary articles that profiled it. With Ducati’s recent and much-publicized “introduction” of a production frameless design using the engine as a completely stressed member in the Panigale series of sport bikes, you’d be forgiven for thinking that “frameless” motorcycles are a new thing. The reality is that frameless or monocoque designs have existed for decades, and Ducati is not breaking any new ground. Go back far enough and you’ll note that from the Series B onward Vincent was a pioneer in the use of the engine as a stressed member, with only a box-section oil tank/spine supporting the steering head. Similarly the Hunwick Hallam chassis made full use of the inherent strength of an engine’s crankcases to make a virtually frameless motorcycle. Hallam’s solution was to bolt a cast aluminum casing supporting the steering head to the forward cylinder and using the engine as a fully stressed member.

Australian Rider Autumn 1998

The rear suspension was notable for mounting an adjustable WP coilover shock just behind and below the steering head, bracketed onto the front cylinder. A long alloy beam, which at first glance might be mistaken for a frame spar, ran along the right side of the engine and connected the alloy box-section swingarm to the rising-rate linkage of the shock. This system, dubbed RamRoc, freed up valuable clearance around the rear cylinder and allowed the engine to be tilted back without compromising the wheelbase or exhaust routing, which allowed the fine tuning of weight distribution within the chassis. The RamRoc solution would be adopted in Europe by Pierluigi Marconi while designing the Bimota SB8 chassis; he referenced the Hunwick Hallam rear suspension as his inspiration for moving the rear shock up beside the front cylinder of the Suzuki-sourced TL1000 V-twin, with a linkage rod connecting it to the swingarm.

Australian Rider Autumn 1998

Adjustable 41mm WP upside down forks were used on the prototype machines, with the Boss featuring a 30 degree rake and the X1R 23.5. Wheelbases were 61 inches for the Boss and 52 inches for the X1R, with the X1R’s adjustable geometry allowing an extension of up to 55 inches - handy for improving traction when you have a fire-breathing motor threatening to spool up the rear wheel.

Australian Rider Autumn 1998

Each component of the Hunwick Hallam, apart from the forks, wheels, shock and brakes, was designed from first principles, meaning the chassis and engine were designed from a clean slate as a harmonious whole rather than two distinct objects within the machine. Hallam incorporated many clever engineering solutions throughout his design, his process more or less unhindered by the considerations that plagued larger manufacturers who worked within a framework of conservative adherence to existing ideas. Individual components served multiple functions whenever possible. This methodology drew repeated and slightly awkward comparisons to that other mould-breaking V-twin powered motorcycle from the other side of the world - the Britten V1000.

Photo Courtesy Richard James

Two running engines, one Boss 1350 and one X1R 998, were completed and tested in early 1996. A running Boss prototype hit the road in the fall of the same year. When the project was unveiled to the press in early 1997 the curious looking Power Cruiser was met with reserved enthusiasm. The styling was decidedly strange, a mixture of advanced technology and high-quality running gear saddled with dumpy looking bodywork, a bobbed solo seat surrounded by a massive shroud (a necessity as the radiator was placed under the seat), an off-the-spares-shelf exhaust, Fat Boy -esque solid disc wheels, and wide cruiser bars that would have looked right at home on a Duo Glide parked outside of a roadhouse bar. The machine appeared to be more of a test bed than a polished machine ready for production, with some crude detailing and half-finished components making things look a little less than ready for primetime. Stripped of the bodywork the Boss looked like a cutting edge design, a testament to Hallam’s work on the engine and chassis. Clothed it looked like something hastily made ready for the road, the engineering masked by the strange aesthetics. Period reports hinted at the advanced technology that was being presented, but a lot of the impact was lost when you gazed upon the styling. Hallam wanted to build an advanced and competitive Australian machine from first principles and his attempt at satisfying the cruiser design brief seemed forced. Hunwick wanted to build a bike that Americans would buy if they suddenly decided that their Harleys were too fat and slow and the Boss deviated considerably from his vision. This is not to say that the Boss was entirely a result of Hunwick’s desires – it was very much a product of Hallam’s vision of what a cruiser should be, while Hunwick expected a more traditional-looking machine.

Photo Courtesy Richard James

While the Boss had hit the road, for good or ill, a mockup of the proposed Rage streetster was assembled in the HH design studio but was put on hold while work continued on the X1R prototype. Here there was more promise for something earth shattering and a worthy exhibit of Hallam’s engineering that was more in tune with his design principles. If the Boss was Hunwick’s idea, the X1R was entirely Hallam’s. While spreads of the Boss were showcased in the press, small sketches of a sleek, fully faired superbike were inserted into sideboards hinting at what was to come. When the completed prototype was unveiled at Phillip Island in March 1997 during the first race of the World Superbike Championship, it caught the world by surprise. The sleek, organic curves of the initial sketches were translated into carbon fibre and metal faithfully, with a long nose extending to the leading edge of the front wheel serving as the defining characteristic of the otherworldly machine. A shapely belly pan hid some of the mechanical bits, but left a central swath open revealing the exposed cam belts and snaking exhaust headers. The radiator was hidden at an angle in the massive nose, visible through the central duct that fed it cool air. Here comparisons to the V1000 were more appropriate, with a menacing V-twin clothed in highly aerodynamic bodywork with snaking exhaust headers that looked unlike anything else.

Photo Courtesy Phil Aynsley

Phillip Island proved to be the first test run of the X1R, which had never been run in public and had been limited to nothing more than dyno testing prior to its unveiling. Company insiders noted that it was truly a last minute all-or-nothing gamble, with final assembly of the priceless prototype happening on site in the hours leading up to the moment that Paul Hallam bump started his creation for the crowds. Veteran rider Malcolm Campbell was handed the X1R for some parade laps around the circuit, where it performed flawlessly despite never having run under its own power before that Saturday afternoon. The X1R proved to be a hit with the home crowd and an instant sensation that was mobbed by curious onlookers for the remainder of the race weekend. It was a menacing-looking threat from an underdog upstart to the existing manufacturers. They would waste no time in putting the X1R into competition despite the early stage of development.

Photo Courtesy Phil Aynsley

Given that Hunwick Hallam had not yet produced the requisite number of machines needed for homologation (they had in fact only produced one, and that machine was going to be their entry) the X1R was entered into the 1997 Australian Superbike Championship as a prototype. To compete in this category the X1R had to meet all existing Superbike regulations except for production numbers. No points would be awarded for wins, but the company would earn some much needed development testing in the heat of racing, and some good publicity, in the hope that by 1998 they could build enough production examples to qualify for full homologation in the series. Unfortunately things did not begin well. To fill the grid at the opening event at the Winton circuit, Supersport 600 entries were allowed into the Superbike race. While Campbell was able to qualify in 9th position in wet conditions, a collision with a Supersport rider on a Kawasaki ZX6 in the first corner on the first lap of the race led to a fall that sent the silver-liveried machine sliding unceremoniously into the gravel trap. During subsequent repairs a Kevlar chip jammed the fuel pump, putting the X1R out of contention for the following heats. Most recall this ignominious start, but few remembered that the X1R would go on to complete events for the next two seasons, even landing a 2nd place finish at a Thunderbikes event at Eastern Creek  - a result made even more impressive by the fact that Campbell missed qualifying and was forced to start at the back of the grid. That victory was offset by a spectacular mishap in a later round - an ECU glitch caused a lean condition which overheated and blew apart the exhaust, starting a fire that scorched Campbell’s leathers as he continued around the course in flames to get the machine back to the pits to extinguish the inferno.  Later events in the Superbike class netted some respectable 8th and 9th place finishes; nothing to sneeze at considering the X1R was an unproven one-off prototype.

Photo Courtesy Richard James

Road tests of the X1R noted good handing (though Wayne Gardner complained about the rear suspension) while nobody had any complaints about the engine, which produced a very useable powerband and a significant spread of torque. Power tapered off around 9000 RPM, which was fine for a street motor but a bit limiting for a racing machine. Hallam noted he was aiming for stable Honda VFR-like handling characteristics, which spoke to his desire to build a useable street machine despite the extreme specs and racing mandate of the X1R.

Photo Courtesy Phil Aynsley

The 998cc machine was soon joined by a second example, referred to as the “Phase Three” or the “Titanium” bike - the first X1R was dubbed “Phase One”, while a proposed future prototype incorporating Hallam’s pneumatic valve design would be “Phase Five”. Phase Three had a short stroke layout with a 102mm bore and 61mm stroke, giving 996cc. The “Titanium” moniker came from the fact that the engine incorporated titanium conrods, valves and valve springs, which along with several other revisions pushed claimed power up to 176 HP at 10,800 RPM and allowed the engine to breath a bit better at higher revs compared to the Phase One. Combined with a 370lb wet weight the extra power was enough to impress noted journalist and seasoned racer Alan Cathcart, who was fortunate enough to ride the Phase Three back to back with the original X1R in 1998 and note the significant progress that had been made by the tiny company.

Photo Courtesy Phil Aynsley

Despite the wowed reactions and impressive figures surrounding the X1R, it could not be forgotten that the meat and potatoes of the Hunwick Hallam venture was the Boss, which was expected to make up at least 60% of the company’s sales, and a lot of press coverage was devoted to the cruiser rather than the Superbike. Early reviews of the Boss noted that the machine had excellent power and good handling for a cruiser, but often noted that the machine was a strange concoction in search of a niche. It had the motor and chassis to get the job done, but was hampered by the very elements that defined it – cruiser ergonomics and weird aesthetics.

Photo Courtesy Richard James

By this point Hunwick Hallam was behind schedule. An analysis by the Australian Graduate School of Management pointed to some serious issues with the HH business model, noting problems like the overly ambitious plan for a worldwide introduction and the immediate entry into several overseas markets, and the projected $30,000-$40,000 AUD price tag for a product that had no current market niche. The report closed with a verdict that the company was aiming far too high given their current situation and that they would have difficulty securing the capital needed to fund their plans. While the initial setup and prototype construction had been funded by Hunwick (to the tune of several million dollars), more capital would be needed to establish production and a sales network. Hunwick was cagey with the details of where the investment money was coming from, but it was revealed that the majority was from Asian investors. Some disappointment was noted that local Australian backers could not be secured, but in any case Hunwick claimed that all was well financially.

Photo Courtesy Richard James

Further complicating matters was the fact that the company had become split into two bases of operation, one based in Melbourne and the other in Sydney. The Sydney location, set up close to Hunwick’s Action dealer network, was the operational centre of the company. Meanwhile Melbourne was the site of Hallam’s workshop, where Paul worked on the design sketches and prototype machining during the early stages of the project. The considerable distance (600 miles) between the two sites complicated the process, with sketches and parts being shuffled back and forth between the locales, often by Paul himself. Problems emerged when Hallam’s designs were being altered without his permission in Sydney during his absence.

Photo Courtesy Richard James

This situation came to a head when a competing prototype was built. While the Boss and the first two X1Rs had been assembled in Hallam’s workshop, a street-legal Rage test mule was put together in Sydney without Hallam’s input and revealed to the public without his knowledge. Presented to the press in a barely finished state, with slapdash bodywork, datalogging equipment everywhere, and half-finished components intact, the reviewers were not impressed despite the performance on offer. Local press praised the machine but UK testers were not swayed by the home-grown pride and derided the machine. This publicity stunt highlighted the growing schism within the company, a dangerous revelation when investors were still being courted - especially when the situation became so dire that mediators were forced to step in to ease the growing tensions between Rod Hunwick and Paul Hallam.

Photo Courtesy Richard James

Richard James, a member of the HH design team who would also work on the Vincent RTV and the Norton 961 Commando, provided these photos of the mule taken in his parent’s backyard in Sydney, just before he rode the machine 950kms to Paul’s workshop – he noted “The engine went like a train and the bike handled beautifully. It was a bit of a handful to hold onto at high speed though”.

Photo Courtesy Richard James

Series production of the Boss and X1R was slated to begin by 1998, with a hope of 350 machines in the first year scaling up to 800 examples by 2001, but delays and internal issues pushed the date further and further back. By 1999 promises were still being made but no new machines were forthcoming and investors were beginning to get worried. A “factory” was established in Sydney but was little more than a warehouse with offices and a machine shop, with the empty space serving as storage for Action Motorcycles inventory.

Photo Courtesy Richard James

In addition to the rift between the two centres of operation, tensions were on the rise between Rod Hunwick and Paul Hallam. A gulf was forming between the visions of the two men as time went on, with Hunwick focussing on the marketability of HH products while Hallam wanted to develop the engineering and performance of his designs. It became a classic case of marketing trumping innovation, of the considerations of production compromises that plague large companies driving a wedge between the two partners. Despite their upstart status HH was already settling into the patterns that limit larger companies and stifle innovation – Hunwick wanted to sell cruisers and turn a profit, Hallam wanted to build the best possible machine and develop the X1R. Later on, Hunwick would reveal:


So it was that in 2000 that Paul Hallam left the company and Hunwick Hallam was reborn as Hunwick Harrop, with Hunwick retaining Hallam’s engine design and reforming the company in partnership with Melbourne-based automotive engineering firm Harrop. Harrop was (and still is) a well-established supplier of high-performance parts and engineering to the Australian Ford and Holden crowds and the Harrop family had a long history of participation in motorsports. In the new arrangement it was proposed that Harrop would function as a supplier to HH - complete engines and some ancillaries would be produced by Harrop in Melbourne, while the final assembly of motorcycles would be performed in Sydney.

Australian Motorcycle News February 2001

The first product of this partnership was the Phantom 1500 Super Cruiser designed by Jeff Haggarty, which could be summarized as a heavily reworked version of the Boss concept that was more in line with Hunwick’s original vision. Hallam’s engine architecture and frameless chassis were retained but the styling was completely revised. The engine featured a 101.6X92.1mm layout giving 1493ccs, producing 106HP at 6250RPM and 101 LB/FT at 4250RPM with a 9.25:1 compression ratio. The five-speed gearbox of the Boss was retained, while the radiator was moved up behind the steering head. The chassis remained frameless, using a U-shaped alloy steering head bolted to the front cylinder, but dropped the long rising-rate lever and head mounted shock of the earlier machines in favour of a Koni monoshock in a straight-rate arrangement pivoting off the rear cylinder. The right-side up 51mm front forks came from Paoli, while braking was courtesy of Harrop-produced four-piston calipers and 320mm Beringer rotors. The 17-inch disc wheels, shod in sportbike-sized rubber, were also produced by Harrop.

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Styling was a radical departure from contemporary production cruisers and foretold the coming of the factory chopper style that plagues the market today. The rear was shrouded in a shapely binnacle that enveloped the rear of the machine before arching above the motor, with only the seat and speedometer recessed into the “tank” (actually the airbox cover) ahead of the rider disrupting the flowing curves. The 18 litre fuel tank was hidden beneath the seat along with the collector for the dual Staintune exhausts. It was a modern design that earned the company accolades from numerous sources as well as a Good Design Australia award, a far cry from the damning-with-faint-praise that the Boss had received upon its unveiling. With a low, wide butt and a lithe front end the proportions gave the machine a stance that looked far more aggressive than the 31.5 degree rake, 17 inch wheels, and 67 inch wheelbase would suggest. The Phantom looked more like a custom showpiece than a production motorcycle and it channelled the spirit of the new crop of highly-polished custom American machines that were popping up, in advance of the mass selling-out of chopper culture that would soon occur (see OCC et al). Unlike those eye-catching show machines the Phantom had a modern engine, a proper chassis, quality running gear, functional brakes, and the ability to go around a corner. And it wasn’t powered by a ubiquitous Harley-clone motor.      

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The Phantom was in line with Rod Hunwick’s vision of producing a modern power cruiser and it was a machine that was admittedly built with the American market in mind. EPA certification for the driveline was high on HH’s priorities. It was hoped that 70% of the production run would be exported, a clear sign of whose dollars Hunwick was chasing. Early plans were to only sell the Phantom in the USA and Australia, though interest from the European and Asian markets expanded the mandate. Retail pricing was announced at $38,900 AUD, which during the record drop of the Aussie currency around 2001 would have put the Phantom under $20,000 USD.

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The press was impressed with the style and performance offered by the Phantom, noting that it possessed ample power and tidy handling in spite of the long and low geometry and 530 lb dry weight. The styling was seen as fresh and was largely well-received. All looked promising and a goal of producing 325 units in 2001 was announced, with production gradually ramping up afterwards. Once the Phantom was in production it was hoped that the Rage concept would finally come to fruition after languishing on the back burner for several years, while the company website hinted at an upcoming “1350cc sport motorcycle”. Curiously the official Hunwick Harrop website continued to list specifications for the Boss and X1R despite the apparent end to those projects, as well as including quotes from earlier Hunwick Hallam reviews that were edited to refer to the company as “Hunwick Harrop” - a transparent attempt at distancing themselves from the earlier partnership.

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The Hunwick Harrop was to be sold through unconventional means. Customers would place their orders with the company through an online process and have their Phantom delivered directly from the factory. Brick and mortar dealers would be limited to “Stocking Service Providers” who would carry limited inventory and act as a liaison for prospective customers. Each machine would be built-to-order to customer specifications and colours. Preparation and servicing was supposed to be performed by volunteer “Delivery Service Providers”, existing dealerships around the world who would take on the task of caring for the machines without joining a traditional distribution/sale network or holding inventory. Requirements to become a Hunwick Harrop “dealer” were, according to the official website, “SSPs and DSPs will need to be Internet and email connected, have a digital camera for processing claims, have access to a notebook computer to simplify engine servicing, and have a credit card.” It was a new concept driven by the possibilities offered by online marketing and sales, but one that seemed rather half-baked for an upstart company that had not yet delivered any finished motorcycles.

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It was clear that Hunwick Harrop was seeking to capitalize on the recent “Business to Consumer” sales model that had achieved some limited but notable success in the motorcycle industry.  Ducati gambled on B2C as a motorcycle sales tool by offering their limited edition Pierre Terblanche-designed MH900e up for grabs online in 2000, and again when they sold the entire run of 996Rs online in 2001, but those experiments were backed by a major company producing tasty bits of hardware that were well and truly desired before the online sales started. Selling an unproven product from an unknown company that had been consistently behind schedule was far from appealing to sceptical consumers and it made Hunwick Harrop’s B2C model look suspicious rather than revolutionary.

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Four complete machines were exhibited at the 2001 Dealer Expo in Indianapolis, Indiana, marking the US introduction of the Phantom and an optimistic move into the North American market. The upstarts from Down Under received a few curious inquiries, but no commitments were made and no dealers were signed. The four machines were then sent back home to be displayed at the Melbourne International Motorshow where they proved to be a hit with the crowds, though the company website repeatedly parroted the self-deprecating comment “that the Phantom looks better in the flesh than in photos”. The Melbourne show was followed by the public introduction of the Phantom at the opening of the Australian Motorcycle Grand Prix at Phillip Island in October, where Sir Jack Brabham was handed the keys to a red example for a spirited parade lap around the circuit – four and a half years after the Hunwick Hallam X1R had been piloted around the same course by Malcolm Campbell. Apparently no one dared make the connection between Brabham and Paul's engine despite the history of Sir Jack’s Formula 1 exploits with Frank Hallam’s Repco V8.

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After a brief period of renewed interest in the media and some optimistic reports HH faded into obscurity. The venture limped along, with a claim of 51 orders and an announcement of test rides for “those holding reservations and other interested riders”, but it eventually fizzled out with a whimper.  An undisclosed number of machines were produced (some say only the four that were shown in Indianapolis and Melbourne, along with one pre-production prototype, with no evidence of any customer deliveries) before the funding ran out and the company was quietly shuttered in 2002.

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Rod Hunwick would go on to co-found Deus Ex Machina in Sydney in 2005 with surfware magnate Dare Jennings, cleverly capitalizing on the nascent custom café-styled motorcycle scene that had been brewing in sheds and back alleys for several years  - most notably in Japan where the duo had admittedly pilfered inspiration for their stripped-down and marked-up hipster rides. In a nod to Hunwick’s previous venture visitors to the new shop had the opportunity to see the Phase One X1R on display in the showroom, looking remarkably out of place alongside the various tarted-up Japanese bikes it shared space with (today it sits in the Deus Cafe in Camperdown). Deus would go on to become a successful worldwide chain of shops and cafes supplemented by the sale of branded wares and lifestyle items (“Would you care to peruse our selection of surfboards and pomade while you sip our fair-trade espresso?”) that have become the model for modern custom shops looking to cash in on the grease and nostalgia fad.

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After leaving HH Paul designed the Ecoforce EcoH horizontally-opposed twin, a fuel-injected four-stroke that used crankcase induction like a two-stroke. Crankcase pressure forced the mixture into the cylinder through a sidevalve head, harnessing the considerable pumping forces of the reciprocating internals to create an integrated supercharging effect. Gas-charged pneumatic valve control used a conventional camshaft to open the valves but closed them via pressure bled off the combustion chamber that was directly proportioned to engine speed in an attempt to remove some of the efficiency-robbing resistance of conventional springs. By their nature valve springs apply heavier resistance than necessary at lower engine speeds, as the spring rate is fixed and determined by the force needed to close the valves at the maximum engine speed. By eliminating this resistance, the EcoH exhibited better thermal efficiency and lower emissions while remaining simpler than traditional four-strokes, despite using a supposedly obsolete sidevalve cylinder head. The Ecoforce engine achieved some notoriety for its interesting mix of old and new technology applied in a unique fashion, and the claims of power and efficiency offered by the design appeared promising, but the engine ultimately never progressed beyond the prototype stage where a 86x68mm 790cc version produced 80 HP and 80 LB/FT of torque with a 8:1 compression ratio.

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Today Hallam continues to work as a tuner and engine builder alongside his brother Andrew, with Frank Hallam and Sons Engineering in Geelong now operating as Hallam Boyz. Hallam seems to be best known for his work tuning Harley-Davidson engines, a strange twist of fortune after his work on what was ostensibly going to be a Harley-murdering street rod that could do double duty as a Superbike contender.

Photo Courtesy Richard James

The Hunwick Hallam and Hunwick Harrop ultimately proved to be yet another overly ambitious business venture that failed to secure the funding and support needed to crack into the fickle motorcycle market. What could have been the birth of a world-beating Australian product instead became a poster child for broken dreams and the grim realities of the marketplace – no matter how good your product is, you still need to be capable of producing it and selling it to survive, and the demands of the marketplace are often at odds with the cultivation of innovation. Paul Hallam’s pioneering design work and his attempt to push engine and chassis design forward have proven to be tragically underappreciated, particularly in light of recent advances in motorcycle construction that echo the ideas he was developing in the mid-1990s. The failure of Hunwick Hallam and Hunwick Harrop has relegated the novelty of their prototypes to obscurity, their clever elements becoming a footnote in the infinite register of unsuccessful motorcycle ventures and ambitious “could have beens”.

Photo Courtesy Phil Aynsley

Interesting Links
Hunwick Hallam X1R Reviews
Motorcycle.com Hunwick Hallam Technical Details
Motorcycle.com Hunwick Hallam Articles
Ian Falloon's postmortem summary of the Hunwick Hallam
Phil Aynsley's photographs of the X1R Phase One at Phillip Island in 1997
Review of the X1R Phase Three "Titanium" bike
The Kneeslider on the death of Hunwick Hallam
Archived AGSM analysis of Hunwick Hallam
Richard James' photo collection
Paul Hallam's Ecoforce engine patent
Archived Ecoforce homepage
Video coverage of the 1997 Winton race, with Malcolm Campbell's crash
Archived Hunwick Harrop homepage
Good Design Australia award for the Phantom 1500
Alan Cathcart's review of the Hunwick Harrop Phantom 1500
Bob Jenning's review of the Hunwick Harrop Phantom 1500
Jim Duncan's review of the Hunwick Harrop Phantom 1500

Photo Courtesy Phil Aynsley

The whole concept of authenticity (and what is or is not authentic) is one of those paradoxical topics that seems simultaneously important and utterly trivial. The term serves an accusation / accolade directed at whatever fad du jour is grabbing the attention of the public, but it also seems to be a product of our recent cultural aspirations. The whole business of following your passions, aspiring to greatness, and generally expecting the best for ourselves no matter how lazy or shiftless we are is a recent development that has enveloped our culture. To lack authenticity is to contrive against some notion of “true” passion – or worse, to debase those passionate pursuits with monetary concerns. To exhibit an idealized form of authenticity is to be in tune with your loves and desires without corrupting them with too much rationality or materialism. Upon reflection it’s all a bit ridiculous, but bear with me, I’m sure I have a point brewing here somewhere.



This societal push for everyone to live out their dreams (or forever live in despair because they failed to do so) is a recent development that doesn't seem to have much precedent. Our highly networked, highly public culture places a high value on success, the trappings of wealth, and some vague pursuit of happiness; our constant monitoring of each other’s progress inspires greed, jealousy, and the sort of beating-the-Jones-into-submission dick-waving that would make our ancestors cringe. And that’s what makes it seem all the more ridiculous. Did our great-great grandparents aspire to pursue their dreams? Did they tell their children that someday they could be anything they wanted to be (but today they needed to pick rocks out of the soil)? Did bean farmers in Iowa sit on their porches and gaze wistfully into the sunset, wishing they could abandon their earthly responsibilities to pursue their “passion”?

Probably not. They farmed dirt like they had for generations, and pursued the only life they knew. Those who aimed higher would either make their fortune with luck and hard work, or get browbeaten back into submission for being so vain as to aim above their lot in life.   

This pursuit of irrational desire has bred a multitude of curious trends. We live in a material culture that places high value on things, with some objects having more monetary and philosophical value than others based on their construction, performance, and the ideas that inspired them. We have gone beyond the realm of mere functionality; now we judge objects by their moral and conceptual backgrounds. High value is placed on that which is somehow “honest” and born of true workmanship (whatever that is), be it coffee, clothes or motorcycles. We've come to romanticize the notion of honest labour, of some selfless pursuit of perfection in materialism, of widgets crafted by scarred hands and inspired by hard-won experience. And in lieu of actually living this honest life, you can buy it: the products, the image, and the ideals are all up for grabs if you have the money and the poor sense to fall for the hype.

Pictured: Why Harley can get away with it.

I'll digress a bit and attempt to return to the core of this discussion, and what matters to me and my readers: how do these notions of authenticity impact on our modern motorcycle industry?

Motorcycling as a whole has seen a strange series of ups and downs over its short history, a string of failures and rebirths that have contributed to a curious mythos that is as complex as it is contradictory. In Western society we've witnessed motorcycles transition from cheap transportation to status symbols and recreational items in the course of a few generations. They've flickered in and out of respectability repeatedly over the decades, building an image of grace tempered with a tinge of outlaw culture. We reference our past and play dress up with the trappings of bygone groups, putting on pageants of leather, chrome, and noise that are as much the product of marketing as they are a contrived expression of “individuality”. We conveniently ignore the elements of our history that we dislike and parade around in references to the bits we chose to glorify. Our culture is a constantly evolving pastiche of disparate elements stitched together into some virtually incomprehensible mess that is scarcely decipherable to those outside our world (and quite a few of us inside it).    

In cultural terms we've appropriated elements of the past without understanding them, building monuments to nostalgia and tradition without substance. We have trouble moving forward as a result. Conservatism reigns and we distrust the new. We stick to the formulas and keep building bicycles with engines strapped to them without accepting meaningful progress. At the end of the day image trumps engineering.

It isn't all bad. There is something to be said for machines that channel a genuine spirit. As much as I may disparage the paint shaker-cum-motorcycles rolling out of Milwaukee, I have a begrudging respect for their single-minded pursuit of an ideal (even if that ideal is of their own design). Harley-Davidson is, all marketing aside, the only authentic cruiser. They have an unbroken lineage that has survived depressions, recessions, wars, and image problems, a purity of antiquated design that respects their heritage (aberrations like the V-Rod and Street 500/750 aside). The company can draw a nearly unbroken line from their origins to the present, and their products exhibit the hallmarks of the company’s past in a way that somehow doesn't fall completely into the trap of creaky nostalgia. They aren’t reproductions, they are continuations. If we ignore the brash and contrived commercialism and zero in on the machines themselves, there truly is no substitute for a Harley. To attempt to copy a Harley is to commit the ultimate sin: to build something that is at its core a sham, a shameless knockoff that exhibits all the elements of the original with none of the heritage or spirit intact.

Genesis.

The Japanese marques are notorious for this. They analyse, copy, and conquer. The product may be superior in rational terms of performance, value and reliability, but it has no cultural value. The result isn’t a motorcycle:  it is an attempt to lure sales away from an established niche, to build a by-the-numbers facsimile. It is not authentic. The Japanese are at their best when they are given the freedom to establish a new category, to build something distinct and advanced that doesn't reference the competition. Modern sport bikes and standards owe their existence to the arms race instigated by the Japanese in the 1970s and 1980s, a push that propelled design and performance forward at a remarkable pace. We should celebrate the birth of the superbike and the refinement of the modern motorcycle brought on by the strength of Japanese engineering, not the production of oil-tight copies of British twins and goofy Harley clones that cluttered showrooms for decades.           


There is a paradox in there somewhere, or perhaps a trap that can easily lure in the clueless followers of fashion. We place value on that which is true and pure, but which upholds an outdated standard, and we end up sitting in place and stagnating. Laziness is not authentic. Neither is grimly hanging on to past glories without looking to the future. There is a fine line between honouring your heritage and clinging to old successes. I'm as much as sucker for the idealized, Peter Egan-esque notion of the bygone purity of the old as anyone else.  There is an appeal to the image of sitting in the corner of the garage swigging a dark beer and gazing upon some antiquated machine, a crafted device that is visibly hewn from metal by human hands, as it plinks itself cool following a hard day’s ride. There is a spirit in these old barges that comes through with every ride, a personality that oozes out and puddles on the concrete of the garage floor along with so much straight-weight oil. The trick is to appreciate this old world character without remaining a slave to it. Old machines will always be there; there is no need to recreate them. And keep in mind those old machines were never harking back to some past ideal: they were the products of forward thinking designers, and they were contemporary in their design and performance when they were current. What compels us to build homages to the past, when the subjects of those homages were the result of looking to the future?

A Norton that isn't a creaky throwback.

I would argue that the British lost the plot after the collapse of their motorcycle industry. Norton was able to shamble along and renew itself with a series of remarkable rotary powered machines for a brief but interesting period, but all the other storied marques were obliterated following the arrival of the Japanese conquerors (despite a few admirable attempts to modernize right before the end). While Harley was able to cash in on its legacy early on, and sustain itself through the Eastern onslaught and AMF bungling, the British had their industry crushed and buried before a revival could take place. John Bloor’s resurrection of Triumph has been an undeniable success, but it has earned that success through the bastardization of the company’s legacy. The 1990s were an interesting period where the company moved forward with a series of unique and charming triples and fours. Then they shat out the Bonneville repop in 2001. History had come full circle: the Japanese had beaten the competition by building soulless copies of British machines, and now the British had copied the Japanese by building a soulless homage to their own past. Union jack decals distracted buyers from the “Made in Thailand” and “Made in India” stamps on all the cheap components. The “new” Bonnie was (is) as British as tom kha gai. Reliable, plodding, boring performance and wobbly roadholding was a far cry from the fine handling and snarling engines that propelled Brit iron into the hearts of riders in the 1950s and 60s. Despite this the facsimile was good enough at 20 paces to lure image conscious buyers into the fold by pandering to their nostalgia without offering any real substance. It may well have been a Kawasaki W650 - a bike that arguably recreated the spirit of the original better than the new Bonnie ever did. The Bonneville became the prototypical nouveau classique motorcycle, a runaway success that spawned a series of equally uninspired rehashes from other marques (see also: Moto Guzzi V7, Honda CB1100, or any other machine that excuses lazy design and mediocre performance by appealing to our limitless capacity for nostalgia).

Dime City "who cares what it is".

The resulting me-too hopping on the nostalgia bandwagon has done irreparable harm to modern motorcycle design. Where we once looked starry-eyed into the future aboard our sleek pastel-coloured rockets, we now look wistfully upon a past that never was while straddling wheezy appeals to the sentiments of baby boomers and their self-entitled hipster brethren. In the process you end up with weird compromises, like the new BMW R NineT abandoning the clever Telelever front fork in favour of a non-adjustable conventional fork to make “customization” easier. No, it wasn't to save costs and glean some extra margin, it was to give 1% of buyers the opportunity to swap in some better suspension components (that they will never come close to making use of). Accommodating the whims of fickle buyers forces a step backwards.

Which allows me to segway neatly to my next target:

Our current industry has managed to combine the wistful longings of senile buyers, the muddled self-images of materialistic self-entitled brats, and the myth of honest labour into a cocktail that has given birth to the second coming of the café racer. Every wrench-spinning hack and their grandma has taken to the shed to build a cobbled together monstrosity as the custom scene has exploded into an orgy of candy-flaked, header-wrapped, Firestone-tired homages to… who knows what, we were too busy selling T-shirts and moustache wax to decide.

Honda CB Cafe Racer number 4,695,345.

We have appropriated elements of the past and given them the glossy sheen of branding and rampant materialism, thereby abandoning any hope of contributing something meaningful to our culture. We will never exhibit that effortless cool of our heroes because we are trying too hard, and trying hard to make a buck in the process. Anyone who dares summon the spirit of McQueen (or Brando, or Marvin, or Eastwood, or Newman, or any other grizzled American male celebrity) in their marketing should be avoided at all costs. Beware the Steve McQueen/David Hasselhoff Conundrum. 

Fake carbon fibre is the most inauthentic thing you could possibly slap on your motorcycle.

That’s not to say that numbskulls slapping together deathtraps in their backyards is a bad thing. As long as young men and women have had hacksaws and cheap Mastercraft tools at their disposal, they’ve been butchering two- and four-wheeled devices to their perverted liking. Hot rod culture is alive and well - despite the arrival of the Prius and the Honda NC700 - and the naïve tinkering of our youth should be celebrated and encouraged, no matter how ugly it gets.

It should not, however, becoming commercialized to the point of ridiculousness. That is the difference between the authentic custom and the contrived machinations of businesses masquerading as honest builders. If they are churning out overpriced machines while selling made-in-China bolt on parts and apparel with explicit references to Steve McQueen, they are not worthy of our praise. Save your accolades for the person with blackened, calloused hands who lives in poverty, funnelling all their meagre funds into their projects. You likely won't hear about those people in the media, because they generally neglect to hire publicists or submit their work to Bike Exif.              

Yet another Honda CB cafe-whatever.

That’s the unfortunate and largely untenable ideal we have built, that of the passionate builder plying their trade free of corruption by monetary concerns. The myth of honest labour has merged with the image of the starving artist. The truth is that the most notable visionaries usually toil in obscurity, and always will. Their potential will always be limited by their lack of funds, and their impact will be blunted by their lack of exposure. Noble though their plight might be in an idealistic sense, they can rarely achieve greatness or improve our culture if they are working in anonymity with limited means. A select few rise to the top and get the breaks that allow them to soar, but most will suffer Ramen noodles and cheap beer while they skin their knuckles on their latest creation. It is a romantic image, but not a pleasant one to live through. 

"Ace Corner"

I once liked the whole aesthetic and do-it-yourself mentality that surrounded the rebirth of the café racer (and its American cousin, the chopper, which is equally the victim of a series of deaths and renewals that have tarnished the spirit of the original concept). I became disillusioned when I visited the “Ace Café Corner” at the Barber Vintage Festival in October 2013. II paid extra to gain entry (which should have been my first sign of trouble) into what promised to be a cornucopia of expressive custom machines and a gen-u-ine recreation of the fabled Ace Café. What I got was a bunch of similarly-butchered Honda CBs with gaudy paint jobs and a concession tent that was identical to the dozen other food trucks that dotted the grounds, except this one served overpriced beer in addition to the cardboard pucks they passed off as burgers. Various businesses plied their cheap wares in this “private” area, with everything from Chinese rearsets to coffee mugs on offer to the crowds of bearded, be-flannelled millennials. It was pathetic and disheartening. Bar a few original machines and an entirely out-of-place display of original Brough-Superiors, the whole scene left me cold and feeling cheated out of my admission fee. I had felt the cafe-racer culture had jumped the shark sometime prior, but seeing this pathetic display made me realize I truly disliked where our once vibrant custom scene was heading.

There is also the problem of missing the point of those old café racers and stripped-down bobbers. They were products of purpose. Their aesthetics were a result of the desire for more performance, less weight, and extreme simplification. Their builders were not deliberately trying to channel any particular "look": that came naturally from the pursuit of performance. The modern café racer is merely a pretender, an attempt to replicate the appearance of this purity without the substance. Yes, I'm deliberately drawing a parallel to those soulless Harley copies. That being said there is a place for deliberately hack-n-slash "engineering". These machines should not be presented in overwrought, high-minded terms cooked up by arts degree arrogance, attempting to channel some nonexistent spirit of rebellion (by doing the same thing everyone else is doing). Instead they should be fun, self-deprecating romps like the Dirtbag Challenge.

Magnificent, spectacularly flawed authenticity.

In my mind, true authenticity is born of a purity of purpose and design. The most notable machines are those that execute an idea with minimal compromise. They are pursuits of a focussed goal, of a certain truth. They are unapologetic. In terms of mass-produced machines, the Italians have made their mark building beautiful and uncompromised tributes to mechanical art - and that’s why I continue to ride and lust after Italian machines against all good sense. If I could only ride Bimotas for the rest of my life, I’d die a happy man. If I wanted something boring, comfortable, and easy to ride in traffic, I'd buy a scooter - or literally anything other than a focussed machine that makes no excuses for its performance. If someone hops onto one of these lithe, visceral monuments to man’s hubris and proceeds to nasally complains about how hard the seat is, or the lack of fuel capacity, or how the gearing is tall for stop and go traffic, they need to be immediately barred from ever riding anything more exciting than a Burgman.

The most egregious offenders to our sense of authenticity, wobbly café hoppers aside, are those that are borne of compromise and design by committee. Elements are dumbed down to suit cost-cutting, the bullying of environmental agencies, and the fickle demands of mouth-breathing consumers who are too busy looking for places to bolt a cupholder to notice how perfectly shaped the subframe support is. More recently the concerns of liability issues in the North American market has driven many manufacturers to abandon anything remotely novel for fear of some dolt tipping over in a parking lot and then suing the company because they didn’t explicitly inform him via A. orange warning labels, B. audible alarms, and C. flashing lights that he shouldn't ride with the sidestand deployed.

This exposes a core problem with our industry – we rely too much on the opinions of ill-informed potential buyers who are happy to disparage anything new and unusual. We are constantly forced to look backwards, to accommodate the whims of customers who refuse to accept anything unfamiliar. The classic retort of “I wouldn't buy that” echoes loudly whenever something unusual is presented to the public, despite any attempts to demonstrate that those whiners were never the intended buyer (or that they wouldn’t have the opportunity to buy it even if they wanted to). People tend to forget that the world doesn't revolve around their whims. They also fail to realize that their opinions limit progress, and that simply disliking something doesn't lessen its value or its impact on the world.

Authenticity in innovation and engineering...

The most notable projects, outside of mass production, are those built by the geniuses, tinkerers and cranks who dare to reject the norms and traditions of our otherwise conservative industry. These are the machines that often shock and inspire but are rarely well known outside of a few circles of discussion. James Parker might be one of the best known designers of weird and wonderful alternatives given his infamous association with Yamaha and the GTS1000, and JT Nesbitt continues to buck convention in the most beautifully subversive manner from his workshop in New Orleans, but for every well-known odd bike designer there are a dozen unknown visionaries toiling away beneath the public’s radar; people like Tony Foale, Ian Drysdale, and Julian Farnam to name a few. They produce the best kinds of motorcycles: bikes that draw the ire of the short-sighted individuals weaned on boring appliances. If a machine is radical enough to inflame and enrage the conservative tendencies of all the yokels who gaze upon it, then you know you are doing something right.

The commercialization of racing, and the resulting push of the cost of entry into the stratosphere, has contributed to this relegation of true innovation to the realm of the backyard tinkerer. No works team is willing to bet the farm on some quote-unquote “unproven” technology, and sanctioning bodies would be waiting in the wings to ban any progress if a development proves advantageous. A few small teams bravely try to do something different but are limited by their modest means and their lack of support. The era of the privateer racer/mechanic building and racing his/her own machine (and remaining competitive) is long gone. Racing is so expensive, so complicated, and so heavily regulated that the individual scarcely has any hope of contributing any meaningful technological progress to the sport.

...But not in their choice of name.

That’s not mentioning that entire subsets of the industry have grown to accommodate the status quo. A good example that most people would overlook is tires. Builders who have attempted to race with alternative front suspension designs have discovered that they are severely limited by tire performance. By separating the braking, suspension and steering forces acting upon the tire (which are typically muddled together by the action of telescopic forks) you reduce stress and friction on the carcass, which results in less grip because the tire can never maintain a sufficient temperature to perform properly. Tires are designed with telescopic forks in mind, and there is nothing out there that will exploit the potential of a forkless front end. This leads to builders fielding exasperated ideas like internally heating the tires, or directing exhaust heat towards the tread, or trying damn near anything that will allow a forkless suspension to perform properly in racing. Accommodating the compromises inherent in motorcycle design leads to a vicious circle that sustains those compromises.

They say racing improves the breed, so long as the breed is backed by billions of dollars and doesn't deviate too far from the formula laid out in the rulebook.

Several designers I've spoken to lament that the problem of rampant conservatism doesn't seem to have the same hold on the automotive industry as it does in the motorcycling world. In the realm of automobile design progress seems more rapid and radical ideas are often celebrated, rather than viewed with all-damning scepticism. Engineering solutions to problems are more natural – few in the automotive industry would accept the compromises inherent in a telescopic fork when a better system could easily be designed. There could be many factors at play that lead to this gulf. Some think that the hidden nature of much of the engineering in cars allows more experimentation – nobody will complain about how a suspension arm doesn't look right when it is shrouded in bodywork. It might be also due to the financial aspects: a top tier car is aimed at an elite few who expect perfection, while even the most expensive motorcycles are still within the grasp of the upper middle class who seem to be far more fickle in their desires (and always willing to make unfair comparisons to cheaper, mass-produced machines).

Time to digress again. I've meandered away from the original point of this editorial. Where does this all play into authenticity and passion? Does it really fucking matter? The problem with our industry as a whole is that we have become too preoccupied with defining what is and isn't worthy of our attention. In the meantime we've lost sight of the innovation that’s been brewing right beneath our noses. No, not those hipster dipshits wearing bubble visors and concocting new and creative ways to cut up their subframes. They are a mere distraction, a trend/fad that has been latched upon by the media and profiteers looking to cash in on what should otherwise be a pursuit of progress tempered with passion. You won't find meaning in half-baked tributes to Steve McQueen, or glossy photoshoots of models failing to look rugged in the saddle of some rolling throwback to a past that never existed.  True authenticity, in my mind, is the quest for purity in design and unchecked innovation in the face of daunting conservatism. The people who should be conquering this industry are working in isolation and anonymity. It’s a damned shame that you've likely heard about Wrenchmonkees or Classified Moto but you don’t know who Tony Foale is.

Of course I'm being harsh. I should probably avoid wholesale categorizations and unchecked disdain, but in general the priorities of our current motorcycle industry have left me frustrated. The man/woman in a shed building a bike has tremendous value to our culture, no matter how contrived their inspiration might be. They deserve praise, and don't deserve to be caught in the tides of fickle fads or transparent marketing. If they keep hacking and chopping, they might someday find the inspiration that will carry them toward building a meaningful contribution to our sport. Or they might keep cobbling together noisy deathtraps ad nauseum. Who cares? It doesn't make a difference. My hyperbolic opinions shouldn't stand in the way of your innovation/butchering, just as the vocalizations of a slack-jawed consumer base shouldn’t stand in the way of progress in our industry.

Photo Courtesy Brian Case

There are rare instances in the realm of motorcycle design when there emerges an icon. These are machines so radical that they serve as a clean break from the standards of the past, thereby setting a new template and pushing the high-water mark up the wall a few extra feet. To truly be an icon, they must influence subsequent processes and inspire a new thread in motorcycle design; one-off machines that immediately fade into obscurity won’t do. They can be new standards of beauty, or of performance, or of chassis design, or templates for hitherto untried categories (or some combination of all four). These motorcycles are often the product of years of research and countless design hours, produced by multi-billion dollar corporations that can afford to take a risk once and a rare while. They are not often produced by a tiny boutique manufacturer that has built less than a thousand machines, conceptualized by men who were not classically trained “designers” with decades of experience under their belts.

Image courtesy Brian Case

The Confederate Wraith was one such icon of that emerged from Southern Louisiana like a thundering slap in the face to all that the motorcycle industry held dear. It was an absolute break with tradition, a bold insult to the long-held standards of a conservative industry, and a new way of conceiving of the motorcycle that was unlike anything that had preceded it. It was a product of looking forward while respecting history, a curious mixture of old and new ideas blended into a stunning machine that was as brutal as it was intelligent.

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The story of the Wraith must begin, inevitably, with the story of Confederate. Founded in 1991 by H. Matthew Chambers, Confederate was as much a product of Chambers’ ideology and uncompromising principles as it was the result of a desire to introduce a new concept in American motorcycle manufacturing. A long time motorcyclist and passionate student of Southern history, Chambers was far from the prototypical entrepreneur. After a series of career changes he earned a law degree and practiced as a trial lawyer in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He established a successful practice and earned a tidy income, but dreamed of contributing something greater to the world. After winning a particularly grievous personal injury case in 1990 and earning a considerable fee, he sold his share of the practice to his partner and with a million dollars of his own money set out to start his dream project: an American motorcycle that would eschew the stagnant design and commercialization of the American market in favour of an heirloom-quality machine that would have dominating performance. His plan would spark the renewal of an industry that had not existed in the Southern United States since Simplex had faded into history. In conception and execution it would prove to be a labour of love born of high-minded ideals and a desire to renew craftsmanship in an industry that had become driven by profit margin.

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Chambers’ ideas were as esoteric as they were inspiring, a lone voice in the wilderness calling for a conceptual shift in the way motorcycles were designed and built in America. Design and construction would be unhindered by considerations of profits. Individualism would be emphasized, as would mechanical detail and craftsmanship. Nothing ancillary or unnecessary would be present. The machines would be raw and would command respect from their riders, channelling their uncompromised nature through their performance. Chambers’ tenets called for a renewal of what he called “The American Way” and the abandonment of “The American System”: at its core the idea is to bring back quality, pride and craftsmanship in American manufacturing instead of promoting materialism, stagnant design, and marketing falsehoods. This rhetoric continues to inspire confusion among the masses who have been weaned on cheap mass-produced motorcycles fluffed up with contrived links to a mythos cooked up in the boardrooms of multi-billion dollar corporations.      

The name Confederate, often a source of controversy in the early years of the company, was a product of Chambers’ appreciation of Southern history and his unapologetic bucking of convention. Much to the chagrin of politically-correct followers and “Yankee” interviewers Chambers celebrated the exploits of Southern heroes, citing them as the inspiration for the company’s rebellious spirit. Racial implications were never a part of the program but were often brought up by media members who focussed on the negative aspects of Chambers’ heroes, rather than accepting the philosophical implication of his celebration of the South and a pure spirit of rebellion against an overwhelming adversary. In Chambers’ idealized view the South was railing against the Northern corruption of American ideals brought on by the imposition of centralized government, a parallel to how Confederate was fighting the stagnation and materialism that had enveloped the motorcycle industry. He pointed to the lack of industrial development in the South as a result of the history that followed the Civil War, a situation he aimed to correct by promoting manufacturing in the region. In recent years this rhetoric has been softened somewhat in Confederate’s marketing material, but the basic principles still linger.    

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Chambers approached drag-racing specialist Kosman Specialties in California to develop a chassis for his motorcycle. A stiff, well-engineered frame would be needed to ensure the good handling that most American motorcycles seemed to lack. While ideas for a chassis using a unitized engine as a stressed member were fielded, in the end the choice of a non-unit Harley-pattern big twin for motivation led to the development of a steel cradle frame with a massive three-inch backbone. A two-inch front downtube doubled as the oil tank for the dry sump engine. A triangulated rear swingarm operated a straight-rate rear suspension supported by a pair of shocks operating on a single pivot, ala HRD Vincent. Ceriani forks supported the front, with twin Performance Machine rotors and calipers providing meaningful stopping power.  A five-speed gearbox developed in conjunction with Kosman and Sputhe rotated the gear shafts 90 degrees, then flipped the countershaft to the right side of the bike, to create a vertically-stacked transmission that aided packaging and created a structure stiff enough to support the swingarm pivot - an innovation that would become a Confederate signature.

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The first prototype hit the road in 1994. Dubbed the Grey Ghost, this machine set the basic template of subsequent Confederates – a long, low chassis with top quality suspension and brakes, with minimal bodywork surrounding a hulking “radial” twin, Confederate’s term for the 45-degree layout that references the history of the V-twin as a slice-of-a-radial-engine arrangement. Power for the first machine came from a 93 cubic inch (1525cc) S&S-produced big-twin clone; production machines would use a variety of powerplants from S&S and Merch, and specifications varied considerably over the course of production. Customers could customize most elements of their Confederates, and chose from a variety of engine, suspension, wheel, and brake combinations - an American cruiser with 17-inch Marchesini wheels, fully floating Brembo cast iron rotors, and adjustable WP forks? While these first generation machines might seem relatively conventional by our current standards, what with the proliferation of factory “customs” and “muscle” cruisers in recent years, but in the mid-1990s there truly was nothing like a Confederate on the road. It was the prototypical brutish sport cruiser, a distinctly American machine that could go, turn, and stop, while looking mighty badass in the process.

Production of customer motorcycles began in Baton Rouge in 1996, later moving production to Abita Springs, with prices starting in the high $20,000 USD range, easily clearing $30,000 if you checked signed off on a few of the options. The machines bore names that drew inspiration from American history; the Hellcat, standard bearer of the Confederate line, was named after the Grumman F6F Hellcat that served as one of the United States Navy’s most successful carrier-based fighter aircraft in the Pacific Theatre of the Second World War. The emblem on the hand-built fuel tanks bore the inscription that served as the company letterhead and the final throwdown to anyone who might have missed the Southern Cross engravings on some of the components: “Confederate Motors, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Sovereign, C.S.A.”

Image courtesy Brian Case

         
Like many American motorcyclists who desired something that would challenge The Motor Company’s hegemony of the market, JT Nesbitt was smitten by the Hellcat. While working as a freelance journalist for Iron Horse, during the magazine’s golden years under Editor David Snow’s leadership, Nesbitt had the opportunity to ride a Hellcat Roadster for two days in Daytona Beach, Florida. At the time the magazine was a bastion for the sort of honest, irreverent, and intellectual writing that has long been absent from the mainstream motorcycle press, making it a favourite for misfits and writers with actual opinions who desired more freedom than any meddling advertiser would allow. Iron Horse in the mid 1990s was a gold mine for creativity and honesty, and helped kindle the legitimate do-it-yourself chopper culture that has since been bastardized by the hipster set.    

Image courtesy JT Nesbitt

Nesbitt had briefly met with Matt Chambers in 1995 and again in 1997 prior to testing the Hellcat, a series of encounters that would signal the beginning of a partnership that would end up redefining what constituted the American motorcycle.

At the time Nesbitt was freelancing as a writer while waiting tables, a bachelor’s degree in Fine Art under his belt. Nesbitt had dabbled in motorcycles as part of his sculptural projects and had a keen interest in their design and construction, but was not trained in industrial design through the traditional avenues – a background that would prove to be an asset.

The original Confederate went bankrupt in 2000 and closed the Abita Springs factory after producing between 300 and 500 machines, depending on who you ask. Chambers regrouped and restarted the company in New Orleans in 2001, and it was around this time that Nesbitt reached out to Chambers to ask for a job. Chambers agreed and Nesbitt began his tenure with Confederate by hitting a home run in the redesign of the Hellcat dubbed the G2.

Image courtesy JT Nesbitt

The G2, also called the F113/F124, served as a template for Confederate’s subsequent design language. While the G1 Hellcat had been a relatively conventional-looking machine supported by high-quality components and excellent attention to detail, the G2 was a mean, vicious son of a bitch that soon drew the attention of the public and the motorcycle industry, making Confederate the darling of celebrities and well-heeled riders looking for the ultimate in performance and exclusivity. The big twin and cradle frame were still present, as was the Confederate vertical gearbox, but all the details were reworked into a package that was completely unlike any other production machine on the market.

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Everything that wasn’t billet aluminum or titanium was made of carbon fibre, including the fuel tank. The G2 was ugly in the best possible way, elemental and a bit rough with no extraneous baubles distracting from the purpose of going fucking fast. It looked “purposeful”, if we can forgive a hackneyed motojournalist cliché.

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Nesbitt devised a way of using the swingarm as the exhaust, by way of a triple-layer Inconel bellows connecting the headers to the curved, hollow swingarm tube. Thus far the G2 Hellcat is the only motorcycle design to route the exhaust in this manner; the Riedel Imme R100 used the exhaust pipe as a swinging arm, but the powerplant was rigidly attached to the arm/pipe and moved in tandem with the rear wheel. Twin Penske shocks supported the rear. Adjustable 50mm Marzocchi forks and six-piston radial mounted brakes up front suggested a sporting machine, but a 240mm width rear tire and a carbon-fibre tractor saddle said something else before being drowned out by the fury of a too-much-is-just-enough 124 cubic inch S&S mill which thumped out 130hp and arm-wrenching 140 lb/ft torque at the rear wheel. These massive engines and obscene power figures proved to be more than enough to fling the 530 LB brute down the road with the sort of immediacy and drama that made motojournalists wax poetic about the capabilities of what was supposedly an “antiquated” 45-degree twin - when they weren’t busy pointing out the astonishing $60,000-plus price tag, anyway. It performed like it looked – brutal, uncompromising, and awe-inspiring.

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After years of operating in relative obscurity, Confederate and Nesbitt were suddenly on the radar with a design that had made them the bad boys of the boutique/custom motorcycle world. While other builders were busy hacking together damn-near unrideable, chrome-addled, over-commercialized odes to the chopper scene, Nesbitt had perfected a new breed of machine that created a new category overnight. The new aesthetic was not flawless chrome and airbrush paint jobs tarting up ridiculous machines with absurd chassis geometry: it was the intelligent application of functional, mechanical art that respected heritage without being a slave to tradition. It was raw materials arranged around a taut core, a big-ass motor barely contained within a modern chassis supported by the best components and no frivolous parts distracting from the singular purpose of the machine.  It had a few subtle nods to bygone designs, but applied in a way that didn’t look like anything but a vision of the future. In a way the G2 Hellcat was a self-fulfilling prophecy, leading to countless imitators and more than a few Confederate wannabes who emerged to fill the newly discovered market for a modern but distinctly American custom.

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But the G2 wasn’t what Nesbitt truly desired to create. Despite the genre-defying elements and radical styling, the Hellcat was still a relatively conventional motorcycle: engine in the middle surrounded by a steel cradle frame, telescopic forks up front, and a swinging arm at the back. It wasn’t that far removed from the G1 in terms of chassis design despite the marked difference in styling.

Image courtesy JT Nesbitt.

Nesbitt had been mulling over a new conception of the motorcycle that would represent a break from previous design language. At its core, his idea is to reverse the accepted order of the machine: build the bike around the engine. While it sounds like an obvious statement, it isn’t the way motorcycles have been conceived in the past. The basic structure of a motorcycle is a bicycle with an engine clipped on – a motor added to an existing chassis. Most supposedly modern motorcycles aren’t far removed from that original formula; pull the powerplant out and remove the bodywork and the rolling chassis of a lot of machines still look like an overgrown bicycle with fancy suspensions bits. The engine almost seems like an afterthought, bolted into place wherever it will fit. Nesbitt’s idea was to start from zero and design the entire motorcycle around the engine in an effort to create a coherent whole.


The genesis of the project began as a conversation between Nesbitt and Chambers on a long cross-country drive just as the G2 was being readied for production. Nesbitt had his own peculiar formula laid out, what he called “circles and lines”. To summarize Nesbitt’s idea in the simplest, most unjust fashion: the engine and wheels are the circles, and the horizontal planes connecting them together are the lines. The 45-degree twin favoured by Confederate worked well as a slice of a pie, a fraction of a radial engine, whose form Nesbitt would complete by closing the imaginary circle around the engine with a chassis and suspension of his own devising.


These ideas were first fleshed out with endless sketches and a scale model, progressing in late 2003 when Nesbitt built a full-sized (but non-running) concept around a Harley-Davidson XR750 powerplant. The machine was utterly alien in appearance. A rolled aluminum backbone served as the frame, with the rear shock mounted inside the spine at the rear supporting a single-sided swingarm. A multilink girder fork with carbon-fibre blades, inspired by the Britten V1000, was suspended by a coilover shock set in parallel with the steering head. A simple leather saddle was perched on the frame with no subframe, the old-world seating contrasted by narrow sporting clip-ons on the front end. There were hints of stripped down board track racers and, by Nesbitt’s own admission, Italian racing bicycles.  The result was an radical mixture of old and new elements applied in a completely distinct fashion that referenced the past without attempting to recreate it.

Image courtesy JT Nesbitt.

Bodywork was limited to a scoop-shaped bellypan wrapped around the sump of the engine and tightly-fitted fenders on the wheels. The engine took centre stage, exposed and menacing within the otherwise graceful curves of the chassis, fed by a pair of open carburettors and vented through a shapely heat-wrapped two-into-one header. It looked like an elemental, stripped down motherfucker of a machine, little more than a motor with a seat attached. As Nesbitt intended, the engine dictated the design in spectacular fashion.

Image courtesy JT Nesbitt

Despite being nothing more than a visual experiment that was patched together from parts bin leftovers and Bondo, Nesbitt’s creation caused an immediate sensation in the motorcycle industry. Featured on the cover of the premiere issue of Robb Report Motorcycling in Spring 2004, the newly-christened “Wraith”. The machine was named after the Scottish colloquialism for ghost, described by Chambers as “a name derived to echo man’s notional denial of and rebellion against death”, while Nesbitt elaborated “A wraith is a willowy image of your future dead self coming back from the hoary netherworld to portend your imminent doom.” The concept sparked a flood of inquiries from parties interested in this creation that had been cobbled together in the back of the Confederate factory. In December 2004 the jury of the Motorcycle Design Association of France awarded the Wraith second place in that year’s Concept Bike Category.  Despite the interest there were no immediate plans to put the Wraith into production, or even produce a functional prototype. Nesbitt and Chambers didn’t even know how to put the design into production, as the chassis had not been developed beyond what was effectively a three-dimensional sketch.


In light of the success and innovation of his designs, Nesbitt and Confederate Creative Director Grant Ray were invited to make a presentation at the 2004 Industrial Designers Society of America Eastern conference in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Nesbitt and Ray took to the stage in front of a group of design students, accompanied by a bottle of Maker’s Mark. While Nesbitt was wheeling a G2 Hellcat into the room in front of the crowd, a man in the audience whispered to him: “start the bike.” Nesbitt paused, then obliged, sending a thundering racket throughout the building and enthralling the audience by unleashing all the fury of his creation in an enclosed hotel conference room. With their appropriate introduction completed, Nesbitt and Ray proceeded to get properly drunk during the presentation. They showcased the G2 and shared Confederate’s modus operandi, finishing up by informing the bright-eyed students they “had wonderful futures flipping burgers at McDonalds”. In the closing minutes of the slideshow they flashed images of the Wraith mockup on the screen, hinting at the possibility of a future design in spite of Chamber’s insistence that production wasn’t feasible.

Confederate’s spirit of rebellion was flaunted in dramatic fashion, with a degree of honesty and reckless bravado that made a significant impression on many present. The man who had encouraged Nesbitt to light up the G2 against all considerations of fire codes was one of them. His name was Brian Case, a local industrial designer who ran Foraxis Design Solutions in Pittsburgh, and this was his introduction to Confederate. He vaguely recalled the relatively conventional machines the company had produced in the 1990s, and was absolutely floored by the design of this new generation of machines that Nesbitt had conjured up. Case desperately wanted to know more about who was behind this new machine that was so unlike anything else. The images of the Wraith shared during the presentation left a deep impression on him, and he wanted to be a part of the project. He approached the duo after the presentation and called them “true rebels”. He gave Nesbitt his business card, telling him he would be happy to offer his skills in CAD design to help put the Wraith into production.



Nesbitt added the card to the pile that he had amassed from eager audience members following the presentation. It might have been forgotten among the dozens of other offers to join the Rebellion, had it not been for a chance encounter later that night.

Case was invited through a friend to join a penthouse party following the IDSA conference. He arrived to find the room packed and everyone well and truly drunk. After some mingling he bumped into Nesbitt and Ray and began chatting with them, in the traditional way motorcycle guys tend to gravitate together and swap war stories no matter what the venue may be.

After some time Nesbitt addressed the elephant in the room. “What the fuck happened to your hand?” Case lamented that he had mangled his left hand in a CNC mill accident, and the resulting surgeries had left him with a fused finger. He hadn’t been able to ride a motorcycle for the past four years due to the injury, as it prevented him from operating the clutch lever. Nesbitt had a simple solution: “Dude, you've got to cut that thing off.”

Two weeks later Case had his left ring finger amputated. Ecstatic at the prospect of riding once again, he called Nesbitt just to inform him that he had done the deed. Nesbitt immediately asked him if he would like to work for Confederate.



Case was a skilled designer in his own right and particularly adept at Solidworks and CAD modelling, a skill set that would serve the company well in subsequent years. But there were still no plans to put the Wraith into production, and Chambers was adamant that the project was not feasible.

Image courtesy Brian Case

Nesbitt formulated a plan. On a Friday afternoon, one week after Case had called him, he loaded a 100ci S&S Super Stock Sportster-clone engine from the company shop in New Orleans into a van and drove to Pittsburgh without Chamber’s knowledge. In Pittsburgh Nesbitt met with Case to sit down for a beer and cigarette -fueled marathon session to finalize the chassis design of the Wraith around the engine Nesbitt had “borrowed”.

Image courtesy Brian Case

When Chambers discovered that his designer, the S&S mill, and the company van were missing, he contacted Nesbitt. He informed Chambers that he could fire him, but in four days he would return and re-apply for his position. When he returned from Pittsburgh he presented a series of CAD files detailing a monocoque chassis that he and Case had developed for the Wraith. Chambers was so impressed with the progress the pair had made in such a short period of time, and the innovation of their solution for a strong but easy-to-manufacture frame, that he greenlit the project and allowed development to continue - after re-hiring Nesbitt.

Image courtesy Brian Case

Nesbitt and Cases’ solution was to use a U-shaped formed aluminum shell that wrapped around the bottom of the engine, which was held together with fore and aft bulkheads that were fastened with shoulder bolts that penetrated through the shell and served as locating pins into the bulkhead – positively locking the skin into the bulkheads. This featherweight 14 pound carbon-fibre backbone would double as an oil tank for the dry-sump engine. Wings moulded into each end of the backbone would be bolted to the shell, which cradled the 1640cc motor as a stressed member. This monocoque “fuselage” (folded around the engine “like a taco” as Nesbitt likes to put it) required a unit construction Sportster clone – while the Sportster has a separate transmission and external primary case like a traditional Harley big twin, it is held in unit with the engine crankcases by a casing that allows the power unit to be used as a stressed member. This marked a significant departure for Confederate, who had hitherto relied on big-twin powerplants mated to their proprietary gearbox design, which necessitated a traditional (albeit strong) steel cradle frame.

Image courtesy Brian Case

The chassis was remarkably simple despite its radical appearance. All that would be required to manufacture the monocoque skin would be a flat sheet of aluminum, cut to shape with countersunk holes drilled for the mounting points, folded into the final shape by a hydraulic press. One piece, no welding, no jigs - the result would be a strong and extremely light frame that would allow the Wraith to be produced with a relatively quick turnaround by the tiny manufacturer. Fuel would be carried in a cell hidden in the hollow space below the sump of the engine, at the base of the “taco”, lowering the centre of gravity and eliminating the need for an unsightly tank up above. The exhaust collector would also be placed within the taco, fed by a pair of wrapped header pipes that snaked around the cylinders into the cavity below - this in the days before heat wrap became de rigeur for any hack builder trying to dress up their XS650. Two ports cut into the left side of the shell served as the exits. Mass centralization and simplicity was the aim, but the resulting appearance was that of the bastard lovechild of a piston-engine fighter aircraft and a board tracker. It looked impossibly badass, compact and tightly packaged, stripped down to only the barest functional elements wrapped around a massive engine.

Image courtesy Brian Case

The rear suspension would be relatively conventional, with a straight-rate monoshock mounted within the hollow backbone acting on a single-sided swingarm. The front end was what really set the Wraith apart. The basic girder layout presented on the concept machine would be refined with milled alloy rocker links and an adjustable coilover shock mounted ahead of the steering head, but would retain the carbon-fibre fork blades. It looked wild at first glance but was quite simple in execution, with far fewer components than a telescopic fork.

Image courtesy Brian Case

Girder designs are nothing new, though they are quite uncommon in modern designs: the technology has existed for a century, debuting as the Druid fork, a solid fork supported by a spring on a parallelogram linkage, introduced in the 1910s. In the early days of motorcycling when suspensions of any sort were in their infancy girder designs of various configurations were favoured for their strength and stable geometry, and their ability to separate braking and steering forces from the suspension action. Hydraulically-damped girder forks became a signature of Vincent twins, which used Brampton items before developing their own forged-blade Girdraulic design in the late 1940s as a more rigid alternative to the era’s highly flexible telescopic forks.

Image courtesy Brian Case

Nesbitt and Case set about building a running prototype, dubbed the XP-1, in mid-2004. Early on Nesbitt expressed a desire to field the completed machine at the speed trials on the Bonneville Salt Flats, scheduled a scant four months later. At the time Confederate didn't have the resources to participate in the trials. To ensure that his creation would get a proper baptism at the Flats Nesbitt “resigned” from the company while continuing to work on the XP-1, asking Chambers to withhold his salary so the company could afford to run the machine at Bonneville.  Case also worked without pay during this period, abandoning his Pittsburgh studio to work in New Orleans - completing the Wraith would be a labour of love for both of them, and both men paid expenses out of their own pockets to see it through. Seeing their passion for the project, Chambers relented and agreed to take the completed machine to the Flats.

Image courtesy Brian Case

XP-1 was completed in time to be entered into the first annual BUB Speed Trials in August, 2004. Confederate electrician Chris Roberts volunteered to ride the prototype across the salt, rising to the challenge in a stunning moment of bravery. Roberts, who had hand built the electrical system on the XP-1 (as well as all production Confederates), was a man with no experience at Bonneville who was expected to ride a priceless (and unproven) contraption, put together in a few months by a pair of iconoclastic designers, as fast as he possible could across the Flats. Testing had been limited to a few blasts along the Interstate near the Confederate factory before loading the machine into the van and heading for Utah. To add to the pressure XP-1 was earmarked for delivery as soon as the trials were over. XP-1 became known as the McKenna bike, destined to be installed as a piece of sculpture in the home of a prominent California automobile dealer owner after it had proven itself at Bonneville.

Image courtesy Brian Case

The trial was ultimately successful, but not without drama.

After several days of rain, the Flats were slicked with a thin layer of water and runs had to be delayed while the surface dried. The salt remained damp when XP-1 was scheduled to run, reducing the top speed and adding to the challenge. Bonneville’s surface is notoriously slippery even in the dry, as you might expect when you are driving a high-powered vehicle across a bed of powdery, abrasive material at ludicrous speed.

Image courtesy Brian Case

As per FIM and AMA regulations all competitors must complete a two-way pass through the course to earn their official time, their final speed calculated from the average of these two runs through the markers. Roberts and the XP-1, entry number 99, were on the course at the same time as a streamliner with entry number 999. Roberts had finished his first run and was waiting to begin his second pass in the other direction. Meanwhile 999 was waiting to begin its run at the opposite end of the course. When the call was made for 99 to complete its second pass through the markers, the driver of 999 misunderstood and took off – on a collision course with Roberts. Disaster was averted but the incident nearly had the upstarts from Confederate ejected from the trials. Video proof was presented to show that the call was made for 99 and it was the streamliner driver was at fault, not Roberts.

Image courtesy Brian Case

Roberts ran over 139 MPH across the salt and the crew shared a moment of triumph before delivering the bike to its new owner. The Confederate legacy had been established at the Flats, and all subsequent machines produced by the company would be fielded at Bonneville as a test of their performance and the company’s resolve in producing the fastest American production motorcycles. Nesbitt returned to the National IDSA conference with Case and Chambers where they showcased the results of the Wraith endeavour and screened a video of XP-1 running at Bonneville.  



With XP-1 delivered to its new owner, work began on a pre-production prototype that refined the chassis design and prepared the Wraith for (limited) series production.  While outwardly similar to the McKenna bike, aside from the liberal application of black hard anodizing, a number of notable improvements were implemented in what would become known as the Black Bike. Changes were made in the hopes of creating a more streetable (but still awe inspiring) machine - something more suitable for public consumption than the XP-1, which had been built with Bonneville in mind.

Image courtesy Brian Case

The monocoque, carbon fibre backbone, and Sportster-pattern engine would remain, but the front suspension was reworked. Instead of a coilover shock mounted ahead of the steering head, Nesbitt envisioned a spring enclosed within the steering neck, damped with a cartridge contained in a cavity filled with hydraulic fluid. It was essentially a rearranging of the internals of a telescopic fork applied in a unique way, with the suspension centred along the steering axis. The spring would be connected to the forks by a pullrod mounted to a rising-rate linkage, pulling down from the bottom of the steering head to compress the spring via a plunger cap mounted above.

Image courtesy JT Nesbitt

While the XP-1 had used a highly-tuned 100ci Super Stock engine, the Black Bike used a more “docile” 101.6x92.1mm 91ci (1490cc) powerplant built for Confederate by Revolution Performance. Fitted with two massive 48mm Super G carburettors, a reversed rear cylinder head, and Confederate’s signature vertically stacked six-speed transmission, this was not your typical Sportster mill. Power was a claimed 125hp at a screaming 7400 rpm with 104 lb/ft of torque – at the rear wheel. Semi-wet weight, without fuel, was 425lbs.

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Performance from this combination of light weight and massive torque was impressive, but the chassis also shined. Wheelbase was 58.5 inches with a rake of 27 degrees, fitted with 17 inch wheels that could accommodate sportbike-sized rubber – no slow-turning 240 rear ala Hellcat here, instead the Wraith used a 5.5 inch width Marchesini forged alloy rear wheel shod with 180mm Metzeler rubber. Traxxion Dynamics supplied the suspension units, a modified Penske shock at the rear and a custom damper for the unique front end.

Alan Cathcart was given the opportunity to ride the Black Bike in an early state of completion in 2005. His impressions were favourable, noting a very compliant ride and excellent handling. His only gripes were the odd seating position and the lack of a tank to grip with your knees when cornering (the white hot rear cylinder serving as a poor substitute), and some fueling issues from the Revolution engine that were addressed, but not fully sorted, during his test. Remarkably, the Black Bike was assembled shortly before Cathcart rode it and was not complete finished. Though he did not reveal the fact in the review the front suspension did not have any damping mechanism installed, making the tidy handling all the more impressive and serving as a testament to the stability of Nesbitt’s fork design.

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Development of the Wraith continued, with production anticipated to begin in the Fall of 2005. A target retail price of $47,500 (later revised to $55,000) was proposed – making it considerably less expensive than the existing Hellcat and reflecting the simplicity of the chassis’ production. A release party for the first production Wraith was scheduled for Halloween eve, with a procession of bikes meeting at the Confederate factory before touring the warehouse district of New Orleans. In late August Chambers and Nesbitt were invited to the Middle East to discuss a business arrangement with an undisclosed funder somewhere near the Persian Gulf, described as a prominent figure who was an existing Confederate customer and enthusiastic supporter of the company.

Plans were made to pay the debts of the company and fund the construction of three new models without compromising the American ownership of the company. A deal was struck and Chambers and Nesbitt spent the night celebrating before retiring early on the morning of August 28th. Upon their return to their private residence they tuned into CNN and watched in horror as reports were broadcast of a category four hurricane making its way straight for New Orleans. The epic high of their salvation at the hands of a wealthy patron was immediately crushed by the realization that their friends, family and business were now at the mercy of the wrath of God and nature, and they could do nothing but watch from the sidelines on the other side of the world.

Image courtesy Brian Case

Hurricane Katrina made landfall in Louisiana on August 29th. Chambers approached his backer and offered to annul the deal in light of the possibility that the factory might be destroyed. The backer refused to go back on his word and assured Chambers and Nesbitt that the agreement would stand no matter what the outcome of the storm.

Image courtesy Dave Hargreaves

Katrina would prove to be one of the single most destructive storms in United States history, and one of the deadliest hurricanes on record. In addition to the destruction wrought by the hurricane winds, New Orleans was devastated when the levee system failed and flood waters blanketed 80% of the city. Nesbitt returned to Louisiana and established his parent’s home in Shreveport as a safe haven for the company employees and families, all of whom were fortunate to have survived the nightmare that Katrina and its aftermath had wrought upon the city. Some preparations had been made at the Confederate factory in anticipation of possible flooding, but nothing prepared the employees for what they would encounter when they returned to the site. The West wall and the roof had collapsed, and the building that had served as the company’s factory and headquarters since 2001 was completely destroyed. The Black Bike had been on exhibition in New York at the time and was spared, eventually finding a permanent home in the Trump Tower, but the heart of Confederate was in ruins. Some frames and most of the company files were recovered but it was clear that that Confederate as it had been was no more, and another complete renewal of the company would be needed.

Image courtesy Dave Hargreaves

Chambers made the decision to relocate the factory to a new location, a move that led to a great deal of turmoil for Nesbitt. Nesbitt remained fiercely loyal to the city he loved and refused to leave, thereby parting ways with Chambers and Confederate. Nesbitt had promoted a sincere desire to inspire a renewable and sustainable industry in the region, an industry driven by skilled labour that would manufacture commodities for export in a place which had hitherto relied on cultural exports and oil money to keep the coffers filled. It was a philosophy that had endeared him to Confederate and Chamber’s desire for a renewed industrial presence in the South.  These ideals would drive Nesbitt to found Bienville Studios alongside Dave Hargreaves, another refugee from the Confederate Family, where he would continue his own peculiar brand of uncompromising industrial design in the heart of the French Quarter.

Image courtesy Dave Hargreaves

Meanwhile at the renewed Confederate Motor Company Brian Case and Nesbitt’s protégé, Edward Jacobs, were tasked with taking over the Wraith project. After a period of canvassing for locations and favourable economic conditions, the decision was made to move the company to a new facility in downtown Birmingham, Alabama. Under Case and Jacob’s direction the Wraith would be reborn along with Confederate, taking on a form that was distinct from Nesbitt’s original vision but no less iconoclastic in its execution.        

Image courtesy Brian Case. Nesbitt speaks with Chris Roberts at Bonneville in 2004. Roberts, who worked for Confederate until 2006, was murdered at his New Orleans home in 2007 while trying to stop a robbery.

Interesting Links

Confederate website
Confederate chassis patent
Ultimate Motorcycling (nee Robb Report Motorcycling) report on the XP1 running at Bonneville
Inc. profile of Matt Chambers and Confederate circa 2000
Review of the Confederate Grey Ghost
Review of the Confederate America GT
Announcement of the CSA line of entry level models circa 1999
Neale Bayly's review of the G2 Hellcat
Alan Cathcart's review of the G2 Hellcat
The Kneeslider details and discusses John Burn's disastrous review of the Hellcat in Cycle World
New York Times on the Wraith and Katrina
Bloomberg Business Week interview with Matt Chambers circa 2012
Alan Cathcart's review of the Black Bike
Motorcyclist interview with Matt Chambers following Katrina
Scale model recreation of the Black Bike
Matt Chamber's tribute to Chris Roberts

Image courtesy Brian Case

It is late 2005 and Confederate Motors is in shambles. Fresh from the epic high of securing a high-profile investor in the Middle East, the company’s president Matt Chambers and lead designer JT Nesbitt returned to their New Orleans base of operations to discover that their factory has been destroyed by the winds and flooding brought on by Hurricane Katrina. With their facilities in ruins and their insurance company bankrupted by the claims in the aftermath of the storm, it looks like the infamous purveyor of brutal, radical and rebellious motorcycles is no more. Katrina has seemingly crushed the hopes of bringing Nesbitt’s iconoclastic Wraith design to production.


The situation appeared dire and the circumstances were debilitating, particularly for a tiny boutique manufacturer that had constantly fought with debt, flirted with bankruptcy, and struggled to meet the demand for their two-wheeled anti-establishment icons. A few frames and components were salvaged from the ruined factory, as were most of the computer files and company books, but the operation was a long way away from building bikes - particularly when New Orleans was still wracked with instability, crime and resource shortages in the wake of flooding. In spite of the literal collapse of their New Orleans factory, Confederate’s anonymous investor/saviour had maintained his end of the agreement and would provide the capital needed to renew the company. The question remained: with the factory gone and New Orleans in shambles, where would Confederate build its bikes?




The unstable period following Katrina led to a great deal of internal turmoil and emotional conflicts within the company. Former employees of Confederate often liken their time at the company as being part of a “family”, a tight-knit and sometimes conflicted group of misfits who loved each other as much as they believed in the machines they were helping create. Many suffered long hours and paltry (or nonexistent) wages to help support the company in times of financial trouble, their contributions a true labour of love that spoke to the passion they felt for what they were building and the charismatic nature of the philosophy that Chambers espoused.


It was not a surprise, then, that following the horror of Katrina and the destruction of the factory many intense emotions would come to fore. The period following the hurricane is rife with conflicting stories, disagreements, and defensive statements that need not be repeated here. All that is important for the telling of this story was that the ultimate outcome was that Chambers made a decision to leave New Orleans and start the company anew in a more favourable location, and JT Nesbitt made the decision to leave the company and remain in Louisiana.

Image courtesy Brian Case.

Brian Case continued to work as a consultant for Confederate through his Pittsburgh-based company, Foraxis. In addition to helping Nesbitt design and build the Wraith XP1 and B91 prototypes, Case had a team of CAD modellers working on digitizing the components and blueprints for the G2 Hellcat into ThinkId files to streamline production. Following Katrina it seemed that Foraxis would lose its biggest and highest profile client, but Chambers saw a place for Case in the post-Katrina re-organization of the company and began discussing the possibility of bringing him on board. It would prove to be a difficult but momentous moment in Cases’ career – here was the possibility of leaving his stable business to join one of the most innovative and adventurous motorcycle companies in the world. Case felt that there was nothing else that could be as fulfilling as working for Confederate. It seemed like a dream opportunity, and in spite of the destruction wrought by Katrina there appeared to be promising opportunities on the horizon.



After canvassing locations across the United States an offer was extended for Chambers to visit Birmingham, Alabama in December 2005. The offer was made by local magnate and motorcycling icon George Barber. A wealthy industrialist who had made his fortune in the dairy industry and local real estate, Barber was renowned for building the finest collection of motorcycles in the world: the world-class Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum is home to largest and most thorough catalogue of rare, significant, and historically important production and racing motorcycles anywhere in the world.

George Barber is an imposing but well respected figure in the Birmingham area, a powerhouse business maven who balances his acumen with a friendly, cordial attitude that has earned him a great deal of respect in the local community. So when George Barber makes you an offer, you pay attention. Chambers was invited to the Barber Motorsports Park to discuss the possibility of moving to Birmingham, and made a point to bring Case along. Barber made a strong case for the move with some significant incentives, including a year's free rent in an 8,500 square foot downtown warehouse on Fifth Avenue South to get the operation back on its feet. An agreement was made and after several months of insecurity Confederate was set to move to Birmingham.

Image courtesy Brian Case.

Tentative plans were made to build a 25,000 square foot state-of-the-art production facility adjoined to the Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum two years after Confederate relocated, with production facilities and offices being setup at the downtown location in the interim. The partnership between Barber, Confederate and the city of Birmingham became big news in the local media, with an official announcement made at the museum and a high-profile photo op that saw Alabama governor Bob Riley riding a G2 Hellcat around the Motorsport Park track. Much ado was made about the economic benefits that the company could offer the region, with jobs for as many as 250 employees and tens of millions of dollars of investment going into the local economy. Chambers announced an intention to build 150 machines in 2006, with double that expected in 2007, ultimately reaching a target of a lofty 900 examples in 2008.


Confederate seemed to be a part of a series of economic windfalls that were benefiting the Birmingham area, an explosion in growth and culture that was spearheaded by a gentrification of the industrial areas of the city’s core. Confederate was among dozens of trendy businesses, restaurants and breweries that were popping up in the city and spurring on the growth of some interesting progressive cultural development within the region. Press releases made it seem like Confederate was part of some hipster gentrification movement, the motorcycle manufacturer to the stars - conveniently located across the street from an independent theatre venue. The media oversimplified the purveyors of the Art of Rebellion into a cute boutique/craft manufacturer making curious-looking bikes for wealthy clients. It was in line with Chambers’ ideals of promoting uncompromising design and craftsmanship, and the construction of “heirloom quality” machines... But it marked a noticeable softening of the abrasive damn-the-North ideology that inspired Chambers to adorn his G1 Hellcats with a decal that stated the Confederate States of America as their place of origin and to name one of his motorcycles after Nathan Bedford Forrest.

Once plans were made to relocate to Birmingham, Chambers made Case a formal offer to join the company with the ultimate goal of finishing development of the Wraith. His colleague Ed Jacobs would be tasked with the proposed Renovatio project, a radical machine that would represent the rebirth of the company (but would, unfortunately, never reach production). Case left his partner in charge of Foraxis and moved to Birmingham to become Confederate’s head of operations. Enthusiastic about the prospect of helping resurrect the company, Case also hoped to fulfil a personal promise he had made to Nesbitt several months prior – he intended to see the Wraith project through to completion and put Nesbitt's design into production, albeit in a form that would be quite distinct from the two prototype machines.

Case, Chambers and Jacobs were the first and only employees of the new Confederate. The immediate goal was to resume production of the G2 Hellcat as soon as possible, and for the first six months Case coordinated vendor relations and supply chain management. What few parts were salvaged from the New Orleans factory were put to use in the new series of machines, including the first Hellcat produced after Katrina - built for Ryan Reynolds, who had placed his order before the hurricane. Chris Roberts soon joined the company once again to continue his work as Confederate’s electrical engineer.


With production of the Hellcat underway, Chambers asked Case to continue on the Wraith project. A chance phone call from an unlikely champion helped give impetus to the project. One day Case happened to answer the phone when Eddie Van Halen called to inquire about a motorcycle he had seen featured in a two-page spread in a certain lifestyle magazine. That machine was the B91 Wraith - the Black Bike that was now in private hands, the property of a wealthy enthusiast who kept it displayed in the living room of his Trump Tower apartment. As a youth growing up in the 1980s Case had idolized Van Halen, and made a promise to Eddie that he would build him a Wraith. Van Halen, attempting to reassure Case that he was indeed THE Van Halen, sent him a surreal email – several photos to prove who he was, accompanied by a solid block of text with written without spaces because his spacebar was broken.


In early 2006 Alan Cathcart pulled some strings and earned Confederate an offer to participate in the prestigious Goodwood Festival of Speed in West Sussex, England. Exhibition at the Festival of Speed is by invitation only, so this was an offer that was not to be taken lightly. Case planned to have a Wraith built in time for Cathcart to ride on the Goodwood House grounds; no mean feat considering the event was in July and there had not been a Wraith built since the B91, and the bike would have to be shipped a month in advance to make it to the event on time.


To add to the challenge the only motor available on short notice was a 131 cubic inch (2147 CC) R&R Cycle billet Evolution-clone big twin that was intended for the 2006 F131 Hellcat, which featured completely different architecture compared to the Sportster-based engines used in the prototype Wraiths. With a deadline looming and problems with mounting the big-twin engine into a chassis intended for a Sportster architecture not fully addressed, the Goodwood bike, dubbed B131, was built as a non-running prototype. The machine was completed in June and crated up for shipment to the UK a month in advance of the Festival. Case flew to overseas to setup for the event and await the arrival of the B131.


The machine never arrived. A problem with the customs paperwork meant that the B131 remained in the crate in a holding facility in the USA while Case was getting prepared for the big reveal at Goodwood. The Confederate stand was still put up, featuring exactly zero machines, with labelled plinths sitting empty. It was an embarrassing moment for the company, but one that would be rectified the following year when a Wraith and a G2 Hellcat would successfully complete the transatlantic journey to Goodwood.  

Confederate Wraith and Hellcat at the Goodwood Festival of Speed in 2007. Image Source

Upon his return to Birmingham Case sat down to re-evaluate the big twin Wraith idea and refine the concept. He decided that the Evolution-pattern R&R engine would not work, particularly due to the transmission mount shared with the Hellcat that would preclude using the engine cases as a stressed member within the monocoque structure.
The solution was found in a series of clone motors produced by JIMS USA under license from Harley-Davidson. Based on the Twin Cam architecture introduced by Harley in 1998, the JIMS Beta series twin features a counterbalancing system as found on Twin Cam B series engines used in Softail models from MY2000 onward. Dual counter-rotating balance shafts, placed fore and aft of the crankshaft and driven by a single chain geared off the primary side flywheel, ensured a smooth engine devoid of the usual paint-shaker primary vibration inherent in a massive 45-degree twin. This makes solid mounting possible without having the engine conspiring to rattle the chassis (and the rider) to pieces. More importantly for the Wraith, the Twin Cam engine featured direct mounting points for the transmission case at the rear of the crankcase, allowing the gearbox to be bolted rigidly to the engine to create a semi-unit structure that could be used as a stressed member. The Evolution series and all prior big twin designs have had completely separate gearboxes that needed to be mounted independently from the engine, precluding the possibility of using the powertrain as a chassis member.


Case designed a proprietary gearbox support that would bolt to the Twin Cam crankcase and house Confederate’s signature vertically stacked five-speed transmission. With this unitized design, the JIMS powertrain was a mere ½ inch longer than a Sportster unit. A "not street legal" (cough) 120 CI 4.125 x 4.5 inch undersquare (approximately 104.8mm x 114mm, 1973 CC) engine was selected, an off-the-shelf counterbalanced JIMS mill intended for use in Softail applications. Aside from a set of Screaming Eagle cams, pushrods, and valve springs, most of the components were produced in-house by JIMS, including the conrods, pistons, tappets, rockers, crankcases and crankshaft. With a 10:1 compression ratio and running premium pump gas, claimed power was 125 HP and 121 LB/FT at the rear wheel (some sources claimed 131 LB/FT - in either case it could probably be deemed adequate). In a bike that would weigh less than 450 LBS ready to ride, this would be sufficient to give some sparkling performance – without any of the retina-detaching vibration that would normally be expected from a highly-tuned big-inch Harley-clone motor.


The chassis was similar to the previous prototypes, sharing the same hollow carbon-fibre backbone used on the XP1 and the Black Bike – close inspection will reveal that the curve of the spine doesn't quite match the radius of the big twin cylinder heads, as the spine was originally drawn around Sportster dimensions. The suspension contained within the steering neck used on the Black Bike was abandoned in favour of the XP1 multilink girder setup with an external Penske coilover shock mounted in parallel to the steering axis, using a titanium shock spring to reduce steered mass. Rake was 27 degrees, with 4 inches of trail - wheelbase was 58.5 inches. Another key difference compared to the earlier prototypes was the splitting of the monocoque fuselage into five pieces. The spine and bulkhead panels supported the motor and served as the load-bearing structure, while the belly pan became an unstressed panel that could be unbolted from the rest of the chassis. As before the backbone served as an oil tank for the dry sump motor, while the belly pan contained the fuel cell, exhaust silencer, and battery. An automotive pump was needed to move fuel against gravity from the underslung tank, fed through a regulator to reduce pressure enough to feed a single 51mm Keihin carburettor.


By December 2006 Case had completed a running (but not yet rideable) “B120” Wraith prototype. Plans were made to deliver the bike to Southern California where Alan Cathcart would get some seat time and write a review for Motorcyclist magazine. Case himself would make the trip across the country with several bikes in tow – he would take the opportunity to personally deliver Ryan Reynolds’ now completed Hellcat as well as bring the Wraith to Cathcart.

Image courtesy Brian Case.

While the B120 was more or less complete, some detail work remained before Cathcart would be able to ride it. Case took the bike to Eric Schwartzkopf’s Exclusive Customs shop (now DC Custom Designs in Marina Del Rey), then a Beverly Hills-based Confederate partner located just off Santa Monica boulevard. Schwartzkopf had served as an unofficial Confederate service centre and had a favourable relationship with the company, performing repairs, maintenance and warranty work for local owners (read: celebrities), despite the fact that there was no official Confederate dealer or service network at the time.

The Confederate Wraith logo, a stylized W designed by Case so he could paint it on the road with a burnout. Matt Chambers wasn't amused.

Schwartzkopf opened his shop to Case to allow him to finish the B120. With the bike running and a quick shakedown complete, it was hastily delivered to Susan Carpenter from the LA Times for a review. Carpenter discovered a few issues, including a leaking backbone which dripped oil onto the exhaust pipes and rear wheel, and a wonky fuel pump which caused the bike to die on her first ride. The resulting review was a bit disappointing and it seemed like the test had been unnecessarily rushed, but Carpenter was still charitable to the machine and could not deny the appeal of the Wraith, despite the teething issues and a riding experience that taxed the rider. She noted the smoothness of the counterbalanced engine and the compliance of the unusual front suspension, and the massive amount of attention that riding the Wraith around Los Angeles attracted.


After Carpenter’s ride, Case made some last-minute fixes, such as sealing the leaky oil reservoir in the backbone with Kreem. Before delivering the bike to Cathcart, Case took the opportunity to take the B120 on some shakedown rides around Malibu and the surrounding backroads, including a trip to the famous Rock Store where he encountered Jay Leno (who expressed enthusiasm for the wild design). Case had to deal with an unstoppable amount of interest lavished upon the alien-looking machine on every route and at every stop. As Carpenter had discovered the sight of a Confederate of any sort on the road was cause for investigation, and the awesome-looking Wraith garnered even more attention than usual.


With the major bugs ironed out the B120 was passed to Cathcart. His review noted much improved riding characteristics compared to the Black Bike he had ridden in 2005. He praised the smoothness and power of the JIMS engine, particularly compared to the Revolution Performance powerplant used in the B91.  He also noted the good handling, commendable stability (without the need for a steering damper, though production models were fitted with one), and excellent feedback offered by the girder front suspension. Soft springing and controlled damping allowed the bike ride to absorb rough roads without feeling undersprung – it rode comfortably, even if the ergonomics would injure the rider before the suspension harshness ever would.


At this point a retail price of 55,000$ was set for the B120, undercutting the F131 Hellcat which remained the flagship of the line at 67,500$. Chambers claimed that 35 pre-orders were in hand for the Wraith, and that there were plans to build as many as 250 examples with production starting in early 2007. Plans were made for a return to Bonneville in 2007 to prove the mettle of the new Wraith. Case hoped to lead the effort and field his baby on the Salt Flats, just as Nesbitt had done with XP1. However Chambers was pushing Case further away from design and testing and more into production logistics for the company. A Haas CNC mill and CNC lathe were purchased on Case's recommendation to bring more manufacturing in-house and he was placed in charge of setting up and programming the units - once the machines arrived on site it was clear that a suite of CAM software was needed to convert the company's Solidworks files into real objects, an expensive oversight that angered Chambers. He made Case responsible for getting the critical CNC equipment running, while Ed Jacobs was gradually increasingly billed as Confederate’s star designer. Case was being pulled from the front line and relegated to daily operations, and he began to feel slighted as a result.

Alan Cathcart and Brian Case with the B120 prototype. Image courtesy Brian Case.

Period articles seem to corroborate the shift, with mention of Case’s contributions to the Wraith project steadily disappearing as time went on.* Despite the high-profile nature of the design and the favourable attention the B120 was garnering, it seemed that Chambers preferred to shift focus onto Jacobs’ work, which were more industrial, clean-sheet designs that represented a break from the pre-Katrina machines.


In March 2007 Case was sent to the Daytona Bike Week in Daytona Beach, Florida with two Wraith prototypes. Neale Bayly was invited to ride and review the B120, with Case joining him on the second machine for a friendly blast around the event. Bayly noted some ergonomic issues and clunky clutch and shifting, but was favourable in his assessment. When he rode the newer of the two prototypes he noted some noticeable improvements, what he saw as a sure sign of meaningful progress towards a polished production machine from the tiny company. Retail price was now quoted at 62,500$.


During the fall of 2007 a team consisting of Denis McCarthy, Jason Reddick and Joe Brutton was preparing a B120 for a record attempt at the BUB Speed Trials in September of that year in the Altered – Pushrod Gasoline class (A-PG 2000CC). Case had been helping the crew prepare Bonnie, the Wraith registered as entry 96 in the BUB trials, but was removed from the team by Chambers in August. He was tasked with taking a B120 and a F131 Hellcat to take to Sturgis, North Dakota to participate in the American Motorcycle Dealer World Championship of Custom Bike Building. The AMD championship is an annual showcase of all that is wild and wonderful in custom motorcycles, with entries from all over the world competing in several categories - but despite their worthiness as entries, Case failed to see how competing in the championship would play into Confederate’s brand image. The AMD championship was a showcase for over-the-top unrideable choppers and candy-coloured styling exercises that represented the sort of ridiculous excess that didn't jive with Confederate's ideology. He felt that the trip was a way of pushing him out of the limelight while his coworkers were working on the Bonneville entry. The two Confederates were entered in the Production Manufacturer Class, with the requirement that the “entry must be based on a production motorcycle with over 50 units of the model produced annually”; a definition that was probably stretched a bit for the Wraith, which at that point existed only in pre-production form. Regardless of the letter of the rules the two entries swept the class, with the Wraith taking first and the Hellcat second.


The results served as a bit of vindication for Case, but it didn't help his position with Chambers. Upon Case's return to Alabama, the two had a vicious argument. Chambers proceeded to suspend Case from work for two weeks. Frustrated by his increasingly marginalized position within Confederate, Case spent the time off work mulling over his options. He made the decision to leave the company and tendered his resignation upon his return.


With regards to the Wraith, Case felt the design was finished and he had seen it through to production. He felt that he had accomplished what he set out to do, and in so doing had kept his personal promise to Nesbitt (and, to a lesser degree, to Van Halen, who eventually took delivery of a B120 for himself and a Hellcat for his wife).

Image courtesy Brian Case.

The Bonneville run went ahead as planned in September, with Bonnie taking to the Flats with Jason Reddick aboard. Featuring a pair of board-tracker style reverse bend handlebars to allow Reddick to tuck in, entry 96 averaged 137.152 mph in the flying mile on their first outing, then 154.778 mph on their second runs. Despite the impressive performance from a naked, air-cooled V-twin powered “production” machine, their trap speeds weren't enough to secure a record in A-PG 2000CC. The team noted that the bike was running out of gearing at the top end; a subsequent attempt in December 2008 with a revised Wraith, again with Reddick aboard, netted a two-way average of 166.459 mph. With that Confederate earned their first FIM land speed record in the Altered - Pushrod Fuel class (A-PF 2000CC).

Denis McCarthy aboard Bonnie. Image courtesy Denis McCarthy.

Series production of the Wraith was underway by mid-2007, with a retail price that had now inflated to 92,500$. Given the hand-crafted nature of the machines, no two B120s are exactly the same. Some have single front brakes instead of a dual disc setup, some have stainless brake rotors while others have carbon composite, some have BST carbon fibre wheels instead of forged Marchesini items, some have open headers while others route the exhaust through the belly pan. Small detail differences and specification changes abound throughout the production run. Some complaints were addressed, particularly an extremely heavy clutch pull and clunky shifting, as well as some ergonomic tweaks that made the seating position a bit more bearable (but still far from appropriate for long rides).

Image courtesy Brian Case.

Not only are no two Wraiths alike in specification, it would also appear that no two Wraiths ride alike. Each reviewer that had the good fortune to swing a leg over the B120 had a very different opinion of the handling. Most praised the smoothness and power of the JIMS engine, and universally noted the awkward ergonomics, but each noted different characteristics from the girder front suspension. This ranged from the commendable stability and feedback that Cathcart noted in Motorcyclist in 2007 to flighty nervousness that required a maxed-out steering damper described by Mark Hoyer in a 2009 Cycle World review. In a 2008 review for The Telegraph the late Kevin Ash described the steering as vague and slightly unstable until you pushed it hard (which he was reluctant to do on a borrowed machine that retailed for £52,560)  and lamented that the multilink front end wasn't tuned for anti-dive properties like a BMW Duolever (Hossack) suspension.

Image courtesy Brian Case.

The reason for this variety in handling impressions is unclear. It may have something to do with aberrations in the front girder geometry - either intentional due to tweaking by Confederate over the years, or due to improper suspension setup, or due to minor variations in production. Girder forks tend to have odd dynamic characteristics, with consistent trail for the first few inches of travel followed by a significant change at longer strokes which can lead to odd handling under certain conditions - they work better with very short (and thereby harsh) amounts of suspension travel. The reason is the fork is moving independently of the steering axis of the frame, causing loss of trail under compression when the steering offset changes. This can be tuned to acceptable levels on the street, but is not so great if you plan on racing with a traditional girder - for that you need a Hossack or Fior fork, which links the steering axis to the fork.    


Seeing a Wraith in person you are struck by how utterly alien it looks. Like any Confederate it is stupendously well made, with the finest components liberally strewn around a massive motor. The machine is tied together with highest quality CNC milled billet, titanium and matte-finish carbon-fibre. Every fastener and fitting is of the highest quality, if not made specifically for the machine. The carbon-fibre girder blades dominate the aesthetics, but somehow look right. Time has softened the impact of the Wraith's awe-inspiring design, but not by much – these are still amazing looking machines that are unlike anything else on two wheels.


A Wraith is smaller and narrower than you imagined it would be, a 9/10ths scale replica of what you pictured in your head. The weight is carried low and the seat height is barely over 30 inches. While seated on the bike it seems to disappear beneath you. The B120 is slightly larger than the XP1 and B91 but it is still a physically tiny machine that seems like little more than a giant motor with some running gear shrink wrapped around it. You don't realize how compact it really is until you see it in person, sit on it, or witness it in motion with a rider aboard. It is little wonder that the completed B120 weighed in the neighbourhood of 410 LBS dry (some sources claimed 385 LBS), despite packing a near-as-damnit 2000 CC engine with an ungodly amount of torque on tap. The Wraith was billed as Confederate's "sport" machine - considerably lighter and more oriented towards sharp handling than the Hellcat, with a leaned-forward seating position, 120/70-17 and 190/50-17 Pirelli Diablo tires, and a compact chassis. It's hardly a sport bike by any traditional definition but it makes sense when compared to other Confederates.


The proportions of the Wraith look even stranger when a human is perched precariously over it, the minimal saddle disappearing beneath their butts, their legs set back in a semi-rearset position with arms outstretched to meet the flat streetfighter bend of the bars. The ergonomics are, to put it lightly, awkward. Without a fuel tank to grip with your knees the air-cooled engine threatens to alternately roast or shred your legs, with the rear cylinder head and open belt-driven primary drive respectively. You need to keep your knees splayed to keep your jeans intact, and be mindful of the exhaust exit on the right side (if the bike is fitted with open headers) which will likely melt the toe of your boot.


Production continued at a slow rate with steady refinements. Each Confederate is hand assembled by a team of craftsmen, and for most of the company’s history they have only built one machine at a time, with the next order starting only when the current machine is finished and ready for delivery. As a buyer, you put down your deposit and wait your turn for your machine to be built. Each machine is tested for 200 miles by Confederate staff before delivery to the customer; former Confederate engineer Denis McCarthy noted that every ride home was a non-stop barrage of dumbstruck onlookers and 20 minute fuel stops, and he had to build a ramp on his front porch to roll whichever priceless machine he was testing into his home for safekeeping.


After the year of free rent expired at their Fifth Avenue location, the much-touted plan to move Confederate to a larger facility adjoined to the Barber museum quietly fell through. The economic catastrophe in 2008 hit Confederate hard – the ultra-exclusive nature and high prices of their machines killed sales in the wake of a general sobering up of the market. Flash and conspicuous consumption had been building to a crescendo before the downturn, supporting boutique brands and a luxury market that existed in a bubble – in motorcycles as much as in cars, watches, art, boats, booze and anything else that might have graced the pages of the Robb Report. When that bubble inevitably burst the trend was towards far more discreet displays of wealth and a general shrinking of demand in the luxury market. There were still wealthy clients buying luxury goods, but they now wanted more tasteful, more understated products with solid fundamentals and better resale. Fly-by-night manufacturers of trendy, expensive and flashy goods disappeared, while more established brands like Confederate suffered greatly reduced sales. In 2008 the company produced a mere 37 machines, nowhere near the several hundred units they anticipated before the recession hit. A total of approximately 25 B120s were built, a mere tenth of the originally planned production run.

Two B120s on display at the current Confederate factory showroom in Birmingham, Alabama. The assembly area is visible to the right.

In Spring 2010 it appeared the Confederate would abandon its operations in Birmingham to return to New Orleans. A 750,000$ loan was offered by the city to entice Confederate to return to Louisiana and develop a lower-priced entry level model (which would ultimately materialize as the sub-50,000$ X132 Hellcat). Opposition from a member of the board of directors created a rift within the company and delayed acceptance of the loan. A lawsuit was taken out against the board member with the accusation that he was attempting to “deadlock” the company. Meanwhile Confederate’s benefactors in Alabama were not impressed with the about-face after the company had promised tens of millions of dollars in investment and the creation of several hundred local jobs. Ultimately the loan from New Orleans fell through and Confederate remained in Birmingham, moving to their current location on Second Avenue South in 2013.

Image Source

The B120 evolved into the R135 Wraith Combat, the last hurrah for a platform which had been gradually overshadowed by the introduction of Ed Jacobs’ P120 Fighter in 2009 and third-generation X132 Hellcat in 2010. The R135 was announced in early 2013 as a limited edition of seven examples retailing for 135,000$. The most obvious difference, aside from black anodizing on all the metal surfaces, is the fitting of a JIMS 135 CI 4.3125 x 4.625 inch (110 x 117mm, 2212 CC) Twin Cam engine. Based on the architecture of the 120 CI mill, the 135 boasted detail improvements across the board, including CNC milled heads, higher lift Screaming Eagle camshafts, and a welded crank pin. JIMS claimed power was up to 136 HP and 135 LB/FT at the wheel with 10.67:1 compression. According to JIMS the 135, like the 120, is a “race only” not-street-legal engine - but no one told Confederate that.

One of Ed Jacobs' Confederate Fighters in for servicing at the Confederate factory. The Fighter succeeded the Wraith as the company's flagship model. It uses a girder front suspension similar to the B120, but with alloy rather than carbon fibre blades.

After leaving Confederate in 2007, Brian Case set about canvassing for positions. Foraxis had closed a year after he left, leaving him without a fall-back position. In the winter of 2007 Case travelled to East Troy, Wisconsin to be interviewed by Buell for a design position on the upcoming 1125R superbike project. Erik Buell interviewed Case personally, and at the conclusion of the interview informed him that he wasn't suited for the position: not because he wasn't qualified, but because he wouldn't be satisfied with the job. Buell told Case that he would be relegated to focusing on some tiny subset of the design of the bike, a far cry from creating a radical machine out of whole cloth and running a production facility as he had at Confederate. It simply wasn't a job for him.

Case accepted the outcome with a positive outlook: here he was being interviewed by Erik Buell himself, who told him that he was too good for the job. It snapped him out of the funk that followed his resignation from Confederate. After visiting Buell he was convinced that he too could produce a new all-American motorcycle. That and the miserable, bitter desolation of winter in small-town Wisconsin didn’t impress him much after he had grown accustomed to the year-round riding season in Alabama.


Upon his return to Birmingham Case sat down with friend Lee Conn and drafted a business plan. Initial plans and sketches were for an air-cooled V-twin sportbike, but the concept eventually evolved into a longitudinally-mounted 1650 CC V4 based loosely on a small-block Chevrolet pushrod V8 powering a modern all-American sport tourer. Motus was officially born, and Case never looked back.

Image courtesy ADMCi

In 2010 Case and Nesbitt once again collaborated on a motorcycle, when Nesbitt approached Case to provide the powertrain for his Bienville Legacy. To Case working with Nesbitt on the Legacy felt like a continuation of their work together on the Wraith, as if their collaboration had never been interrupted. Pre-production of the Legacy began in 2013, and the prototype was unveiled at the Motus factory in downtown Birmingham in October of that year. Three complete Legacies were rolled out of Nesbitt’s studio a year later in October 2014 and were proudly exhibited in the lobby of the Motus headquarters, just over ten years after Nesbitt and Case had first teamed up to work on the Wraith XP1.

JT Nesbitt (left) and Brian Case (right) working on one of the three Bienville Legacy motorcycles at the Motus factory in Birmingham, Alabama.

There is a certain symbiosis to their work together, a pairing that seems incongruous but somehow works. Nesbitt is the consumate dreamer, a master craftsman with high-minded ideals that often ruffle the tendencies of more “conventional” (i.e. boring) designers. He is an artist by training, but refuses to identify as one. He is brilliant, perceptive, occasionally blunt and sometimes a bit arrogant, and he refuses to compromise his principles. Case is more grounded, more technically minded, and has a background in industrial design. He is reserved, intelligent, calm and perceptive. Despite the differences in their personalities, Case and Nesbitt mesh and work together remarkably well. It is one of those odd yin/yang pairings that seems too cliched to be true, but their collaborations have produced some of the most interesting motorcycles of the 21st century -  the Wraith and the Legacy are proof enough of that.    



* Following Case's resignation, Ed Jacobs was presented as the man who had made the Wraith a production reality and all mention of Case's contributions disappeared: a 2009 Cycle World review said Jacobs "is largely responsible for the Wraith’s current producibility and functionality." 

Interesting Links

Business Wire's announcement of Confederate's move to Alabama
Susan Carpenter's LA Times review of the B120 Wraith prototype
Alan Cathcart's review of the B120 prototype in Motorcyclist
Neale Bayly's review of the B120 prototypes in Motorcycle Mojo
Motorcycle.com details of the 2007 Bonneville trials
The late Kevin Ash's review of the 2008 B120 Wraith
Cycle World review of the 2009 B120 Wraith
Motorcyclist on the 2009 Wraith and Fighter
Ultimate Motorcycling review of the 2010 B120 Wraith
Bonhams' auction of a 2007 B120 Wraith
B-Metro magazine on Chambers and Confederate
Matt Chambers' TEDx talk on the "American System vs the American Way" and the philosophy behind Confederate
Matt Chambers speaks about the aftermath of Katrina
The Wall Street Journal profiles Ed Jacobs
Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum website
Motus Motorcycles website
Bienville Studios Website
OddBike profile of the Bienville Legacy
ADMCi Website

Image courtesy ADMCi

“So tell me what you think, man.”

JT is wearing a shit-eating grin and holding a tallboy of Coors. He’s beaming because today is the first time his incredible creation has been rolled out of his New Orleans workshop into the public eye. I’m standing outside the Motus factory in downtown Birmingham, Alabama on a warm fall evening in October 2013. I'm barely able to process what I'm seeing, let alone formulate any meaningful opinion about it.

I recall my immediate reaction as being “What the fuck does it matter what I think?”

The thought comes in a moment of pure intensity for me. It followed a long, difficult day spent running around in muggy Southern heat while attending the Barber Vintage Festival. I've dragged myself here to meet the man who I've been following and conversing with for several months, an enigmatic and controversial motorcycle designer who has been keen to share his ideas with me. Today is the day his baby gets unveiled to the public. This marks the first time I've met JT Nesbitt in person, and it’s the first time I've seen his handiwork outside of a computer screen. And I'm completely awestruck.

Image courtesy ADMCi

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Moto Guzzi has lost its way.

The boys at Mandello del Lario represent the oldest continuously operating brand in Europe in spite of operating in a near-constant state of flux due to catastrophic insolvency and unstable sales. Over the years the products emblazoned with the eagle crest have attempted to fill nearly every conceivable niche - sometimes successfully, more often not. Despite their attempts to crack into various categories with sometimes ill-advised oddball machines, Guzzis of old channelled a certain spirit that made them appealing to a certain type of rider who lusted for something peculiar. They were sporting machines, but not sportbikes. They were a bit rough and charmingly unpretentious, but refined enough to be pleasant. They were unique, but somehow familiar, and backed up by decades of heritage – passionate machines with antiquated guts. Moto Guzzi excelled at building the prototypical gentleman’s sports machine, exemplified by iconic models like the Le Mans, the V11, and the Daytona. They were not the fastest, or the most agile, or the most useable – but they were some of the most charming.

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But it was not to last. With their finances in shambles and profits needed to keep the lights on, a new strategy would be needed. It was a boring solution, with practicality and rationality taking precedence over passion. When the Piaggio Group took over Moto Guzzi in 2004, the company gradually phased out the true heirs to the company’s heritage in favour of dull, safe products that would appeal to the masses. Thus we ended up with wallflower machines like an asthmatic retro throwback, a chrome-addled American-esque cruiser, and a Teutonic-aping capital-A “Adventure Tourer”. Guzzi weathered their near-demise to fight another day, but at the cost of all that made them interesting.



Projects that promised to satisfy the lust of the rabid Guzzi faithful like the MGS-01 were unceremoniously dumped in favour of practical machines. The evergreen V11 was dropped from the lineup. If you wanted a true sporting Guzzi, you would no longer find one in the dealer showrooms - unless you could tolerate the brutish ugliness and pavement-rippling weight of the Griso.

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There is, however, an alternative - a series of machines that fill this lamentable gap. To get one, you'll need to visit Millepercento, which at first glance would appear to be a Milan-area Moto Guzzi dealership. It is here, operating quietly under the radar, that the true heirs to Guzzi’s lineage are produced. While Moto Guzzi proper languishes within the iron grip of the Piaggio group, the dealer/manufacturer Millepercento has been producing limited series of well-developed motorcycles that serve as the answer to the pleas of the world’s die-hard Guzzistas: properly quick, modern, and beautiful sporting machines powered by that iconic transverse Italian V-twin.

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There is a long and rich history of dealer hot rods in the motorcycle industry, where large dealerships with passion and capital to spare set about improving the breed. It isn't far removed from the limited production machines produced by high-quality custom shops, but when a dealer like Millepercento is involved there is a certain amount of familiarity and experience with a particular brand baked right into the mix. In the case of the BB1, Alba, and Scighera, Millepercento has applied considerable experience with Guzzi tuning and exploited several valuable contacts to create some of the most delectable road-legal Geese we've seen since Piaggio saw fit to shelve the MGS-01.  

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Millepercento is a relatively recent entry into the motorcycle market, but one that has deep roots in the Guzzi community. The Brianza-area dealer began in the early sixties and eventually grew into Bruno Scola LTD in the mid-1990s, with its namesake, a skilled Guzzi tuner, at the helm. It was during this period under Scola’s direction that the company established its prowess as a Guzzi tuner, developing ideas that would serve as templates for later projects. It was not, however, a terribly prosperous period, with Guzzi teetering on the edge of bankruptcy at the tail end of the period of DeTomaso ownership. The Aprilia takeover in April 2000 stabilized the situation, before Piaggio stepped in in December 2004 and took over both marques. In 2005 Stefano Perego, a businessman who had worked within the supply chain of the Cagiva group and had previous dealings with Moto Guzzi, stepped in to purchase the Bruno Scola operation and capitalize on what he hoped would be a renewed Guzzi resulting from the Piaggio takeover. The company was renamed Millepercento (“One thousand percent”) Moto Ltd and moved to a larger location in Verano Brianza. At the time the new facility made Millepercento the largest Moto Guzzi dealer in the world.

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Meanwhile, across town in the south end of Milan, an engineer by the name of Giovanni Mariani was finishing work on his latest project. Using technology and ideas gleaned from American pushrod V8 racing engines, mated with the hot-rod culture surrounding Moto Guzzi big-block twins, Mariani’s “Big Bore” engine would redefine Goose performance. The idea had originated several years prior as a template for a relaxed but powerful touring engine, but later evolved into an exercise of applying modern tuning and technology to the existing big block architecture, improving the basic Guzzi mill with some careful and significant re-engineering. While visually similar to the standard engine it is based on, the Big Bore used liquid-cooled cylinders and heads to facilitate a higher compression ratio and more extreme tuning without risking a meltdown. Cylinder and head fins were retained, while water passages were kept internal, preserving the air-cooled aesthetics. A water pump driven off the camshaft fed a small radiator that could be bolted ahead of the timing case between the downtubes of a Tonti-framed machine.

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Bore was bumped to 106.3mm, mated to the 80mm stroke of a V11 series bottom end giving 1420ccs, with the pushrod tubes re-angled parallel to the cylinder and further away from the center of the bore to allow more room for the massive pistons: forged slipper items with dished crowns and DLC coated skirts, matched to titanium con rods with DLC coated big-ends. The top end benefitted from a new cylinder head design that was inspired by American pushrod V8 dynamics and tuning – word was that Mariani studied a Corvette racing engine to glean some of the principles he could apply to the Big Bore. The pushrod two-valve layout was retained, but the new heads had larger ports, a pent-roof combustion chamber with a very flat 14-degree included valve angle, and massive titanium valves – 53.3mm inlets and 40.6mm exhausts. Special attention was paid to reshaping the ports to maximize cylinder filling and charge swirl to achieve optimum combustion efficiency, aided by a twin-plug ignition system necessary to light up such a huge bore surface. A hotter camshaft drove roller tappets (vs. the flat tappets of a stock setup) and chromoly pushrods, acting on billet alloy rocker arms (which retained locknut lash caps for easy adjustment). Claimed power was 123 HP at 7500 RPM, with a stunning 97 LB/FT of torque at 5750 RPM - compare that to the claimed 91 HP and 70 LB/FT of a contemporary V11 engine. Later dyno runs proved the initial claims to be conservative, with as much as 131 HP on tap in “street” tune. Released to the public in early 2005, the Big Bore was offered in a package that could fit into a stock Guzzi frame, a direct replacement for any big block from the 850 up.

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The Big Bore engine had the distinction of earning Moto Guzzi a win at Daytona, though you wouldn't have guessed it if you were not familiar with Mariani’s design. Gianfranco Guareschi had taken a victory at the Battle of the Twins race at Daytona in 2006 aboard a standard MGS-01 Corsa, but for 2007 a new trick was up the team’s sleeve. The MGS-01 chassis would be fitted with a specially prepared Big Bore engine, destroked to 76mm to fit under the 1350cc displacement cap for a pushrod twin. The addition of a massive multi-level radiator and the lack of four-valve heads gave away the ruse to those familiar with the MGS, but few were aware of the architecture of the hotrod motor slotted into Guareschi’s machine. According to Mariani power at the crankshaft was 167 HP at 8750 RPM. Guareschi won the BOTT F1 category, beating two highly-developed NCR Ducatis despite having a significant disadvantage in overall weight, and took second in Sound of Thunder. Moto Guzzi proudly trumpeted their victory in the media, but failed to mention that the winning engine was not developed in-house and was quite distinct from the quattrovalvole mill that came stock in the MGS-01.  

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In 2007 Millepercento purchased a controlling interest in Big Bore Ltd. In November of that year Millepercento Ltd. was founded as a motorcycle manufacturer.  In March 2008 MPC Ltd. hired the legendary Giuseppe Ghezzi, half namesake of Ghezzi & Brian and designer of the MGS-01 during his brief tenure with Moto Guzzi proper, to design a series of heavily reworked Guzzis that would be produced in limited numbers. The company’s first offering, announced in late 2008, was the Millepercento BB1 – a modified Griso 1100 that featured a Big Bore powerplant.

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Being Euro 3 compliant and street legal, the BB1 proved to be one of the most powerful street-going Guzzis of all time, with significantly more power and a lot more torque than the 1151cc 8V engine introduced by Guzzi in 2008. Using the full-fat 1420cc version of the Big Bore engine the BB1 knocked out over 115 HP at the wheel, a power output that eclipsed the stock 2-valve 1064cc Griso mill by over 50%. Claimed power was 135 HP at 7,100 RPM and 108 LB/FT of torque at 5,600 RPM. Aside from the heart transplant the BB1 was mostly standard Griso fare, with stock brakes, wheels, suspension and final drive. The only distinguishing items were a reshaped seat that narrowed the midsection, a carbon fibre belly pan, and carbon fibre side panels masking the presence of a huge rectangular radiator running the full height of the engine.

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Despite the extra components claimed weight was supposedly lighter than the standard Griso 1100 at 480 LBS dry.  Price was quoted at $32,000 USD (24,190 Euros, with Ohlins suspension available for an extra 3,000 Euros), with delivery slated to begin in early 2009. Testers found that the power was impressive, with ridiculous torque that had the heavy machine pawing the sky in the first three gears. The fine handling of the Griso chassis was undisturbed, but early reviews noted the custom fuel injection setup was cold blooded and extremely choppy, with very poor throttle response. Some Italian testers didn't seem to notice – either the FI issues were sorted on their test machines, or their breathlessly patriotic assessments didn't have room for criticism.


Ghezzi then turned to developing a new chassis for an upcoming sport model that would fill the gap left when Moto Guzzi dropped the V11 series in 2005, fulfilling one of Ghezzi’s desires that he felt had been denied during his time at Mandello – the introduction of a modern, street legal sport Guzzi. Ghezzi was no stranger to building fast Geese, and his work on big-block powered sportsters is well known among the Guzzi faithful. The Ghezzi & Brian SuperTwin and its naked Furia/Fionda stablemates were bikes for discerning Guzzi nuts – they mated a bespoke chassis and top-spec running gear with a standard big block Guzzi twin, with an emphasis on fine handling and component quality over outright power. Ghezzi & Brian began when Ghezzi pulled the engine out of his personal Le Mans and built a racing chassis of his own design around it, upon which he went on to win the 1996 Italian Supertwins Championship. Ghezzi’s chassis design addressed several key issues with sporting Guzzis: aside from offering a stout backbone with better suspension and brakes, they improved the intake with an airbox integrated into the spine of the frame that isolated it from engine heat, addressed drive shaft jacking with a torque arm linkage, shortened the wheelbase by several inches, and improved real-world roadholding with a rising rate rear suspension that production Guzzis lacked at the time. The resulting bikes were considerably lighter than standard Guzzis, had superb handling, and were handsome in a functional kind of way.

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At Millepercento Ghezzi penned a new chassis and styled a beautiful sporting machine that would make MPC the envy of the Guzzi faithful who pined for an up-to-date Mandello sport bike. The Millepercento Alba 1200 (also referred to as the M2S in prototype form) was unveiled at the 2009 EICMA show. The Alba was named for the Spanish Circuito de Albacete (notable for being a venue of the Endurance FIM World Championship, where a MGS-01 won its class in 2004) and featured a steel tube frame that was lighter and slimmer than any existing Guzzi chassis, hanging the engine from a tubular trellis space frame in a semi-stressed arrangement that brought the engine 40mm higher and 75mm forward of its placement in the Griso donor. Claimed dry weight was 453 LBS. Wheelbase was 57.9 inches and rake was 24 degrees, with 3.85 inches of trail – quite a bit more compact than the Griso, but not as tight as a SuperTwin. The engine, 6-speed transmission, and rising-rate CARC driveshaft were pulled straight out of a Griso 1200 8V – the internally unmodified high-cam 95x81.2mm 1151cc engine produced a claimed 108 HP and 89 LB/FT. The prototype was shown with Ohlins suspension, but production machines would come with the standard Griso 1200 Showa fork and Sachs shock while fancier bits were available as optional extras.

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A large oil cooler was mounted below the seat at a steep angle where you'd expect to see the rear a mudguard – cool air was fed to the rear via two long ducts that flanked the crankcases and swept below the cylinders, which in conjunction with a belly pan gave the appearance of a nearly-complete fairing, if it wasn't for the big cylinder heads jutting out either side. The reason for the odd arrangement and complex ducting was simple – the liquid-cooled 1420cc Big Bore engine was an option in the Alba 1500, and if so equipped the radiator would be placed under the seat to keep the front end uncluttered. The huge 24 litre fuel tank was aluminum while the rest of the body was carbon fibre. Styling was unique and modern, with sharp angles mixed with upward sweeping curves that were reminiscent of the MGS-01, but maybe not quite as handsome. Reaction to the looks were mixed, but most pundits were happy to see a proper sport Guzzi coming down the pipe.

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It took several years before the Alba would hit the streets. Final specs were announced in 2011 with a starting price of 19,752 Euros for the base model equipped with standard Griso running gear, a brushed alloy tank, and bare carbon fibre body panels (sans bellypan). Test bikes featured some subtle modifications to the engine – a quickshifter-ready Athena engine management system, a MPC accessory clutch that was 7.7 LBS lighter than the standard item, and MPC’s “Air One” intake kit. The twin 50mm throttle body intake of the standard 8V was replaced by a single 64mm Dell’Orto throttle body feeding an alloy plenum. Similar to the intake of the Big Bore, this kit is offered by MPC as a way of supposedly improving low and midrange power, with a slight penalty at higher revs. The stainless-steel 2-into-1 Zard exhaust was also claimed to boost midrange torque. Claimed power was up slightly, to 110 HP at 7200 RPM, while maintaining Euro 3 compliance.

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Testers came away impressed with what Ghezzi and MPC had cooked up. Comparisons to the BMW HP2 Sport were common and perhaps inevitable - expensive, high-spec European machines with weirdly oriented, antiquated air-cooled twins are apparently a small niche. Comfort was secondary to handling, and the Alba delivered in that department. Agile and light handling was noted, the exact opposite of almost every Guzzi reviewed since the dawn of print. Power and throttle response was noticeably improved and (unlike the BB1) fueling was noted to be quite good. High price, limited production, and a nearly invisible market presence limited the appeal, but those who had the opportunity to take an Alba for a ride came away impressed and wondered aloud why the hell Moto Guzzi  wasn't the one building it.

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In 2011 Ghezzi left Millepercento and continued his work of building hot Guzzis alongside Bruno Saturno back at Ghezzi & Brian. The Alba and BB1 remained in production, but MPC flew under the radar for the most part, only seeing coverage in European magazines and not receiving much attention outside of the Guzzi forums. With Ghezzi gone it seemed that development at MPC had slowed and was limited to building faddish customs, but in 2014 it was revealed that they were still toiling away behind the scenes on a new model. The Scighera, named after the Milanese term for morning fog, is based heavily on Alba architecture but with completely revised styling courtesy of Filippo Barbacane of Pescara-based custom shop Officine Rossopuro. The Alba space frame is retained, along with the 1151cc 8V motor, 6-speed transmission, and CARC driveshaft, but everything else is reworked to turn the Alba into an elegant, naked sportster that makes the Griso look like a lumbering Neanderthal in comparison.

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The subframe is reshaped and stylized into an abbreviated solo tail with exposed alloy framework. The tail is no longer burdened by the awkward housing and intake vents for the underseat oil cooler of the Alba – the cooler is relocated under the transmission, hidden within the bellypan and fed by a pair of air scoops. Custom tubeless Borrani wire wheels are a nod to the current retro fad, but don't distract from the modern, high quality components present: Ohlins forks and shock, Brembo radial master cylinders and .484 Custom calipers, CNC milled triple clamps, and carbon-fibre body panels. A hydroformed 2-into-1 exhaust caps it all off. The styling is by no means radical, but it shows how much nicer a naked big-block Guzzi can be with just a little care - without resorting to stupid “classic” styling cues and neo-retro clichés.

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Technically the Scighera is not far removed from the Alba. Chassis geometry is identical, aside from the slightly different specifications of the Ohlins components. The Air One intake and an Athena GET ECU are used; claimed power output for the Scighera was 105 HP at 7600 RPM and 91.8 LB/FT at 4900 RPM. The massive cone filter for the 64mm throttle body juts through an opening in the undertail, the only aberration in the otherwise clean lines of the machine. More important than the power figure is the weight, or the lack of it: the Schighera is supposedly one of the lightest street legal big-block Guzzis of all time, weighing a claimed 419 LBS. For those keeping score at home, that’s 70 LBS lighter than the claimed dry weight of the 2014 Griso 8V SE.

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The public ate it up, and attention was unprecedented for one of Millepercento’s projects, despite a projected price starting at 29,000 Euros (34,000 for the specification as shown on the prototype). Release of the Scighera is slated for early 2015. It’s clear that the market wants machines like the Scighera, and once again, the resounding question that arises is “why isn’t Guzzi building this?”

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Back at EICMA in 2009, on the other side of the hall from where MPC was unveiling the Alba, Moto Guzzi proper was showcasing Pierre Terblanche’s V12 concepts. A trio of sporting machines, based on a common chassis around the 8V engine with modular bodywork and different running gear, the V12s were seen as the much-hoped for return to form for the company. Piaggio didn't agree. Despite intense interest from the market and the media the V12s were buried immediately after EICMA, stuffed into the back of a warehouse and covered with a tarp. All requests for photographs, details or interviews about the concepts were denied. The implication was that sporting machines like the V12 would be seen as an infringement on Aprilia’s hegemony of sport motorcycles within the Piaggio group. They didn’t represent the “direction” management had in mind for Moto Guzzi. Thus, the project was killed and the prototypes forgotten.

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Terblanche was disappointed but not surprised. Despite having far less brand recognition than Guzzi and being hampered by poor marketing, Aprilia remains the golden child of the Piaggio hierarchy and any designs that might encroach upon on its sporting pretensions will be summarily executed or repurposed to suit the pecking order.

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Companies like Millepercento are happy to fill in the void left by the distinct lack of irrational passion over at Mandello, and independent projects like the Alba and Scighera continue to demonstrate how far Moto Guzzi has strayed from its ideals in the pursuit of stealing header-wrap market share from the Triumph Bonneville and building Italian BMW and Harley knockoffs. For those who crave a modern sporting Guzzi, there aren't any options in dealer showrooms. For that you'll have to open your mind and your wallet to the boys in Verano Brianza.    

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Interesting Links
Photo Gallery
Millepercento website
Archived Big Bore website
Interview with Giovanni Mariani
Details of Guareschi's Big Bore MGS-01
Motorbox announcing Guareschi's 2007 Daytona victory
AnimaGuzzista review of the MPC BB1
Moto Guzzi interview with Stefano Perego
Millepercento BB1 on Motorcyclespecs
DueRuote on the BB1
Millepercento Alba on the Monza circuit
Motorbox MPC Alba review
Motorrad MPC Alba review
Cycle World First Look at the Scighera
Motociclismo overview of the MPC Scighera
Millepercento Scighera launch video
Officine Rossopuro website
Millepercento lineup 2015 retail prices
OddBike profile of the MGS-01
Pierre Terblanche's 2009 V12 Concepts

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It's the new year, and a time to take stock of the new series of motorcycles that has been trickling out of the gate over the past few months. It’s also the nadir of our Canadian winter here in Calgary, so of course this is the perfect time to attend a flashy, disappointing motorcycle show to examine this year's newly minted cash grabs and dull rehashes in the hopes of finding a few gems in this post-Economic Apocalypse era.


For some sadistic reason all the major Canadian motorcycle exhibitions are held in the middle of our bitter winter, when we are at least three months away from turning a wheel in anger. It's a chance to admire shiny new contrivances of the two wheeled variety to briefly distract ourselves from the misery of our cold, cycle-free season. Really it seems idiotic. Despite optimistic displays loaded with the latest (and leftover) gear and temporary finance offices throughout the show floor, this isn't the time of year when you are going to be buying bikes. Even taking delivery of them is a chore, shuttling them home on a trailer or pickup just so you can wistfully gaze at them in your garage for 4 months, then take your first wobbly, familiarizing ride on sand and salt caked roads the moment the snow recedes... Test rides are virtually out of the question at Canadian dealerships any time of the year, outside of heavily regulated demo days where you’ll have to sign up well in advance to ride the latest base model at 5 under the speed limit for 30 minutes.


Calgary seems to get the short end of the stick when it comes to the show circuit. I've attended the Montreal and Toronto shows in the past, and they are usually well stocked and exceptionally well attended (i.e. crowded as all fuck). This in spite of the significant anti-biker sentiments and associated legislation (not to mention obscene insurance/registration fees) in Quebec and Ontario. Alberta is one of the most free and accommodating provinces in the Confederation and exhibits precious little meddling with its motorcycling population. From my perspective in the industry, motorcycle sales here are fantastic given the population size, with a perpetually booming oil economy feeding an amazing level of disposable income in the general population – rig pigs like their toys. Not only that, but we are less than an hour away from the Rockies and a lot of beautiful motorcycling routes, and not that far away from British Colombia where you can find some of the best roads in North America. Unlike out East, sales of shitty cruisers don’t dominate the market and colour the entire industry with a faux-badass chrome and leather sheen. Here capital-A Adventure bikes are king, along with pure off road machines and a good smattering of tourers, standards and sport bikes. Metric cruisers are sales floor deadweight. People out here appreciate bikes that are versatile and can go around corners, though there are plenty of dorky hipster gangs with unrideable choppers and café-poseurs to keep things balanced.



This should be an epicenter of Canadian motorcycling. But it isn't. And consequently the Calgary show sucks.


But I digress. My seasonal vitamin-D deficiency is manifesting itself in undue bitterness. You try being a passionate motorcyclist in a land where your riding season is six months long, on a good year, in a city where you've witnessed snowstorms in the middle of September.


I was curious to see some of the new offerings, though in general I've found this year to be quite disappointing in terms of new models. Conservatism seems to be rampant outside of a few high-profile aberrations that have (rightfully) grabbed the public's attention. This probably shouldn't come as a surprise – the fact that there are neat machines getting built at all should be the shocker. We are still in the midst of a slump and plummeting oil prices are screwing with the market, despite misplaced optimism that maybe the economy is really picking up (for real this time, honest, dear God please), and most of the models that are being released now had their design briefs finalized during the depths of the recession.


Star of the show was undoubtedly the Kawasaki H2R. This thing, despite all criticisms, is amazing - the best kind of batshit lunacy you can buy over the counter with a factory warranty. The mere fact that Kawi had the balls to build something so utterly, ridiculously over the top nearly makes up for the atrocious styling and handbag liner seat of the Z1000. We need more off-the-wall engineering exercises like the H2R to spur on an arms race in what has become a terribly boring industry that has been chasing points in worthless magazine shootouts for far too long. It doesn't matter that the H2R is ugly, exorbitantly expensive (55,000$ here in Canada), not street legal, or that the H2 street version is detuned and overweight to the point of being eclipsed by the latest batch of superbikes before it even left the factory. Kawasaki engineers have built something impressive, pointless, and excessive, a fantastic display of engineering prowess born from the mere act of leaving the bean counters out of the equation. The finish and quality of the prototype on display was superb and it is clearly ready for mass production.


Three H2Rs have already been sold in Canada, along with a handful of H2s. I wouldn't say it is better than an equivalently priced Bimota, but it's undeniably cool and the fact that the Japanese have built it marks, for me, a return to form. The Japanese are at their best when they are given the freedom to exercise their engineering prowess, not when they are busy chasing Joe Average’s bottom dollar by making budget knockoffs of more interesting machines. The former is what inspires action and pushes the industry forward, the latter is what gives accountants a hardon.


Yamaha brought along a lone YZF-R1M for the masses to drool over, and truth be told it is quite a nice looking machine. Quality appears to be higher than usual for a production Japanese machine, with glossy carbon-fibre, a brushed alloy fuel tank, sharp TFT dash, and tasty electronically adjustable Ohlins goodies on both ends. If anything the styling is dull, and it looks weird by lacking a "face" due to those minimal lights up front, but the specifications and technology on display more than makes up for it. It's a handsome machine when you see it in person. The only major gripe I can muster is the idiotic projector beams tacked under the nose like an afterthought. The LED running lights set into the nose look cool as balls, but those main beams look like streetfighter cast offs bought from the AutoZone discount bin. On the plus side they are easy to take off for trackdays, which is probably the whole point.


Whatever the specs, the new R1 will naturally deliver obscene levels of razor-sharp performance... Just like every single other superbike on the market. No matter what the those contrived magazine comparos would lead you to believe, every single one of these machines is ridiculously overpowered and has capabilities so far beyond your conception that calling one better than another and putting together absurd score cards based on press release drivel is some of the most pedantic bullshit you can engage in as a quote-unquote “journalist”. As far as I’m concerned, if you are a mortal human street rider your entire experience aboard one of these time-space disruptors should be reduced to shrieks of euphoric delight punctuated by moments of abject terror, with an overwhelming sense of relief at the end of a not-fatal ride. If you aren't gibbering like an idiot after twisting the throttle to the stop on a clear road, then you are have no soul. Only seasoned racers have any right to comment on the superhuman capabilities of these machines, which is why you should be reading the reviews in Road Racing World for accurate summaries of what is and is not good on these brutes. Otherwise ignore ALL of it and just buy whatever tickles your prostate and fits your budget.


There was a pleasant surprise found at the Yamaha booth, one that is likely going to get overlooked by everyone drooling over the R1: the FJ-09. Forget all the pretenses of it being an “adventure tourer” – it's not, and never will be. It's far too light, slim, nimble and handsome to fall into that category, and it comes with 17 inch wheels shod with honest-to-God street tires. Like the Kawasaki Versys, it's a neat little everyday middleweight that fills the gap left by the wholesale abandonment of the sport touring category. Unlike the Versys, it's good looking, has some really nice quality components, and uses the awesome little 847cc triple pulled straight out of the FZ-09 but with the shitty fuel injection and garbage suspension sorted out.


If the FJ-09 has any major flaw it is that it is innocuous to the point of being invisible – it turned out that we had two of these sitting in the showroom of the dealer where I work, and I hadn't noticed them for over a month. Oops. I hope that doesn't discourage buyers, because this is a sweet little machine that fills a niche that has long been neglected – a proper lightweight sport tourer with a fun motor and good handing that weighs under 500 lbs and isn't a BMW GS knockoff. It’s also 11 grand (CDN), which is probably the bargain of the year, though they will charge you a fair bit extra if you want the factory hard bags... Not that any company throws in free luggage on anything smaller than a Goldwing. If I was in the market for a touring bike of any description the FJ-09 would be first pick on my list.


Between the R1, the FJ-09, last year's appealing FZ-09, and the class-leading FZ-07, I think Yamaha is on a roll making good stuff for the common rider.

    
Continuing with the Japanese contingent: Honda had nothing notable on display. The most interesting thing they brought along was a clean, first generation GL1000, to give you an indication of how boring the lineup was this year. There was the updated VFR800, which looks more dated than the outgoing Interceptor despite being a fair bit lighter and more modern under the dull exterior. There was the goofy and expensive (12,499$, a mere 100$ less than a 2015 CBR600RR) NM4 Vultus, which is what happens when a company collectively forgets one their failures (DN-01) so hard that they repeat it verbatim a few years later.


Then there was the CBR300 and the latest versions of the 700 twins and… oh God I can't even muster the slightest bit of interest in any of these catastrophically tedious appliances.


Moving on.

Suzuki rounded things out by showing almost nothing new. The 2015 GSXR differs from the 2014 only in paint, they brought back the DRZ400SM virtually unchanged from when they discontinued it in 2008, along with the SV650S which is also unchanged - yes, American readers, they still sell the semi-faired SV up here right alongside the overcooked SFV. The company hasn't been doing so hot lately, what with their automotive arm imploding, so it's probably not a surprise to see they are rehashing the same ol' to save money. They did bring two of the new GSX-S750 models, which proved to be a handsome little standard and a welcome addition to a category that has been neglected for years in North America. Mercifully they didn't bring the budgie-faced GSX-S1000F, which has to be the most comically styled motorcycle I've seen since Buell went tits up.


Speaking of Buell, Erik Buell Racing was notably absent. Despite having Parts Unlimited as their, uh, parts distributor in the United States, there has been no word whatsoever about bringing EBR up into the frigid tundra, which would be presumably done through PU’s poor Northern brother Parts Canada. Motovan, a major rival to Parts Canada up here, acts as the distributor for MV Agusta so it would make sense for Parts Can to get into the game with EBR.


Or maybe it wouldn't. I don't care. I just really want them to be sold up here, and I really genuinely want them to see them succeed.


I've been quite impressed with what Erik Buell has accomplished in the years since Harley-Davidson shuttered his company. I had the opportunity to examine the new 1190RX and SX in detail while visiting the Barber Vintage Festival this past October, as well as attend a charity dinner that had Erik as the guest of honor. I had the chance to talk to Buell briefly. He is in a great position; Hero MotoCorp provides the funding and the stability, while his team in Wisconsin provides Hero with R&D. He was quite proud of his team's work for Hero, which has largely been ignored – EBR has built 13 concept vehicles for Hero since their partnership began, all of which have earned Hero quite a bit of acclaim. It might not go over so well in India if word was spread that the high-profile concepts of a local company were designed and built in America, a curious turn of circumstances in a world where Harley-Davidson is quietly putting together bikes in Bawal.


The RX and SX are nice looking motorcycles, and all signs point to them being a hoot to ride. Having had the opportunity to examine them next to the 1190RS, I can safely say that they share a lot more in common with that limited-production 46,495$ USD beast than even EBR has let on. The frame, subframe and swingarm are identical, the RX/SX have better looking bodywork, finish quality is equal (and quite good for a small startup), and power is up substantially while still meeting all the requisite emission and noise regulations. The only place the RX/SX lag the RS is in suspension components and their lack of carbon-fibre bodywork, which is acceptable considering they retail for less than half the price. Buell's trademark weirdness is still present with their fuel in frame chassis and perimeter brake, but aside from that the new frame and engine share nothing in common with the swansong 1125R– Harley still owns the rights to the Buell name and the 1125, so EBR set about reverse engineering the 1125 and making it better in every respect without infringing on HD's patents. The 1190 engine is made in-house by EBR and was heavily revised by their engineers compared to the Rotax-made 1125. The 1190 represents similar ideas to the 1125 but with different execution. I thought the 1125 was an awesome machine (marred only by some of the most godawful fuel injection subjected upon the buying public), so the thought of a highly polished successor with 40 more horsepower and far better styling is truly tantalizing to me. I want one, and I sincerely hope EBR does well, and is given a fair shake by our ever-skeptical market. They just need to get their act together and find a Canadian distributor.


Harley-Davidson was present, and laughably out of touch as would be expected. While the execrable "Urban. Authentic. Soul." Street 500/750s took centre stage alongside a couple of luridly awful custom jobs based upon them, two – count em'– TWOLivewire prototypes were relegated to a remote corner of the show.  They were setup in what looked more like a stand for a local bike club than a cost-no-object display of the forward-thinking engineering prowess of America’s  motorcycle kingpin. They proved to be an interesting distraction and the only electric machines present aside from some Oset kiddie trials bikes.

I apologize for not getting any decent shots of the Livewire. It was due to the huge crowd that was milling around the booth. The same could not be said about the Hipsterbait 500/750 display. Are you taking notes, Harley?

I poked through a tablet setup in the booth with a digital contest entry form… To win a Street model, and sign up for updates on the Street series. Sigh. They could not have missed the mark more if they tried, but this wasn't a surprise. Despite a throng of curious onlookers crowding the Livewire display, where they were letting people run up the bike on a set of rollers to get a feel for how the electric motor behaved, Harley is horny to push to their entry-level Street onto young, beginning riders who they are desperate to lure into their fold. The terrible custom jobs on display at centre stage were clearly aimed at budding chop and hack artists (and appeared to be put together by them as well).

Check out the Picasa album for more detail pictures from the show.

A chipper 20-something salesperson misinterpreted my gaze of pained disgust as a sign of interest and tried to corner me to tell me all about this cool new Street model and how these custom bikes were built by… Before he shut up and moved on to other targets when he realized I didn't remotely give a shit. The demographics are getting older and Harley is looking to seduce the youth with what looks like their budget interpretation of a Honda Shadow... Built in India (sorry, “Assembled in Kansas”) with component quality that would cost a Honda employee their head.      

Harley-Davidson's marketing strategy.

Meanwhile, the Europeans are busy doing their own thing. Ducati brought along several Scrambler models and a stage dedicated to them alone, replete with faux-woodsy motif and astroturf to complete the illusion of rugged individualism for the flannel-and-beard set. A single 1299 Panigale S (identical to the 1199 outside of the motor and some subtle chassis tweaks) was shunted into the opposite corner; long gone are the days when Ducati used their magnificent sportbikes as flagship models, apparently. There were more Diavels present than anything else, a sure sign of the apocalypse if you are a die-hard Ducatisti. I walked away from the stand with zero desire to own another Duc, a sentiment I've felt for a few years now – the 1098R or 1198SP would be the latest Ducs I'd consider owning, everything that has followed those brutes has left me cold. That's why when it came to adding another bike to my stable, I bought a used Aprilia Tuono to supplement my 916.


The Scrambler is clearly Ducati's new golden boy, and at a glance you'd be forgiven for thinking they've thrown all their eggs into that particular basket. The hype and marketing has been ridiculous, in scope and in content. In terms of the bike, it is clearly a tarted-up replacement for the discontinued Monster 696/796, a fact that most reviewers appear to have overlooked – it is thus the last Ducati to use the evergreen air-cooled 2-valve Pantah engine, which has been steadily phased out of the company's lineup due to increasingly tight emissions regulations. The fact the Scrambler uses the 2V engine came as a bit of a shock to us pundits who been anticipating this model for several years – we expected them to dump the Pantah architecture after the Monster series took on the liquid-cooled Testastrettas across the board. Whatever the grim realities of emissions laws, it serves for a cheap platform to slot into a new model, and it suits the target market – the 803cc is a good “little” motor and has a nice friendly powerband, and is stone-axe reliable and well developed as far as Ducati engines go. Also, the tooling was paid off sometime 30 years ago so Ducati should make a tidy profit on the Scrambler despite it being a brand new entry-level model.


The Scramblers are cheap, and they will sell a ton of them. They have them aimed squarely at the Triumph Bonneville/Scrambler/Thruxton, Hipsterbait Street, and Moto Guzzi V7 in terms of price and image – and in this crowd they likely won’t have much trouble kicking ass. The initial reviews have been incredibly vague, apparently pawned off onto the newbie journalists (because it's an entry level bike?) who have been so wishy-washy in their impressions they might as well be reviewing a Toyota Camry from the backseat. That being said they appear well put together and are more than likely fun to ride - they won't have much trouble burying their asthmatic competitors. Styling wise I’d call them a miss, though plenty of people seem to like them. To me they look like cartoony, toy-like facsimiles of the original bevel-head Scramblers.


I had the opportunity to sit down with Pierre Terblanche while visiting the Confederate factory last year and spent a while talking bikes, in particular about his work on the SportClassics and the design of the new Scrambler. He dug around on his computer and pulled up a photograph of a studio mockup he had made around the mid-2000s. It was clearly a “Scrambler”, but one that was far more handsome and mature than the Fisher-Price caricature that Ducati has seen fit to release. To get an idea of what he showed me, picture a Sport 1000 with taller suspension, high bars, repro Scrambler tank, and knobby tires. It was a relatively simple series of changes that would have been easy to put into production, and it looked good. It would have fit right into the whole street scrambler fad... And he had it ready to go 10 years ago. But of course at the time the SportClassics were completely under-appreciated and came out too far ahead of the explosion of the neoclassical retro motorcycle craze; with sales of the SC in the toilet Ducati took the short-sighted path and made the knee-jerk reaction of choosing to abandon the lineup instead of developing it and amortizing the costs to remain competitive. Terblanche wouldn't say “I told you so”, so I’ll say it for him: I’ll bet the management at Ducati was mighty embarrassed when they realized what they had fucked up after they unceremoniously dumped the whole SportClassic line.


I'll also say that I was once a Terblanche-hater, but time has proven him to have remarkable foresight and his designs look better today than they ever did when they were current – nevermind that he had several popular designs under his belt that his critics are frighteningly quick to forget about, including the 888, the Supermono and the Hypermotard. After having had the chance to hang out with him and talk shop and design, I’m happy to admit I was wrong and I have earned a new found appreciation for his work. How he will fare now that he is moving to Royal Enfield remains a mystery to me; there are only so many ways you can restyle a Bullet, so I hope for Pierre’s sake they are working on something new and modern upon which he can really flex his abilities.


Over at MV Agusta the latest models were present, though the long-announced (but not terribly anticipated) Turismo Veloce was AWOL. Continuing their milking of the tre-pistone architecture appeared to be the order of the day. The Brutale and Dragster RR were hogging the limelight, with flashy paint and impressive tubeless spoke rims on the Dragster - which look far better in red/black than the red/white/black. The white rimmed machine looks like the motorcycle equivalent of a pair of white Nike pumps and a sideways baseball cap. The Stradale was also on display, which has got to be one of the least anticipated successes of the past year. Somehow taking the Rivale, which was noted to be the least suitable MV for riding further than the nearest Starbucks, and slapping on some tiny bags, an ugly windshield, and a bigger fuel tank transformed it into the most streetable MV in the lineup. It's a sport tourer that should not work, but somehow does and it has been defying all expectations. It also looks like a mess, like someone vomited the contents of the Vespa accessory catalogue onto a Rivale.


The unfortunate side of this multiplication of the lineup (in the three-cylinder line alone there are six distinct models) are some signs of cost-cutting, stuff that has traditionally been beneath MV who have always been notable for their superb build quality. The triples are inexpensive as far as MVs go and they have begun to suffer when compared to the F4, which was always a benchmark in terms of component quality and tidy finishing. Cheap castings, exposed wiring and connectors, and bits made of zinc-plated pot metal are starting to pop up on the newest bikes. Not a good sign, but one that is unfortunately understandable considering they are slapping these out for thousands less and in far greater quantities than anything in the F4/Brutale 4 lines.


On the plus side, word on the street is that MV’s fuel mapping and electronics packages have been refined a lot since their introduction - meaningful progress, because according to some reliable sources they were virtually unrideable in their initial setups. Not that that is unique to MV in our ride-by-wire age – the first maps on the FZ-09 had awful throttle response, though most reviewers were happy to downplay the problem in favour of parroting the launch hype. Take note of how many reviews of the FJ-09 mention how improved the fueling is compared to the FZ.

Note the cheap zinc-plated pieces bolted on the centre of the bar clamp.

Quality gripes aside, these MVs are still exceptionally pretty motorcycles (except for the Stradale) and I still want one (but not a Stradale), all flaws be goddamned. The F3 and F4 remain benchmarks of how a sportbike should look, and will endure for a long time as mouth-watering examples of why Massimo Tamburini was one of the finest motorcycle designers of our generation.        


Nothing notable was new from Moto Guzzi aside from some new colour schemes, as you'd expect from Piaggio's perennially neglected brand. At the other end of the spectrum the new Aprilia RSV4 and Tuono 1100 were absent. The only bikes on display were 2014 models from dealer stock. The Piaggio group always has a magical way of making great motorcycles look exceptionally dull and under appreciated by way of their special blend of neglect and a complete lack of effective marketing... Especially here in Canada, where Aprilias and Guzzis seem to be slightly less common than Vincents.


Over at BMW, the boys from Bavaria were showcasing their newly revamped boxer line which included the new R1200R and R1200RS. These, in my mind, represent a move in the wrong direction for one reason alone: they dump the Telelever front suspension in favour of cheap, non-adjustable telescopic forks. I don’t care if they are excellent bikes, and have superb handling in spite of this; I don’t even care if the upside down forks they share with the R Nine T perform better than the outgoing Telelever setup. I’m sure they are great bikes and will work perfectly well. However, to me, a deranged blogger who values oddities and unique features in a sea of conservative design, BMW’s move away from their signature funny front ends represents an abandonment of the admirable cost-no-object risk taking they exhibited when they adopted those weird-ass suspensions in the first place. It is also, in my mind, a clear case of tightwad cost cutting.


The new S1000RR was nice but not particularly noteworthy outside of the usual class-chasing tweaks to put them back at the top of the spec sheet wars. The only comment I can really muster is it looks slightly less ugly with its softened face, which has abandoned its Cubist interpretation of a headlight. The updates will surely please the chicken-strip and carbon-fibre set who seem to gravitate towards them.


A pleasant surprise at the KTM booth was the inclusion of the Duke 390 and RC390. They represent a smart move towards genuinely good entry level machines that will appeal to new riders without the stigma surrounding the shitty entry-level crap that has been pawned off on North American riders for years. Sure, we haven't appreciated anything under 600ccs and our open licensing system has kept sales of sensible machines in the low-to-nonexistent range, but continuing to offer nothing better than unsexy antiquated crap like the Ninja 250-300-400 hasn't helped matters. One of my first bikes was a Japanese import Honda NC24 VFR400R, which proved to be about the most fun you could have with less than 100 hp and a fantastic introduction to sport riding with something that was cool, desirable, and not dumbed down in any way. I was totally sold on the value of high-quality small sportbikes and I've since been disappointed by how this category has been completely ignored outside of the Japanese home market.


That being said I'm not delusional - those JDM 400s and 250s would ever achieve any success beyond a cult following here because they are too small, too expensive, and will never appeal to the bigger-is-better and fastest-is-best crowd.


The 390s represent something quite special, a tentative first step towards bringing that kind of small-bore fun to the Americas – and unlike the JDM imports, they have an extremely accessible price tag while still looking like proper machines. However, the efforts to get the price down are clear at a glance – quality appears to be middling. They still look better than anything in the category right now; the Yamaha R3 was also present and looked half-decent with perhaps slightly better build quality (reviews are still pending), but they didn't exude quite the same cool factor as the 390s. And that's where KTM has a potential winner on their hands: the 390s are cool and people want them.


KTM has been on a roll lately, and had their latest 1190 and 1290 Adventures on hand (but not the Euro Regulation Special 1050). The 1290R Superduke was also present, and has been making everyone go weak-knee'd for several months. We've had a few pass through the shop already and they are truly an exceptional machine - one of the finest, maddest streetfighters of all time and a fantastic throwdown that KTM's competition had better heed. It looks amazing and the motor is apparently one of the greatest motorcycle engines of all time: owners report that it if treated gently it is docile and smooth, and easy to ride in traffic, but one stiff twist of the wrist and it will rip your goddamned face off and make you thankful for the comprehensive traction control package. 100 mph power wheelies are available. This thing is ridiculous in the best possible way. It also sounds apocalyptic with a decent pipe - the hot ticket is an Austin Racing slip-on (be sure ride it at least once without the baffle).

You've already seen plenty of pictures of the 1290R. I also may have forgotten to snap any shots of it. So here's more of the 390s!

The original Aprilia Tuono showed the way to achieve motorcycling nirvana – take a sportbike, remove the fairings, put high bars, then leave the rest the hell alone. No detuning, no dumbing down, no diluting the experience. The Superduke takes this to the next level by building a vicious naked sportbike from the ground up – it isn't based on anything pre-existing and it sure as hell hasn't been softened up because it lacks clip-ons and a fairing. It’s everything we lunatic sport riders have ever wanted, while still being entirely usable every day, and I sincerely hope it inspires other brands to follow suit. The current competition got caught with their pants down, and now they are going to have to work hard to reach the new high water mark. Yes, the retail price is high (18,999$ up here), but damned if it isn't worth it in this case.


It’s funny that the Superduke has gotten so much good press and rabid attention, because Ducati had the same kind of machine in showrooms not that long ago – the Streetfighter 1098 was a ridiculously fast, vicious, no-compromise naked sport bike that everyone claimed they wanted but nobody actually bought once they released it (see also: SportClassic). Unlike the KTM it lacked civility in daily use, which ended up being the major gripe against it, along with a high price tag. Despite giving the people what they wanted, reviews were whiny and gave the SF1098 middling marks, often making the unfair comparison between the SF and the full-fat 1198 and then concluding that the 1198 was a better sportbike (...duh?). Sales suffered for a while before Ducati finally gave up, dropping the SF1098 while leaving the far duller SF848 in production. Then, shortly after it was axed, the SF1098 earned a dedicated cult following and secondary market pricing has remained very high (see also: SportClassic).

Somehow the equally (perhaps more) nuts Aprilia Tuono V4 ended up becoming a darling of reviewers despite being worse as a daily rider than the Streetfighter - the thousands-less price tag probably contributed to it becoming the poster boy for the category while the Duc got damned with faint praise. Ducati gave up and went on to build the fat and fluffy Monster 821/1200. Rumours are circulating that they might, maybe, should build a naked Panigale, but given how they got burned on the Streetfighter I'd currently give those rumours as much credence as the imminent return of the Supermono... Unless they take a look at the Superduke and decide they want a piece of that sexy, sexy pie rather than shitting out another Diavel variant.

So long as the Superduke avoids the fate of the Streetfighter, it might be just what we need to wake up the naked sportbike market and inspire a new generation of bonkers, undiluted streetfighters. I for one welcome our new brutal overlords.


Of course you already knew that, because the Superduke has been getting praised and hyped ad-nauseum via every possible venue. I hate to propagate the myth, but damned if I don't want to get a ride on one. It won't happen though, because up here the 1290R is being treated like an exotic, unobtainable superstar. Nobody is getting seat time unless they have cash in hand or are a quote-unquote “real” journalist.

So, overall impressions for this year are that most companies appear to be erring on the cautious side. Outside of a few exceptional diversions most everything is terribly boring and barely noteworthy, much every year since the economy took a dump in 2008. We are barely out of the depths of the recession and it has really taken its toll on the market - when companies like Ducati and Harley are pushing their budget, entry-level models to the point of overshadowing their flagships, you know priorities are getting skewed in the wrong direction. Blindly chasing the consumer’s bottom dollar is never a good sign, particularly if you desperately want to see some innovation. There are, however, a few bright points - Yamaha is making good, appealing, accessible stuff, Kawasaki is making the bonkers H2 series, KTM is kicking ass and taking names at the top while also bringing in some sexy entry level machinery at the bottom, while south of the border EBR is showing that the folks in Wisconsin can build some world class sportbikes. Let's hope these stellar examples inspire some more innovation and competition: the rest of the industry should be taking note of what KTM, EBR, Yamaha, and Kawasaki are doing and ignoring the bullshit from everyone else.

Complete Picasa photo album

         

Just a few more months. Everything you are doing is towards this goal. You need this trip. You need this escape.

Don't jeopardize it now.

I've been repeating this mantra in my head endlessly over the past several months, a process of self-medication to try and ease my tortured mind. It's a small but crucial balm to soothe my stress and bring my life back into focus.

Forget the drudgery of the day and the cruelty of working mindlessly, endlessly. The goal is on the horizon. Soon you can escape, however briefly.





It's small comfort. I've been working retail for 12 years and I will forever hate it. Unless you've done it yourself, you can't fathom how destructive it is to your psyche. After a while you will only see the worst side of the people you serve. Your customers begin to blur into a series of unpleasant stereotypes who seem to haunt your workplace with the sole purpose of making your day worse. Every day is a struggle to suppress your desire to lash out against the rude, self-entitled attitudes you are forced to suffer through fake smiles and forced pleasantries.

Over the years I've tried to maintain my belief that people are inherently good and kind and interesting, but working in retail service for several years is a quick way to dispel those notions. There are, of course, many good and friendly folks who will approach your counter but, in life as on internet comment threads, it's the assholes who you will remember first. And just like on the internet, when you get to the point where the only people you can recall are those assholes then it is time to step away and take the time to refresh yourself with an excursion into the wilds of reality as far away from your desk as possible.  

After a while your only remaining power is your apparent freedom to quit, but that is a false sense of control because you struggle to make ends meet and missing even a single day of wages will set you back so much you can't even take a sick day. The economy is shit and has been since you left school. You remember being unemployed for six months living on borrowed money. You don't dare tempt fate.


I've long struggled with my position in the world. It's a never-ending oscillation between self-pity and self-loathing punctuated by moments of unrelenting optimism. The sort of manic mental state most people aren't interested in dealing with, one I keep hidden behind my easy smile and my calm demeanor. Sympathy is hard to come by. After a while you stop looking for it and learn to deal with your own demons. Everyone has their own shit and there's always some self-righteous twit out there who will point out that you have it so much better than most people in the world because you aren't dead.

My demons are numerous and always amplified by long bouts at a desk, where my endless, manic thought processes run amok and blow minor situations out of proportion in my head. Forcing an introvert to deal with far too many people on daily basis is asking for problems. The duality of my personality has become more and more exaggerated as I get older, my facade cracking more and more easily. I try to keep my perspective in check and avoid the endless, toxic analysis of the world that accompanies my low points. Focus on the positives and push the days of depression to the wayside. Try to keep the nihilism and destructive tendencies at bay. But it gets harder as you get older and begin to feel trapped, a prisoner of circumstance and a hyperactive mind. Being trapped in a dead end job doesn't help.  

But you aren't here to read about my personality disorders. You are here to read about motorcycles. And I'm here to write about them.


To wit: the only escape from my demons, the only thing that can consistently make me happy, is my motorcycle. It sits in the parking lot, awaiting my return, welcoming me back to a better reality when I pass through the doors on my way home. The sound, the vibration, and the sheer violence of the performance brings my dulled senses back into sharp focus. There's a reason I've gravitated towards vicious, uncompromising machines, even for daily commuting - nothing else makes me feel alive like riding a wild animal to and from work, and nothing short of a skittish sport machine can satisfy my lust for sensory overload after 9 hours of selling oil filters.

I tell people the only thing that makes me happy is riding motorcycles. And I mean it. It's the one thing I'm unwilling to give up on for love or money.

I let the Ducati languish for the better part of the previous season, mainly because it was such a chore to get it running on a cold morning and riding a 916 through city traffic is a form of cruel physical and psychological torture I preferred not to subject myself to. If you want to truly devastate your worst enemy, give him the keys to an iconic superbike and force him to ride through 50 km/h zones littered with speed cameras, all while dodging dopey motorists at 8.30 in the morning.

Then I discovered a sump full of fine metallic glitter and I knew the engine's days were numbered, so I nursed it through to the end of the season before retiring it to my living room to await an engine transplant sometime in the future. I had hoped it would be my mount for the second USA Tour, but fate, mileage, and mechanical fatigue ended up conspiring against that idea. Not to mention my back and neck aren't holding up like they used to as I approach 30.


The Tuono came into my life through a happy bit of circumstance, another case of rescuing an underappreciated Italian sport bike from the hands of apathetic caretakers. Fortunately I found myself with a bike that was reliable and virtually maintenance free (at least compared to what I'm used to) while retaining a wonderful degree of charisma… Which is a curse on some days. Unintended powerslides through city traffic are a quick way to tempt fate. Every time I have a squirrelly moment saved only by my sloth-like reflexes - sometimes the best reaction is no reaction at all - I imagine a hooded figure in a darkened room adding a tally to a parchment scroll until some arbitrary total is reached, at which point I'll get spanked into the pavement.

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Regardless of its apparent propensity towards killing its operator, the Tuono makes a pretty decent touring mount. Aside from a hard seat, it's quite comfortable and can be ridden it all day, provided you don't get driven insane by suffering the lean surge in the lower midrange while trying to abide by posted limits.

That, unfortunately, makes for a rather more boring travel experience. The spectre of mechanical doom was part of what made the first USA Tour such a hoot, and every destination along the way a triumphant conquest against the odds - a point made quite tangible when the ECU in my 916 shit the bed immediately after I arrived home. People remember when you show up on an inappropriate machine that should never be ridden too great a distance from a fully stocked tool chest. They won't if you show up on a Goldwing or an R1200GS. While the Tuono isn't exactly an Adventure Tourer™, it's also not a torturous choice for a long-distance mount.


My masochistic side tells me that I'm cheating, that this will be too easy. I'm too well equipped and the bike is too appropriate for the mission.

Maybe I shouldn't jinx myself.

Given that I've spent most of my years riding along the East coast it only made sense that I should start planning a run along the West. I'd never driven past the Great Lakes before I made the decision to abandon my increasingly jaded life in Montreal and drive out here on a whim. I've never been to California, and I've only made limited excursions into the Rockies since I moved to Calgary. Utah isn't that far from Alberta so visiting Bonneville, a place for which I have nurtured a sense of curiosity for its apparently intense grip on those who worship at the altar of speed, seemed like a good enough excuse to saddle up and ride for a couple of weeks.


God knows I need a proper vacation. My move across the country and its associated costs had left me completely broke for the better part of 2014. I took the funds I received in advance for a four month sublet on my Montreal lease and used it to pay for my expenses; for four months I had to pay rent twice, on apartments in the third and fourth most expensive cities in Canada, keeping ahead of my creditors with borrowed funds and putting in too many hours of unpaid overtime.

So after suffering through a year without a decent motorcycle trip, I needed to reset and renew. Maybe ponder my most recent hackneyed existential crisis in a new and exciting landscape. Meeting some like-minded enthusiasts on the road would be just the sort of therapy I could use to renew my faith in humanity after so many months of putting up with uppity customers.

I needed another aimless journey into the unknown, setting my sights at the horizon and taking off on a long adventure on unfamiliar routes. So I started planning the second USA Tour in the vein of the first, a long trip aboard an uncompromising Italian sport bike with a few key stops along the way to gather research and photographs for future articles. Given that OddBike has grown considerably since the first Tour in 2013 there would be more opportunities to meet followers and fans along the way, and as soon as I announced the trip I received numerous offers for places to stay along the way from generous fans. Too many to accept, in fact. That was in addition to the numerous people who contributed to the Indiegogo campaign to help fund the trip, and the endless stream of kind words and suggestions sent to my inbox.


I've always wanted to ride the Pacific Coast Highway, ever since my father had planted the idea in my head many years ago. I wanted to camp among the Redwoods. I wanted to run up the Mulholland Highway. I wanted to sleep in Death Valley. I wanted to ride the lonely desert highways and tight canyon roads I'd only read about in magazines - and see if the SoCal-centric legends lived up to the hype. This time around, I'd make a point to take advantage of the side roads and scenic routes that I'd neglected to do during the first USA Tour when I took the easy way out and spent most of my time on dull Interstates. It would be a challenge given I had a mere two weeks to cover at least 7000 kms, and I wanted to spend most of that time on twisty secondary roads with stops in small towns and out-of-the-way museums.

Then came the news, just prior to my departure, that the Bonneville Motorcycle Speed Week had been cancelled due to poor salt conditions. The whole climax of my trip was a bust before I even left.

It suddenly seemed that the second OddBike USA Tour was going to be about the people more than anything else.

My journey begins as they often do, early on a cold, grey morning punctuated by the gut-twisting anxiety I often struggle with whenever I'm about to embark into the unknown. Or pretty much every time I get up before sunrise and try to force a meal down when my bowels are going haywire from being awoken at such an ungodly hour. My best laid plans of departing just as the sun cracks over the horizon are usually derailed by a few visits to the bathroom before I even get my gear on, and suddenly my eager 6 AM departure becomes a leisurely roll out sometime around 8. So it was this morning, as per my usual, that I hobbled down to the parking garage with an armload of 30 pounds of luggage well after my intended start time while I silently cursed my overactive gut.





My anxiety before a ride has eased in recent years. But there is still some primal fear tempered with anticipation that gets stirred up in the pit of my stomach before I saddle up on a big ride. Not so much when I'm commuting to work, but even after 12 years I still get nauseous on some days and need to take my time to let the jitters subside.

I still have a healthy amount of respect for my bikes and their ability to make me overreach my average abilities in a real hurry, and I nurture a healthy degree of unease before a journey like this one, or anytime I borrow an unfamiliar machine for a ride. I'm not one of those unhinged riders who can jump on anything and proceed to ride it like a gibbering maniac right out of the parking lot. I take my time to ease into the ride and learn the characteristics of a bike before I go and flog it - lest it surprise me in some unpleasant, expensive, or painful way.


In spite of the initial anxiety, I'm never more relaxed or more aware than when I'm aboard a bike. I never have and never will get that sensation in a car, where I'm more often barely abiding by the basic principles required to motor from A to B without hitting anything along the way.

Once I'm underway I'm in my element, calm and focussed and smooth. That is why I ride, and why I continue to despise driving cars. If I didn't need one in this damned suburban sprawl they call a city I'd happily give it up and use my car payment to fund more fulfilling pursuits - but you can't reasonably commute on a motorcycle for the five or six months of the year when there is snow, ice and slush on the road. Though some still do. They are the same sort of folks who dive into frozen lakes without immediately dying of hypothermia, who always seems to be fat old white men with lots of white facial hair - the sort of men who perform dumb, careless pursuits of endurance that are viewed with perturbed curiosity rather than admiration.


I strap down my gear, an Ogio soft bag setup I've grown fond of over the past year, and try to hang the saddlebags in such a way that they don't continue to melt above the classic twin howitzer exhausts, which have quickly demonstrated the complete uselessness of Ogio's so-called "heat shielding". If you are an Italophilic rider with no qualms about perceptions of Latin "character" (i.e. the looming spectre of imminent mechanical failure) the Aprilia Tuono might seem like a sensible choice for a sport touring mount. The high seat and wide bars make the ergonomics more akin to one of those curs'ed new Adventure Tourer™ barges than the RSV superbike it is based on. The gearing is tall and the motor is punchy and flexible pretty much everywhere above 4000 rpm. It seems somewhat natural to strap a ton of gear to the back before embarking on a long trek into the wild, if you can fit it onto there without cooking your luggage in the process.

There are some issues with that notion. For One, the Tuono is loonier than Idi Amin during a full moon. Any lapses in your judgement or motor control are going to be punished by a firm reminder that you are riding a full-fat sportbike that has most of the weight taken off the front, with hair-trigger steering and throttle response that demands your full attention at all times. Which brings us to strike Two, wherein it wheelies like a motherfucker even when you aren't trying and will paw the sky constantly in first if you were to, say, do something silly like strap a bunch of camping gear onto the passenger seat. Strike Three is the hard plank of a seat that will give you literal saddle sores if you dare ride it for more than a few hundred miles. I experimented with an Airhawk seat pad that was donated by some of my sympathetic coworkers but found it so aggravatingly squishy, obstructing the chassis feedback I usually glean through my butt cheeks, that I stuffed it into a side pocket of my saddlebag and vowed I'd only use it if it proved absolutely necessary.

My increasingly-tatty but well-proven triple-bag arrangement (which I've dubbed the Anti-ADV setup) is supplemented by a Kriega R30 backpack that was kindly donated to the cause by Michael Walshaw from Kriega USA. Given that the tailpack sits on the passenger seat and blocks me from wearing the backpack in the expected manner, I figured out a way to secure it around the tail bag with the aid of some bungee netting. I've become so fond of the R30 in daily use that I wasn't about to leave it behind, even if it made for some awkward luggage placement, particularly after Michael had explicitly supplied it to me for use on the trip.


The only reason I needed so much damned storage space was because I was carrying a full camping setup: tent, sleeping bag, bed roll, stove and fuel, and food, on top of a week's worth of clothes and all the usual ancillaries you'd lug along on a long trip. I had quite a few places lined up along the way where I'd be staying with OddBike followers but in between I'd be roughing it whenever I didn't feel the need for a comfortable bed, climate control, or a shower. If I hadn't felt the need to skimp on accommodations I'd have been quite happy to just load the tail bag or the Kriega with clothes and be done with it.

As it is on most days in Alberta, this morning was a cold one. Not the damp, gear-piercing chill you get in more humid areas; it's more of a crisp, dry cold that sneaks up on you. Your first few miles are in relative comfort, with the heat retained by your layers keeping your core comfortable as your extremities slowly freeze as per usual. Then, quite suddenly, the warmth is gone and the chill is everywhere, and you scrunch your shoulders up towards your helmet to try and keep the draft from slipping past your neck sock - incidentally, I've never understood why someone would design an otherwise rugged and warm touring jacket while leaving the collar a low, open void that forces you to wear a vest or a separate neck warmer. Pretty soon your back is aching from the tension you are unconsciously applying while your body temperature drops, and an hour into your ride you are ready to stop for a hot cup of something and a cigarette.

We Canadians know that cold comes in many forms and produces distinct effects on our bodies. -30C in one place is not the same as -30C in another - humidity and wind makes a tremendous difference - and we can tell the difference. After the mercury clears +30C we are lost though, a sweaty, sticky mess that can barely conceive of how anyone would dare have the hubris to thumb their noses toward a vengeful God that clearly didn't intend for hot-blooded creatures to live in that particular region.

I suppose that's what it would feel like for a southerner to visit the Great White North (or the American Midwest) anytime there is snow on the ground.

The good news is that my heated grips are keeping my digits flexible and it's always warmer on the British Columbia side of the border. My intended target for the day is well into Canada's California so a few hours of miserable cold aren't going to phase me. Better things and nicer places are somewhere out on the other side of the horizon.

A damned good thing too, because the drudgery of work was really starting to get to me, as you might have gathered from my introductory post. It's not that my job is particularly awful, or my bosses particularly cruel. I eke out a decent living, enough to make ends meet in an expensive city, and I work with a group of passionate and friendly coworkers who have kept me going in spite of all my desire to say "fuck this" and face the unknowns of the job market once again. I just continue to struggle with my position in the world and want something more meaningful to result from my labour. Being treated like I'm just another teenaged parts counter dolt who wouldn't know their asshole from a drain plug doesn't help.

It's not something I enjoy. Not only because facing my insignificance and a lifetime of menial labour makes me feel incredibly worthless, but also because nobody wants to hear it. You don't dare bring up your sense of ennui without inciting accusations of being a whiny millennial brat who thinks he/she is a special snowflake deserving of recognition without merit. Just like the several billion other special snowflakes in the world.


OddBike is where I fulfill myself and, if the servers don't implode, it is my legacy. My thinking and my writing are the only meaningful contributions I can make to a complex society. I'm not out saving lives or climbing mountains, nor do I have any desire to do so. I'm too ambitious to scrub toilets, but too lazy to seek something better. Wait, I meant "too cynical to think I can change the world". Yeah, that's it - I'm too jaded to think I could make a difference. It's not because I'd rather be sleeping until noon and spending my days hunting good corners on secondary routes before retiring to write hyperbolic prose late into the night, fuelled by the ride's lingering adrenaline and my caffeine addiction. Nope.

Most of the "ambitious" people I've encountered are so thoroughly engrossed by their pursuits that it is detrimental to the rest of their lives, unless they are one of those impossibly talented people who somehow find the time to manage a high-stress career while maintaining a slew of complex hobbies, all while raising a family. Meanwhile wage-slave mortals like myself struggle to make the time to read a book. Sometimes I suspect those people are either secret amphetamine fiends or have had a part of their brain lobotomized so they no longer require sleep.

I don't desire success or wealth. I desire simplicity and freedom, which allows me the ability to think clearly without complicating my life. In my case that would mean eliminating my debts and having more time to travel and write, making enough money to pay my bills and have enough left over to keep the bike gassed up. Simple though that desire may seem, it seems to be persistently just beyond my reach, a dream that is tantalizingly close but always floating just beyond my fingertips.


Hoho, this ride is really clearing my mind. The fog brought on by months of tedious tasks, undue stress, and uppity customers begins to fade, a sudden clarity of thought coming to me as I head down the Highway 93 into southern BC. We are off to a good start; I'm finally able to think after months of conditioning against it. I've neglected my duty to write and update the site regularly since moving to Calgary mainly because I'm so damned brain dead after a shift that I can barely stay awake, let alone write something worth reading. As I roll along, wind and bugs blasting into my eyes through my perpetually opened visor, I'm feeling renewed. My mind shifts to its rapid pace, an endless flurry of disparate thoughts brought on by a manic upswing, a welcome contrast to the dull throb of hazy recollection I usually suffer during my low periods. I suddenly realize I've got two weeks to myself to explore unfamiliar routes and enjoy the ride, something I haven't done in two long years, and my mind is finally clear enough to appreciate the journey. I'm genuinely happy for the first time in a long while.

British Columbia never fails to impress me, a land where man and our machinations appear insignificant against a backdrop of pristine natural beauty. The roads here are better than anything on offer in Alberta, but still a far cry from what I would call amazing motorcycle roads. A sacrilegious statement to make if you believe the hype about BC's motorcycle routes, but truth is if you are aboard anything more aggressive than a bagger you won't be challenged much. The surroundings are spectacular, but few roads are technical enough to be challenging at anything less than stupid speeds - which are exponentially more stupid when the sheer dropoffs and dense tree lines bordering the road are factored in. There are odd stretches that impress, but most routes are pretty tame. The notoriously strict provincial traffic laws and overzealous police are another reason to just sit back and take it easy, enjoying the view at a relaxed pace.


Dual sports and ADV machines are popular out here for those who wish to explore the endless gravel secondaries and logging roads that likely outnumber the paved highways, so if you are deluded enough to take your Adventure Tiger Strada GS into the wilderness you'll have a blast. Just watch for the wildlife, because out here you are no longer at the top of the food chain; I imagine middle-aged white men exhausted from trying to lift their 600 lb panzers out of a muddy rut would make easy pickings for a hungry grizzly. Maybe I'm just paranoid after being traumatized by Grizzly Man.

The Tuono is behaving well. I've done plenty of trial runs and have been commuting with it daily, so I've had time to iron out most of the bugs and dial everything in to my liking. Aside from one misadventure that involved a loose spark plug cap (and nursing it 100 miles home on one cylinder), some melted stator wires, and a ride that ended with a puking aftermarket fork seal, it has been perfectly reliable. Despite this it is curiously inconsistent in its running, never quite the same - never out enough to make you think something is wrong, just enough to feel slightly different from day to day. I haven't been able to determine why. I first suspected it was due to fuel quality but it can vary on the same tank of gas, sometimes running sharp as a razor in the morning then feeling a bit wooly in the afternoon, like a sock got sucked into the intake when you weren't paying attention. My best guess now is that it's just really sensitive to atmospheric conditions, or maybe one of the EFI loop sensors is feeding the computer vague info. Aside from that there has been an annoying top end clicking that has persisted since I bought it, with absolutely nothing out of the ordinary to explain what it could be, so I've learned to never ride it without my headphones lest my hyperactive imagination start amplifying the noise and concocting scenarios that involve the engine internals making a break for daylight.


Passing Creston on the way through the Kootenay Pass reveals that that recent news reports haven't been exaggerating the threat of forest fires in the region. The horizon is blanketed with grey smoke, hanging over the trees like a dense fog, and the faint smell of burnt wood begins to intensify into a standing-next-to-a-campfire odour. And I'm riding straight into it.

It's a not-so-subtle reminder that the landscape dominates out here. Our feeble attempts at meddling with the course of nature hasn't helped matters; the whole push to prevent and control forest fires of all types for decades has led to an overgrowth of underbrush that becomes a tinderbox anytime there is a dry spell. Without humans around trying to control the process, the cycle was self-regulating; smaller fires cleansed the region, kept growth in check, and most importantly kept larger, more catastrophic fires from forming. Years of trying to prevent every little brush blaze and suddenly the whole damned province is at risk of becoming a hellscape.


My destination for the day is Syringa Provincial Park, a small park located outside of Castelgar with camp sites along Upper Arrow Lake. I've never been here, nor was I able to find anyone who had visited the park, not an unusual situation given the sheer number of parks and campgrounds in the region. It was a destination chosen like most of my stopovers along the route - find a point approximately 400-500 miles from the previous one and see what's in the area for accommodations that doesn't look like a total shithole.


It turned out to be a pretty good choice, considering it was the result of a dart thrown at the map. A charming little road winds along the lakefront from Castlegar, ending at the entrance to the park. The park itself is modest but well kept, a series of campsites bordering a rocky beach offering beautiful vistas across the lake. If I had any criticisms, it's that it wasn't very tent-friendly - the camp is rather crowded with oversized RVs and the site surfaces are made of densely packed rock that is impossible to setup upon without bending several of my stakes. I appear to be the only person present using a traditional tent, if you don't count the multi-room setups adjoined to fifth wheels. I make do with the minimum, barely tacking into the ground, and pray the wind keeps down overnight lest the whole thing get blown into the bushes.


After setting up camp and preparing a canned meal, cursing myself for not stopping to grab beer along the way, I take a walk along the beach to escape the din of children running through the park and further clear my mind. Smoke hangs heavy over the lake, obscuring the opposite bank and filtering the sunlight to the point that it appears to be an hour or two later than it actually is. The silence of the scene is occasionally interrupted by water bombers flying overhead on their way to and from the nearby blaze.


These beaches are peculiar to the Pacific Northwest, rocky and strewn with well-weathered driftwood, the water still and barely lapping the shore in the evening calm. I try and find some suitable stones to skip across the still water, but the beach is made up of sharp and oddly shaped rocks that haven't yet been honed flat and smooth by years of erosion.


The water appears to be a deep emerald green, the colour altered by the diminished sunlight. I sit and watch a cormorant dive deep into the lake in pursuit of a meal. I am alone. I have time to sort out the flurry of ideas gathered during the day's ride as the light fades and the landscape takes on a beautifully eerie quality through the smoky haze. I fill my notebook with reflections as darkness falls, thoughts I intend to study and re-evaluate during the course of this trip.


I'm too lazy to be ambitious, but too ambitious to accept mediocrity. What can I do?

I can write.

I awake at dawn, the sunlight reduced to a dull grey glow filtered through the haze of smoke. It appears that the forest fire smoke has grown denser overnight, and a light coating of soot has formed on the tent and my bike by the time I emerge. I prepare a quick breakfast, my on-the-road staple of oatmeal and instant coffee, before I pack my things and prepare to hit the road - I have a lot of ground to cover today, as I'm aiming to be in the Seattle area by evening to meet with an OddBike follower who has offered me a place to stay.



I'm remarkably well rested considering I've spent the night sleeping on hard ground with just a one-inch Thermarest sleeping pad keeping the rocks out of my back. The little things are what make the difference when camping and the 100-ish bucks I spent on this pad turned out to be one of the best investments I've made in my camp gear. It had damned well better be, considering I paid about the same amount for the whole tent.

I've planned a route continuing along the Crowsnest Highway down to Osoyoos, where I'll head into Washington through one of the quieter border crossings. One thing I've learned in all my travels into the States is to find the smallest, most isolated community that straddles a border and aim to cross there; you can be guaranteed there won't be a lineup, and the agents are usually pretty relaxed. A painless crossing is always worth a detour.  

The smoke is definitely heavier today, and word around the campground was that the closest fires are along the border near Grand Forks. Visibility is decreasing as I continue my way southwest, and my gear is now permeated with the smell of burnt wood, my eyes burning slightly from riding through the haze. I worry that my route might be closed, but somehow I am able to skirt the evacuated regions while still being in the thick of it.

Grim reality makes a surprise appearance on the side of the road high in the Bonanza Pass. A log is burning in the ditch, the beginning of what could be a serious blaze in this tinder-dry wilderness. How it could have started is a mystery. A hot ember floating in from afar? A careless asshole tossing a cigarette butt out of their window? Arson?

My surprise gives way to panic. This is a desolate stretch of road, far from any civilization. There is no cell phone service here. Traffic has been sparse all morning. I've got nothing with me that could snuff it out, and it's already gotten pretty intense, with a three-foot log engulfed in flames. The only thing I can do is keep riding and stop at the next town to notify the fire department that shit is about to go down.


A few more miles down the pass and a pair of fire trucks pass me with lights lit, heading for the blaze. I'm relieved. Someone must have reported it just ahead of me, and none too soon. Disaster averted, though it's a small consolation considering the conflagration going on all around.    

My anti-ADV setup is fast getting on my nerves. Strapping a bunch of luggage to a bike is a quick way to ruin the delicate dynamics you've carefully honed over numerous rides and constant twiddling with the suspension adjusters. The handling goes to crap and the centre of gravity is altered enough to throw off your balance at low speeds. I don't think the ADV crowd realizes how much they are screwing up their bikes when they bolt a small child's weight of alloy and steel tchotchkes from Toura-Wunder-whatever onto their barges, leaving the boxes on while commuting to work in case the overwhelming urge to ride to Alaska strikes them during lunchtime. If your luggage and associated hardware weighs more than the stuff you are putting into it, and it spends more time on your bike completely empty than it does hauling essential gear, then you've got a problem. One shared with pickup truck owners who don't own a boat, a dirtbike, a quad, or a contracting business.

The smoke thickens and casts a brown filter over everything, reducing the sun to a dull moon-like orb of light in the sky. My visual perception adapts; I don't really notice the alteration of the colour palette until I take out my phone and see the blinding contrast of my screen standing out against the faded reality around me.


I ride through tiny historical towns lining the highway, rural communities clinging to life in a faltering resource economy. Garish, hokey signs and roadside attractions attempt to lure fleeting tourists like myself into stopping. Out here, among the mountains, there are no divided highways plowing through the landscape. These towns are in no danger of being bypassed by a freeway, not with this landscape surrounding them. Not until someone decides to blast a hole through a couple of mountain ranges.

As hoped I make a painless crossing into Washington and head south along Highway 97. Mountains quickly give way to flat range, desert-like scrub land dotted with ranches, casinos, and uninteresting towns.


My goal is to cross the Cascade Mountains along Route 2 to head to Lynnwood, my destination for the night. My choice of route is beginning to worry me. Aside from a few pleasant spots along the Columbia River and some fruit orchards lining the road, the ride is mostly straight lines and dull scenery. Arriving at the crossroads at Wenatchee has me particularly miffed. It's an industrial town with swirling, heavy traffic and poorly laid out freeways; I fear that I've made a mistake if this is my route west.

I am particularly irate after I come within a gnat's ass of running out of gas, pushing my reserve to the limit trying to find a fuel stop along the freeway - after some not-so-scenic detours off exits trying to find some small-town gas stop, I eventually give up and double back into Wenatchee, where I promptly get stuck in mid-afternoon traffic and have to drive several miles off the highway before I finally find a gas station. Sore, sweaty and frustrated by slow traffic and the complete idiocy of not having a goddamned gas station immediately off the highway in a major city centre, I have a moment of mild panic when I realize I came within a half-quart of running out of gas on a machine that gets around 20 miles to the gallon in city traffic. Too close. Let's not do that again.


Once free of the Wenatchee's ugly sprawl, the road narrows into a winding secondary route passing through several small towns before climbing high into the mountains. I needn't have worried. Civilization disappears and the road follows beautiful rocky riverbeds through dense forest. The smoke I've been enduring for two days clears and I find myself riding up a high mountain pass with a brilliant blue sky above, sparkling sunlight filtering through the tall trees. It's just as beautiful as the routes through the Rockies, albeit with the nicer pavement that many Americans take for granted - with few exceptions the roads south of the border are much cleaner and smoother than anything we suffer in the Great White North. The stress of my fuel hunt melts away and I revel in the stunning scenery that surrounds me. Once again I am at ease.


The ennui that continues to gnaw at my gut disturbs me. How do I address it? No one wants to deal with the sentiments of nihilism and depression that accompany my dread of my future. The world isn't what it once was. The economy has been steadily declining since I left university, and my arts degree has proved to be an expensive boondoggle. A bachelor's degree is a prerequisite for getting any position nowadays, something that is incredibly stupid considering that most of us won't work in anything related to what we studied - unless you have the determination, skills, and funding to complete a law, medicine, or engineering degree. And even then opportunities aren't as common as they once were. When everyone has a degree, and everyone is expected to have a degree, its value on the job market plummets. It's just a rubber stamp, a piece of paper that says I have the minimum required skills to work for you. It has become what a high school diploma once was.

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Wages are low, and are only getting (relatively) lower as inflation outpaces my generation's earning power. Jobs are disappearing and resource prices are dropping. I have no hope in hell of owning a property when a detached house starts at 300,000$ and I'm just making enough to pay my bills and my debts without putting anything aside for savings. Nevermind overpriced condos and their associated fees - my ex owned a condo in Montreal and her taxes and condo fees were in the five digit range some years. If my bank repeatedly refuses to consolidate my debts and keeps telling me I have too much debt and not enough income, then I have no hope of being able to stay on top of a mortgage on a property that costs tens times my annual salary (plus taxes, plus school fees, plus maintenance, plus utilities). People like me buying houses was part of what got us into the economic quagmire that was 2008.


Capitalism is broken, a knocking crank wobbling out of control as the years go on. Pretty soon the whole works is going to throw a rod and blast a hole in society. I have to chuckle when manufacturers wonder aloud why youth aren't buying vehicles like they used to, when we are lucky to clear 30,000$ a year in salary and a dull Honda Civic costs 2/3rds of that (plus registration, plus insurance, plus taxes, plus interest on loans).


Meanwhile us ordinary folks are doomed to be wage slaves with no hope of advancement. Merit is not part of the equation, and as you realize that your determination wanes and your frustration grows. Part of the reason I had to leave my post in the jewellery industry in Montreal was that I had a front row seat to the nepotism and old-boy networks that rule the world. The most disgusting example I saw (repeatedly) was rich old fucks getting priority treatment for their illnesses because of who they knew and who they played golf with, while the rest of us would languish on waiting lists for months or years.

I realized I had nowhere to go, and never would have anywhere to go, because I wasn't the right person's son and I didn't hang out with the right crowd on weekends. There is a ruling class in this world making the decisions and supporting their own interests, and the middle class is fast shrinking into subservience as those old white men consolidate their wealth and power at the top. The elites rule and perpetrate their own power, just like they always have.


There is a degree of truth to the myth of the millennial brat, espoused by the trope of the whiny limp-wristed hipster, but not to the degree that the ruling class would like you to believe. There are a lot of us out there struggling to eke out an honest living and make something of ourselves, desperately trying to ignore our inevitable fate of dying saddled with debt and dissatisfaction without having enjoyed any of the privileges accorded to our Baby Boomer predecessors. I won't own a home, I won't live a day free of debt, and I don't even expect I'll be able to retire before I drop dead.


Meanwhile society continues to dangle promises of happiness, fame, and hollow materialism in front of us, all within our reach if only if we would work just a little harder. You didn't achieve your dreams? Well you must not have tried hard enough, you ungrateful little shit. You should be thankful you have a job at all in this economy.        

I have no solution to this problem. No one does. I don't expect to achieve greatness, but I also don't see much hope for my future unless I score some unexpected windfall.

I arrive in Lynnwood in the evening and meet Neal, who has graciously offered me a place to stay for the night before I continue my journey south. I'm surprised to learn he is a fellow Tuono owner, possessing a Dream Blue second generation machine like my own. It makes for some interesting banter as we share experiences and discuss our respective modifications - though it means I can't regale him with tales of how utterly bonkers my bike is because he damn well knows already.


And bonkers it is, as this is the first time I've ridden the Tuono at sea level since I bought it. Even with weight of my luggage the performance is markedly improved, particularly at the top end. Riding at higher elevations gives your machine a breathless feel, where it runs out of steam when winding it on. Up to two-thirds or three-quarter throttle it feels normal, but roll it out to the stop and it bogs slightly without accelerating any more than at smaller openings, feeling particularly flat on the top end where the thinner air makes its presence known. There is no such problem here - twist the grip and the bike responds instantly with authoritative thrust, without feeling like you have a clogged air filter at WOT.

"Choosing" the Tuono - not that I had much of an option, given the 916 is in my living room with a buggered engine - for a long distance trip appears to have been a good move. Foibles aside it's a pretty capable machine and has worked flawlessly, and aside from a sore butt from the stiff seat I'm not suffering much. Even the wind blast is bearable; while ostensibly a naked bike, the headlight surround does a good enough job of deflecting the wind without causing buffeting, even into speeds that are best not discussed on the public record - at least if you are on the shorter side. I've heard tell that taller riders will suffer, and will benefit from one of the many ugly aftermarket windshields that are available.

Compared to what I've grown accustomed to over the past 9 years, the Tuono seems rather sensible. Turn key, go, arrive at destination several hours later. No drama, no hiccups, no painfully cramped muscles, no breakdowns, no heroic roadside fixes, no meeting sympathetic people coming to your aid. It's goddamned boring. I miss the 916 and the arm-flailing theatrics it provided on every ride. I miss the composed brutality of the thing. I quietly vow to get it fixed and back on the road as soon as I can, hopefully over the course of the long winter months that are fast approaching.

After introducing me to his wife and his two Newfoundlanders, the eldest of which is one of the largest dogs I've ever encountered, Neal treats me to a beer and a meal out before I head to bed. I'm aiming to get a good night's sleep before tomorrow's ride. Tomorrow I head for the Oregon Coast, but not before I visit one of the legends of my childhood.