Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1980's

people tend to contact US if they have omething to o[{er," said Schanz, "We u ually only buy compJete inventories of cia sic spares, though there' always exceptions. In 1979, w . gota whole ontainerof 1955-72 B and Triumph spare from Venezuela for example. They belonged to the. former importer down there, and 1 took four years of negotiations tp trike a deal. Manana!," aid chatli "On the other hand, I got a lelt from Goa a while back o[{ering stock of 1946-60 Torton and B A bits. The price was right, so I cabled the funds. Then it took two whole years simply to get clearance to ship lhe con ignment out of India," said hanz. "You wonder if it's all worth it, until you open the ontainer and find a brand new Sunbeam exhaust still in the original factory wrappings, as good as new, or a case of Lucas headlamps, or whatever." Schanz believes be's prelly weli cleaned out known inventorie of British spares in the U.S.A.-"Aren'l six good stocks left I could or would buy"-but feel Canada orrers fruitj ful rewards for prospecting. He r cently acquired Harry Firth's Matc~ less spares inventory from Toronto~ one of the largest AMC parts stoe outside of Britain, Also purchasea were the entire 1960-75 spares of tl\e former ortonlTriumph importe in Quebec, as well as a vast selection of post-war Royal Enfield parts (rom Shillingford's, lheone-time PhiJadelphia importer (or the marque. H ' now casting his net further afield,:.il recent buJk consignment of Worl4c War II and early post-war parts fo AMC and other military machinet recentJy arrived from ingapore, and Schanz is now buying up Triump and orton parts stocks in Britain as~ well. "I find in the United Kingdom may only get 300 part numbers or 0 in an inventory," said Schanz. "Bu lhere' u ually lots of depth-Ii ke 200' fuel tanks, or 600 mudguards." ,_ Often these were the hard-to-sel items when the bikes were new, b they are now in demand, thanks to the needs of restorers: thank heavens for non-computcrized "wonder-howmany-we-necd-of-th is" in venlOry control of the 1960s and before. Until recently, thi sort of part had been hard to move in the USA. "People with British bikes were more concerned with gelling them looking halfway decem and running properly than with originality," said Schanz. "Now they won't even buy Japanese light bulbs if the original ones are still available-even if iI's six times the price and lasts a quarter as long!" Frequently, though, supplies of a particular part just dry up, which is where the other, expanding side of Schanz's business comes in. "We're gelling increasingly involved in commissioning remanufactured parts," said Schanz, " simply because vital spares dried up for partic.ular machines that we held large stocks of other parts for. If people can't u their bikes because, say, there are 00.pistons or clutches available for thlt .., particular model, we would be I t with a lot of unsaJeable gear~~ parts. Once we identified certain k~ I items for which there's a constan need, we went into remanufacturing) in a big way." Hence the oversize Taiwanese pi~w tons for 650 Triumphs. "People don t really care where a part comes froW nowadays if they have no choice )~ the mauer," said Schanz, "provideA that it's priced right and does the jo~ properly. I'm sorry to say that, wilh the exception of Wassell, Quaife, MCA and a couple of smaller companies, British manufacturers have proved completelv nreliable, and I a. • o Iraeer 'You want it, we have it' By Alan Cathcart Photos by Bert Shepard &. Cathcart "Here, give me a hand to shift this," said Bob Schanz as he tugged at a packing case of Plus 60 Triumph 650 pistons with "Made in Taiwan" stamped on the side. We lugged it LO one side, exposing a slack of lillIe foot-square wooden crates . weathered by age an d lhe mOl ture of two score monsoons 26 I in the USA, near the banks of the OhIO Rlv.er In Cincinnati, and whatl was looking through was Simply the late t batch of treasure to be unearthed and saved (rom the scrap merchant's jaws by Bob Schanz and his company, prior to being sorted through, computer inventoried and included in the next edition of the Accessory Mart Vintage Catalogue. Schanz, a wiry, intense but likeable man in his mid-50s, has been involved with bikes, and especially British ones, all his life. Originally (rom Detroit, he worked in advertising before meeting up with Floyd Clymer, who was then about to launch Cycle magazine. Schanz became the magazine's first editor, but only lasted a couple of years. "Floyd was tough to work for, but I learned a lot about business from him," explains Schanz. In 1954, Schanz left the magazine and California, returning to Ohio to work for Kelley's in Dayton, one of the biggest Norton, Triumph and BMW dealers in North America at the time. One thing Schanz learned from Clymer was that you don't get rich working for someone else and accordingly he started his own dealership in 1962, just down the road from Dayton in Cincinnati, again concentrating on Briti hand European bikes. "I fil!:ured it made sense and more. Schanz levered one open, revealing its contents: a brand new cylinder head for an ex-army BSA M20, perfecdy preserved in its original packing grease. "How many more have you got here?" I asked, looking around at the stack of simil3.r crates. "About 30," replied Bob, twirling his handlebar moustache thoughtfully. "Then there's a whole lot of brand new B20 and M20 hubs and brakes as well that we haven't sorted through yet. All this stuff came from India, and the trouble is that the inventory list on parts we get from there usually has about as much resemblance to reality as A Lice in WonderLand. I hope we got our money's worth I" Where was I? In some Brit-bike spares shop in England, rooting through the latest pile of unsorted, unlisted and, frankly, often unusable and unsuitable obsolete bike parts? Given that I was certainly gelling a Cook's tour of what is undoubtedly the world's largest repository of spare parts for vintage and classic British bikes, you might expect so. But no, I was in a vast, well-ordered warehouse I;. I J I l ·,At '1. ~ t ,~ (r •• I J ~ ).. I i J) J •( t t to sell what I knew and liked," said Schanz. The company's name was Domiracer Inc., capitalizing on the newest Norton model, and an indication of Bob's love for competition bike. "Those were good times. We'd sell bikes all week, then go o[{ scrambling on lhe weekends. Didn't last, lhough," said Schanz. Indeed not, but as selling British bikes became less profitable in tbe wake of the Japanese invasion, Schanz noticed with some curiosity a commensurate increase io spare parts sales, as owner sought to keep their British bikes on the road and the first signs of the world-wide boom in classic bike enthusiasm appeared. He stopped selling new bikes altogether in 1976 to concentrate on spares, and Schanz has hardly had time to draw a breath since. Today his busines operates under two tides: Accessory Mart caters to retail customers and Domiracer caters to dealers. Both oUering virtually anything and everything for vintage and classic bikes of the 1930-70 period. "Norton spares are still our best sellers out of the more modern bikes, but the older BSA and Triumph stuff goes best," said Schanz. "BSA parts are particularly mobile-we can sell almost anything we can get hold of." How has Schanz amassed the vast collection of parts-current inventory value is over $8 million-currently held in the Cincinnati warehouse? "Well, for a start, I've never gone out hunting for parts. I've always found you don't find what you'rf; searching for if you do so. I only buy what I come across, but as we've become beller known not only in North America but also overseas, ,~, I ) ' \.J [). I # I l .... t •• h-Jlltlll' • 11 .) "r, ( ("J 11 J • I I H.I,

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