Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

Lots of people have the same kind of dream - they want to build their own motorcycle. A few dedicated, driven designers even actually do just that men like Andy Stevenson of ASP or Massimo Tamburini in the early days of Bimota. But mostly, what happens next is one of two options: either they produce this fantastic drawing of a spiffylooking hyperbike, get it published in a few magazines that are eager for something to brighten up their pages, maybe even actually construct a non-functioning "prototype" as a means of trying to drum up some cash - and then after a blizzard of media hype, the project falls flat on its face, and you never hear of it again. Option Two is not to bother about the motorcycle, but go straight for The Logo. Talk up your avant-garde world beater, drop broad hints to journalists about all the venture capital you've got lined up to put it into production - but just make sure you've got this sexylooking tank badge (a Red Indian connotation's a sure-fire seller: Indian, Apache, take your pick) that you can base a range of designer apparel around. Motorcycles? Who needs 'em? We've got the aftermarket sewn up tight, and there's this great line in thousand-dollar bowling jackets with The Logo on the back. By th e standards, Australia's Rod Hunwick and Paul Hallam have done it all backwards. They had this idea to build a benchmark range of V-twin four-strokes, and without telling anyone, they went ahead and did it. ow they can sell the T-shirts. But the Hunwick Hallam V-twin exists, it runs, and I was the first person outside the company to ride it. This is a dream that came true. So what? What's the big deal about another one-off, even small-volume special from a faraway land Down Under? Only that the HH is very definitely more than that. Does 141 bhp at 9500 rpm from the 10oo<:c XIR street bike get your attention? Or the most dramatic styling ever seen on a production street bike? Or a host of technical features which stamp this motorcycle as the next step forward in four-stroke engine technology after the Britten - like F-I car-type pneumatic valve operation, but with the gas chambers for this incorporated in the cylinder heads? And, unlike the Britten - that wonderful product of a single visionary' desire to find a better way - the various Hunwick Hallam models will go into production, at the rate of 500 projected bikes a year from a factory that already has Australian government funds committed to it. A l000cc Superbike, l100cc street rod and 1340cc power cruiser are all set to enter production for the 1998 model year. The Hunwick Hallam marque will be launched to the world at the end of March -.but thanks to partners Rod Hunwick and Paul Hallam, l had an exclusive foretaste of what you can all expect when I was asked to come and look at the project and even ride the prototype. In return, I was.asked not to write about it until closer to the launch date - a time that has now come. So here's the full inside story of one of the mo t exciting developments of the past decade in the world of motorcycling, a project made all the more exciting by the fact that it's reached its present stage of road-readiness without anyone finding out about it. But here you have the whole story before you. Now - wonder where that Australian rider factory can be..,? Rod Hunwick (left) was the man with the plan and money - while se"· taught engineer Paul Hallam designed the engine that would .power the all-naw li.,e of bikes. ROD HUNWICK: BIKE-BUILDING BUSINESSMAN It's pretty ironic that the bike which stands to take V-twin fOur-stroke design technology to the next level beyond the Britten should itself have a Kiwi connection: Rod Hunwick, the man who initiated the Hunwick Hallam project and is charged with making it commercially viable, is in fact a ew Zealander. Born in Hamilton 39 years ago, Hunwick built up his own bike business in New Zealand before moving to Australia in 1981 and buying a Sydney-area Suzuki dealership - which he's since developed into one of Australia's largest multifran.cruse bike distribu torships. Along the way, Rod ran one of the country's top superbike teams for many years, perhaps inevitably with Kiwi rider like the Hiscock brothers, and the late, great Robert Holden. Since '89, he's also branched out into car dealerships, and by any standards is an extremely successful businessman, and a wealthy' one at that. Why risk gambling so much of that away on becoming a full-scale bike manufacturer? "Several reasOns," Hunwick admits. "But most of all because 1 think it's a sound commercial venture. As a large retailer, I've always felt there's a niche for lpw-volume, high-tech specialist manufacturers, especially more recently, now tha t large-capaci ty bike sales are growing all around the world, and the motorcycle's become an accepted leisure instrument. I always admired what Bimota did with their bikes, but for us to do the same in Australia, we'd need to develop our own engine, and that was going to be a difficult task. "But then the passion of being involved with manufacturing something, combined with the freedom as well as the responsibility to have total control over its specification, its production quality, the way it was sold and above all the margins you could earn on it, was very attractive. Any retailer who deals in imported goods - especially motorcycles - will tell you tha t the opportunity to make a true profit from them is constantly eroded because of a) intense competition, which leads to discounting, and b) currency fluctu.ations. "So, even though this niche product might only have a relatively small market, it'd be good business for me, because once you've acquired the venture capital to create the product, after that you're in the driver's seat, and can make a true but fair profit - fair, because if you get greedy and overprice it, it won't sell" So the Hunwick Hallam project was initiated for the best of all possible reasons: as a business venture with a profit motive, in a business Hunwick knew a lot about and enjoys working in. John Bloor would approve. But what happened next? "About 3 1 /2 years ago, I completed my analysis of the existing market," Hunwick continues, "as well as a projection for the future. I was impressed with Harley in terms of their success in seiling 4000 bikes a year·in Australia, easily topping the large-capacity market overall, and the waiting lists for what is a relatively high-priced product all around the world, that doesn't really have much competition from the Japanese. Partly that's because they don't have the right product, and partly because they're too Big Business for Harley customers. "That's what started me thinking about filling a crack in the Harley lineup, by building a V-twin cruiser - but one with genuine performance, handling and brakes, all of which Harley unfortunately doesn't have. So that's what I decided to do." How did he then team up with Paul Hallam? "I'd had interviews with several leading engineers without striking a spark - and then I picked up a copy of Australian Motorcycle News, which had a test of a locally tuned Harley street rod that seemed really impressive. Paul was the man responsible for it, and I eventually tracked him down, only to discover that he'd just been taken to the hospital after a major crash riding in the bush on his 250 Yamaha. I chased him all around the hospital carrying my conceptual sketches and market projections - and, in fact, our first face-to-face encounter took place with him lying flat out on a hospital bed, with various limbs in pIaster and plugged into the wall with more wires than our fuel-injection system. He'd just had a brain scan because they were afraid he had a couple of blood clots floating around inside. "We ended up chatting for a couple of hours, I realized he was right on my wave length, and we were under way within weeks - he had lots of thinking time about the engine while he was all plastered up and unable to get around." So in fact, the Power Cruiser was the bike that kicked off the HH project. When did the XIR Superbike and Rage street rod come along? "The Ra ge is a recent addition to the lineup," Hunwick says, "but the XIR just kind of happened. Paul and I are both racing enthusiasts, and once he got under way with the engine design, it became apparent what we had here was the basis of a superbike for street and track, if the engine was downscaled to 1000cc - which unknown to me, he'd been planning on doing all along. But at the same time, I'd been working on positioning the Hunwick Hallam marque in the marketplace, and decided this could best be achieved by race-track success. "Paul's race-engine experience and ability to source the right people to go racing with will allow us to compete at the top level, up to and including World Superbike, and put our product on the map. We're both confident we can be competitive, especially with the right rider."

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