Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

competition from another corporate giant besides Harley was now looming, aiter their nearby neighbors Polaris, the snowmobile and personal watercraft giant, decided to go Hog-hunting as well with the Victory V-twin. But, astutely realizing that one reason for Harley's commercial impregnability is its 96 years of American-made heritage, the Hanlons went shopping for history and found that Schwinn had allowed the Excelsior and Henderson trademarks to lapse. So they picked them up, and in March 1996 Hanlon Manufacturing became the Excelsior-Hender on Motorcycle Co. complete with readily identifiable Big-X badge and a quarter-eentury of glorious history, before Schwinn sent the marques into a deep slumber that would last 68 years. "Using the Excelsior name gets us to the essence of the American soul," says Dave Hanlon, "because it embodies the history of American motorcycling there's no better name." Aiter taking E-H public with a $27.6 million flOlation in 1997 (though the Hanlon family continues to own a majority of the stock), Dave and Dan completed construction of a $30 million, energy-efficient, 160,()()(}-square-foot, state-of-the-art factory in their hometown of Belle Plaine, 35 miles southwest of Minneapolis, with a projected capacity to build 20,000 bikes a year by 2004, produced by an eventual SOD-strong workforce working a single eight-hour shift - the 175 people currently on staff are targeted to manufacture 5000 motorcycles in 1999, the first full year of operation. The Hanlons could now focus 100 percent on creating the product, a process that had already begun in 1994 with the first design work on the bike that sat awaiting me five years later in the Main Street ide lot at Daytona - the Super X. To acquire the teclutical and manufacturing expertise they needed, the Hanlons set out on their travels, visiting Britain in 1995 to contract with Ricardo for prototype development, and then to inspect the Triumph factory, where John Bloor had pulled off an equally unlikely Lazams act on a similarly defunct historic marque. There they were shown around the modem, high-tech plant by Allan Hurd, Bloor's key aide in getting born-again Triumph production up and running. "We got a lot. of visitors from all over coming to check Triumph out, including more than one other start-up American bike manufacturer," recalls Hurd, "but what impressed me most about Dan and Dave was that, besides being obviously very enthusiastic about what they were doing, they asked all the right questions and were completely realistic about what problems to expect. The.ir hearts were in it, but their heads were in charge." So when the Hanlons asked him to join E-H to head up their manufacturing operation, Hurd said yes, moving to America in June '96 and soon after bringing with him another key player in Triumph's revival, now in charge of Excelsior-Henderson's in-house R&D: chief engineer Neil Wright. 'This isn't a gamble," says Hurd. 'Td a family to consider in moving continents, so I wouldn't be here if I wasn't sure it would work out. This is a serious operation, fueled by an awareness of the market and an enthusiasm to meet its needs." That much is apparent when you look closely at the 85-cubic-inch (I386cc), 50degree V-twin Super X, and the feeling is reinforced when you ride it. For a start, though replete with design cues which recall Excelsior' hi toric trademarks - like the chrome-dome headlamp, high-set external clrromed fork springs, art-deco hom prominently displayed between the fork legs, curved frame downtubes, leading-link forks running through the front fender, or the X-twin engine format with side-by-side conrods and offset cylinders - it's a V-twin cruiser design that looks forward rather than back, with no outstanding dues to Harley: like the Excelsior ad slogan says, "Cloning is for Sheep!" So while H-D's new-generation TwinCam 88 engine still retains two valves per cylinder and push-rod valve operation (and the eight-valve Polaris Victory has SOHC cylinder heads), the air/oil-eooled Super X engine measuring 3.66 x 4.02 in. (93 x 102mm in metric money) is also an eight-valve design, but with double overhead cams driven on the right ide of the meaty, square-finned cylinders, by a combination of gears and short high-set chain, in the same manner as the TLlooo Suzuki - or the Rumi Supermono which precededit. This is the Ducati of cruisers, whereas it rivals are a functional rather than charismatic modern product, like the Victory or any of the J-model bikes, or else well, a Harley, which is still unique, but also quite different. The Super X's .paired 1.40-inch (35.5mm) inlet valves (with 1.18inch/3Omm exhausts) are fed- by a multipoint electronic-fuel-injection package with a single injector per cylinder, specially developed for Excelsior-Henderson by Sagem in Britain - the same company that supplies Triumph with its equivalent engine-management system, recognized as the most sophisticated featured to date on a catalogued street bike. The same handle can be applied to the whole Super X engine package, which, again like Triumph, is entirely assembled in-house, not by outside suppliers, alongside the three robot-welder chassis production lines and an advanced, computerized paint shop. By cruiser standards, this is indeed high-tech hardware - but most important, says Allan Hurd, it's (Right) Like the license plate says, the Super X hails from Minnesota. (Below) A low center of gravity and low, 27.5inch seat height makelhe big Super X lighthandling. technology with a purpose, aimed at enabling Excelsior to satisfy noise and emissions requirements well into the next millenium, as well as deliver a reliable product aided by the extensive ali-weather road-testing undertaken since August '96, and -to facilitate homologation for export markets, when oversea ales begin in 2001. Though the original Ricardo-built engine (on which TWR is also rumored to have worked) powering the prototype unveiled at Sturgis in '96 had a semi-unit design, !hi was dropped soon a fter in favor of the heavily revamped production engine developed in-house by eil Wright's team that, like the 1929 Super X, is unit-construction with gear primary drive and offset cylinders, combining to achieve a remarkably compact design for such a meaty megamotor - it's much shorter than any Harley, in turn aiding chassis packaging. But there's a fivespeed gearbox with belt final drive, diaphragm clutch and readily accessible smm-under-bucket tappets, plus a crankdriven torsional shock absorber, helping to iron out some - but not all - of the vibration derived from the 5Q-degree Vtwin format. "We wanted to be different," admits Allan Hurd, when asked what determined the choice of cylinder angle (all Harleys use a 45-degree vee, except the 60-degree VRI000 Superbike), "plus we wanted our own sound, with a freerevving, modern engine that ha strong torque at relatively low rpm, and a good power curve that focuses on ridability rather than performance. We've not detuned the engine - it gives the mid-70s in horsepower, as designed, but in a muscular manner. But there's lots of room for development, and we have other models in the pipeline using the same configuration of engine." Yes - and presumably a longitudinal four-cylinder tourer somewhere down the line, to revive the Henderson brand? Hurd just smiled... E-H has gone further in refining, rather than eliminating, vibration from the 5Q-degree motor, by locating it in the tubular-steel-backbone frame (with cast steering head and swingarm pivots) at four points, via their patented TAVAS rubber moonts - standing For Torsion Activated Vibration Absorbing System. The result allows Wright & Co. to dial in just as many vibes as the customer is likely to call for, a fact I realized after slinging a leg over the Super X, turning the ignition key inside my right knee where the carb would be on a Harley, and cranking the start button to light up the motor and join Dan Hanlon for a cruise down Main Street and out past the Speedway into the Florida forests. The engine may be rubber-mounted and have a torsion balancer, but it hasn't lost its personality. There are enough tingles through the handlebars, and even more through the footrests, to remind you you're riding an American V-twin but only enough to please, until the needle on the small tacho in the bottom left of the dash shows 3750 rpm, when the vibes intensify and start to disturb. However, by that stage the legible peedo will tell you you're clocking a tad under 90 mph in top gear - 100 mph is right on four grand - SO in real-world cruising mode at 70 mph, when the tacho shows 2T:>O rpm, there's no annoyance, and at between 2500 and 3500 rpm, there's a smoothedout beat to the power pulses that portrays a feeling of relaxation rather than aggression or complaint. And that's the surprise - for the Excelsior-Henderson is a comfortable cruiser yet with performance potential, one that's equally happy loping along at 40 mph, or haulin' ass at double that speed. Fitted with the optional slash-cut twin-pipe 'exhaust, as the test bike was, the X-twin engine prod uces a stacca to crack when you rev it op at rest that delivers on it promise at speed on the highway. But not at the expense of making the rider hold on too tight. The riding position is really rational, with a 27.S-inch seat height that is tall enough not to let Inger legs get cramped but that still allows you to feel you sit in the bike rather than on it. Handlebars are well wide but also swept . g: ..... '" 35

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