Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

2003 Victory Vegas ATVs, etc., is "just an awesome opportunity," all the more so since his Pasadena Industrial Design College final project was a hub-center V4 two-wheeler that Bimota might have been proud to call its own! Not much has been heard from Victory these past two years while Blackwell's new team has focused on turnaround, especially not in those export markets like the UK, Germany, Benelux, Italy and Japan which Victory had, perhaps overoptimistically, begun to target with its neophyte range. But now the compa- 18 JANUARY 22,2003' eye I Il! offered advice which Song and his team took into account when creating the Vegas. However, even without his autograph on the fuel tank, the result is surely a beautiful bike which Ness would be proud to have created himself, belying the fact that it's a seriesproduction model by its sleek, flowing, graceful lines, raked-out stance and great attention to detail. Features include the frenched-in teardrop taillight; long, curved gas tank with valanced sides (specially made in Germany by Behr, who also make Ducati's and BMW's fuel tanks); the head assembly which increase overall rigidity by 20 percent. In addition, it features a Kayaba suspension package from the company Allan Hurd established a close relationship with during his Triumph days. The 43mm forks - albeit still the less sophisticated damper-rod variety rather than a cartridge type - and a vertically positioned rear monoshock - both adjustable only for preload, but with a linkage at the rear delivering some degree of rising rate replace the Marzocchiforks/cantilever Fox package used on previous Vidorys, while the swingarm is now assem- ny is back in the news with the first new model of its second coming and just one look at the new Victory Vegas, now entering production and set to hit the showrooms this spring, tells you even before riding it that lessons have been learned, and, this time around, Victory aims to deliver. Riding the result for a day along the freeways and through the hills of Southern California only confirmed this. The Vegas is Mike Song's first motorcycle product to be seen through from concept to completion in production-ready form. It came about thanks to an ongoing collaboration that Victory has established with arguably the biggest name in the custom bike world, 63-year-old San Francisco-based styling guru Arlen Ness. Together with his son Cory, 39, Ness met with Song severa! times over the past two years to deliver styling input and suggestions, though he's at pains to stress the Ness duo didn't actually draw anything up, just crucial element and presumably focusing on the engineering, Victory was tying one handlebar behind its back. Which they might just have gotten away with, had the engineering and dynamics entailed in riding the bike been any good - except they weren't, as anyone who ever shifted gears on a V92C will attest. The gear change was easily the single most disappointing feature of the entire motorcycle - slow, clunky and incredibly noisy, with each gearshift clearly audible a couple of blocks away. I know: I listened while I let someone else ride it! Okay - any shaft-drive Guzzi built before the V11 would have been proud to call the Victory's gear change its own. But this wasn't a neo-vintage, stone-age, Italian transverse V-twin with shaft final drive and an engine derived from a mid-'60s delivery truck. It was a modern, purpose-designed and relatively sophisticated powerplant with ultra-silent belt final drive, that had been seven years in the making, and somehow the fact that Victory management could have allowed the bike to get this far along the R&D line without doing something about it said everything about the unfocused nature of the whole operation. But that was then, and this is now, and full marks to Polaris management for not throwing its corporate hands in the air and committing the entire abortive Victory operation to the balance sheet as a $100 million tax write-off. It has instead swept the desk clear, spread out a clean sheet of paper and started over again, determined to do it right this time around, one decade later. The fact that it should do this rather than throw in the towel and dust off those lawn tractor designs says a lot about the kind of company we're dealing with here - and same goes for the management team it has taken on board to reinvent Victory. The team is headed by Mark Blackwell, who, since ending his riding career as a motocross great 30 years ago, worked in business for Suzuki and Arctic Cat before taking over the reins at Victory two years ago as GM. Alongside him, heading up the engineering, is British expat Allan Hurd, formerly John Bloor's right-hand man in bringing Triumph back from the dead and establishing the British firm's well-earned reputation for the quality of its products - meaning he's had plenty of practice at two-wheeled revivals. Heading Victory's in-house design team is Mike Song, a five-year Polaris veteran who switched over to the firm's motorcycle division two years ago. He previously worked in Yamaha's Californian design studio for a year before moving to Kia Motors and then to Polaris. A 37year-old Los Angeles native, Song reckons designing bikes, rather than ridge running up the center of the rear fender then replicated in the fuel tank with its recessed filler cap; the slash-cut exhausts and acres of chrome; and, at last, for the first time on a Victory motorcycle, the 50degree engine comprises an integral part of the design. It hasn't been shoehorned in as an afterthought and then painted matte black to try to disguise that fact ('no unnecessary cosmetics,' right?!). It all gives the Vegas a genuine presence and a unique market niche. It's an Arlen Nessinspired cruiser you can actually buy for a $14,999 list price and then proceed to customize still further via any number of items from the Vegas aftermarket catalog. A key element in the Vegas concept was a three-inch-Iower seat height. It is also two inches narrower than on previous Victory models, says Song, which in turn dictated the adoption of a completely new steel frame. This features larger-diameter chassis tubes and a stiffer steering Evoking a Softail theme, the Vegas owes some of its appointments to a collaboration between Victory and custom motorcycle styling kingpins Arlen and Cory Ness. The Ness relationship may give the machine a stronger presence in the mart

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