Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/128316
What we really want is a Vincent Black Shadow with brakes!' And he was co mpletely right - what we and other guys like us wanted was something with a proud heritage, traditional sporting character, but modem perfonnance. By the time I finallyexited from Eagle One, I had the capital to seriously address the idea of making such a bike - so , we did!" But whyVincent? "It was just the greatest of the old motors," U says. "My generation was the first to buy Japanese bikes here in America, but I had lots of friends riding Triumphs and XLCH Harley Sportsters, so it was on the crossover. We'd be bench racing about whose bike was faster, and I remember all those conversations always ended up with someone saying 'O ur bikes are all crap - the fastest thing on two wheels is a Vincent Black Shadow.' And they were right, but to be honest it took me several years to actually see one. They were just wrapped in this legendary mystique of be ing the baddest, meanest, fastest, most expensive but also the rarest motorcycle ever made, so far ahead of their times. But you couldn't buy a new one - so years on , I decided to try to remecly that. The way I see it, Harley is the same as Chevrolet on two wheels - the heart of grassroots enthusiasm in the USA, used in more kinds of race cars or bikes than anything else , from dragsters to road racers. Indian is the Ford of bikes - the 'other' bike American brand. Ducati is like Alfa Romeo, MV Agusta is the Ferrari of motorcycles, and BMW is - well, BMW, I guess! But that makes the Vincent an Aston Martin on two wheels, so English, so exclusive , perfonnance without compromise, a step up from Triumph - that's the direct equivalent of Jaguar, which by comparison is still classy, but much higher volume. So I had to figure out how I was going to go about making Vincent live again." Not least the biggest problem in doing so was obtaining the rights to the Vincent trademark, which in Britain has been in the hands of the Holder familysince 1974, when they acqu ired the name on purchasing the Harper engineering company, which in tum had taken over Vincent after the finn 's 1955 shutdown. Wasn't not owning the nam ing rights rather a big handicap? "Yes , except nobody else did, either, at least in the USA - so I just made sure I followed the law concerning trademarks very closely," U says. "Starti ng in 1994, we've been selling Vincent clothing using the company's badge ever since then, and since '9S we've owned the rights to the Vincent name in the United States, Gennany and Japan . To be honest, I never knew about David Holder until much later, when someone from England wrote to me about him , because he only makes spare parts for Vincent engines and doesn't sell anything branded Vincent, so he doesn't figure on any searches. I've spoken to him and corresponded with him about my plans to revive the marque, and we're looking at making some kind of agreement that is good for each other, rather than calling attorneys, which is always bad. There's a lot of people in tabloid journalism who'd like to stimulate some kind of controversy about this - but I feel from our contacts that David Holder is a gentleman and an enthusiast who cares about the marque. Now that we know he 's there, I'll find a way to do something with him which , in time, will benefit us both. And equally important, I have the active support of the Vincent family for what we're doing - Robin Vincent-Day, who is PhilVincent 's son-in -law and attends many Vincent rallies with his wife Dee on their 19S0 Rapide, has already registered their support for us in public, as well as to me in private . That's a big plus." Having acqu ired the rights to the Vincent badge, the next issue was what kind of bike to stick it on . "We ll, obviously it had to be a modem V-twin - but the cost and complexity of developing our own engines from scratch are astronomic," U says. "Th ere are an infinite num ber of ways you can fail, versus a very few paths to success so right from the start I was hoping to get one of the OE finns like Honda or Suzuki to help me. Nobody is more competent at designing and manufacturing engines than the Japanese - but it's not an easy task to get one of these guys to help you, plus I was aware from the start that the idea of a Japanese engine in a born-again Vincent would carry a certainamount of negative connotations. In the end it came down to balancing out getting the right engine with being true to the brand and the enthusiast marketplace - how to survive against not putting in $130 million of your own money to design and manufacture an engine. People will never really know how much help John Bloor had from Kawasaki in getting Triumph restarted - but look how crucial that was for the reliability of their product. I tried contacting all the OE guys, including BMW and the Italians, but only two of them would even return my calls, and that was Honda and Kawasaki." Perhaps surprisingly, considering that it has always refrained from supplying engines to an outside company (unless, as with Mond ial, it feels obliged to do so under a debt of honor), it was Honda that proved most receptive. American Honda's top motorcycle executives understood what he was trying to achieve, says U, and this proved the clincher in getting approval from the head office early in 200 I for a supply of RCSI/SP-I V-twin motors to power the born-again Vincents. ''At my level, there's nothing I can do which can benefit Honda, beyond buying 5000 engines, which is a drop in the ocean to them." Li says. "I'm just a little sailing ship that happens to be on the samecourseasan ocean liner, and they've agreed to throw me a line and take me in tow. Honda were concerned that we could build something worthy of their heritage with their engine - they wanted a Vincent with a Honda motor, not a Honda with a Vincent badge. It's reassuring that we couldconvince them we could." The key to this was that U had already commissioned U.S. designer James Parker, best known as the creator of the RADD alternative front suspension, which he licensed to Yamaha for use on the GTS I000 , to design a series of concept bikes to bear the Vincent name. "Parker was ideal for this, because he has such a balance of capabilities - he comes from a technical as well as an artistic background, plus he truly understood the heritage of the Vincent," U says. The arrival of Honda's letter of intent signaled the starting gun to translate these concepts into metal, because by definition until the choice of an engine to power the bikes had been decided on , their detail design couldn't be addressed. Starting in early 200 I, Parker designed a modular tubular aluminum chassis layout and created the styling for four different models, while to translate these into prototype production-ready hardware, U enlisted Detroit-based Roush Industries. Roush is a major league player in the U.S. auto industry's R&D sector and was already a factor on two wheels, too, ever since Harley entrusted the creation of the VR I000 Superbike engine to it 15 years ago , which led in tum to the eight -valve motor currently powering the V-Rod. . " I'd got to know Jack Roush in my Valvoline days , because they sponsored his NASCAR entries," U says . " He took a look at the RTV for me and reported on that, so when we got the green nag from Honda, of course I went back to him." Roush thus constructed the four different Vincent prototypes now sitting in U's motor house outside San Diego , which were completed in August , 2002, and since then have been undergoing development testing as well as commencing the long and tortuous path of securing Federal EPA homologation, www.cyclen s.com now in its final stages. Once that's completed, the next step will be to beg in manufacture, a stage Barney U anticipates will begin in the last quarter of th is year - but without actually having to invest in a Vincent factory as such! That's because Roush Industries will build the customer Vincents in Detroit, as well as the prototypes. "It's the same old thing - to succeed, you have to do what you do best; you rnusn't do what you do secondbest," U says. "We know what it'd cost if we handled production ourselves, including building and equipping the plant to do so, whereas Roush already has the expertise, the facilitiesand the industry contacts to do it better and more cost-effectively than we can, ifwe give them the entire thing. For the quantities we're taking about, which is 600 in the first year, then 1200 in the sec ond , then gradually building up to a ceiling of )000 bikes a year as we introduce more models, this is very feasible. It will also allow us to allocate a certain number of bikes for a custom-build option, like Ducati or MY Agusta or Porsche or Fenrari do, whereby you confJgure your own specification, and we build it for you . Once we introduce the cruiser model, that tailor-made option could be a biggerfactor." U's target price for any of the models is between $20 ,000 and $2S ,OOO, with the lead-in Black Shadow naked bike starting at $19 ,9S0 , plus tax - fadrom outrageous given the quality of the materials and the hand-bullt nature of the motorcycle. Distribution? "We're looking at selling it in the USA through established speciality dealers - the sort of guys who used to sell Bimota, who can handle a high-end product like this properly," U says. "O ur agreement with Honda only deals with the supply of engines, but if any of their dealers want to stock Vincent , using our warranty, that's fine by me ." Export markets will have to wait for the U.S. operation to get up and runn ing first, but in the med ium tenn U expects to sell to Japan and Gennany, hence the registration of the Vincent trademark there, and then in due course it'll be back to Blighty for the born-again version of the world's first Superbike , when sales commence to the UK - presuming the Holder fam ilyacquiesce in this. "To be honest, the response we've had from Europe via our website has at least equaled the pickup from potential American customers," U says . "We're maybe going to have to re-evaluate how quickly we start selling the bikes overseas, depending on the volume of sales in the USA once we get started. At the moment we 're aiming to get bikes in cus tomers' hands by the start of next year, but if it's a couple of months down the line from that, it won't be a big dealthough I expect a lot of people will want to have them in time to take to Daytona for Cycle Week 2005! But Roush have a substantial capability which allows them to deliver on time and to budget - so I guess we have a good chance of making that." Whatever the outcome, U is adamant that he has no regrets spending 10 years so far giving new life to what in today 's global marketplace is a relatively obscure if undeniably historic and prestigious marque from all our BritBiking yesterdays. "Not for a moment," he says . "I have a very established gameplan which is right on target. I've committed X millions of dollars to this project, I have the main pieces in place to make sure it happens, and I've taken a huge element of risk out of the equation. We don't have to worry about whether the engine will work, will it produce the horsepower, will it be certifiable. I don't have a group of engineers who are worried about trying to show they know what they're doing - I have an industry-leading R&D company that only knows how to come in on time and to budget. with a quality the three major U.S. auto companies find more than satisfactory. This isn't a big profit -making deal - to be honest, there's lots better, more efficient ways I could make more money out of the level of investment I'm putting into Vincent. I'm doing this because I love bikes and I have great respect for the Vincent marque's heritage - and I'm looking forward to giving it a new lease of life, in which the Vincent name will stand for the pursuit of excellence. Excellence is not a place you just happen to arrive in; it's a place you must always pursue, and we will deliver an excellent product with the Vincent name on the tank ." CYCLE NEWS • MA RCH 24, 2004 49