VOL. 51 ISSUE 3 JANUARY 21, 2014
P59
SMAN AT WORK
what he wants. How cool is that?
The Bienville Legacy… the latest
creation of New Orleans-based
designer J.T. Nesbitt.
tending, then began designing
motorcycles for Confederate Motors in New Orleans, after owner
Matt Chambers recognized a fellow iconoclast who could help
him promote Confederate's Art of
Rebellion in creating V-twin mo-
torcycles like no other.
In designing bikes like the
Hellcat with its exhausts exiting via the swingarm tubes, or
the Wraith conceptualized from
a blend of vintage board tracker
and Italian racing bicycles, Nes-
bitt set Confederate on track to
becoming the boutique brand
of choice for America's rich and
famous, with Hollywood A-listers
Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt and Nicholas Cage, through to rock idol
Bruce Springsteen, heading the
high-profile roster of Confederate
owners. And more often than not,
they wanted more than one of
these exquisitely crafted and inevitably ultra-costly two-wheeled
works of art in their personal garage.
But then came the tragedy that
was Hurricane Katrina, which in
August 2005 devastated New
Orleans, and with it the Confederate factory just as the Wraith was
reaching production in the hands
of development engineer Brian
Case, working under Nesbitt's
supervision. Confederate relocated to Birmingham, Alabama,
courtesy of Southern motorcycle
patriarch George Barber, but
Nesbitt declined to go along with
the move, preferring to stay in his
adopted city, and help work on
its recovery. He established Bienville Studios (Jean-Baptiste de
Bienville was the Quebec-born
French governor who founded
New Orleans in 1717) as a free-
