VOL. 53 ISSUE 12 MARCH 29, 2016 P77
prospered, more importantly at
least survived the dark days of
America's recent recession.
Founded back in 1991 (though
it only began production three
years later) by Louisiana lawyer
Matt Chambers, its President/
CEO, Confederate has ridden
out the bad times to celebrate
its 25th birthday this year, where
most other small American bou-
tique cruiser manufacturers, as
well as some larger ones, have
gone bust. It's done this through
a mixture of foresight, good
management, some luck, and
the key advantage of offering a
unique range of products that
are quite unlike any other motor-
cycles available elsewhere.
Confederate's 25,000
square-foot factory in downtown
Birmingham—a renovated 1940s
brick warehouse building that it
moved to in October 2013—has
the capacity to lift production
from the 49 bikes built in 2015 to
the 100 planned for this year.
The new P51 Fighter Combat
model is offered in two versions.
The so-called Blonde bare-metal
model comes in at $125,000,
with the Black Flag variant at
$130,000. Thirty-one individu-
ally numbered examples of the
former will be manufactured and
30 of the latter, and Confeder-
ate's Sales Manager Paul Adams
declares he has deposits for 41
of the total 61 bikes planned.
Hurry, hurry.
THE FINGER
By any standards, the Confed-
erate P51 Fighter represents
an imaginative step forward
in contemporary motorcycle
design and manufacture, without
in any way courting convention.
"IT'S EXPENSIVE
AND CLASSY, YET
MUSCULAR AND
SUBSTANTIAL—
INDUSTRIAL ART
WITH A PURPOSE,
BUT ALSO EYE
CANDY THAT
FUNCTIONS A
WHOLE LOT BETTER
THAN YOU MAY
EXPECT, ESPECIALLY
IN TERMS OF
HANDLING."
The P51 features a double-
wishbone parallelogram fork
with a single RaceTech shock.
