I can't be the only person to have connected these two designs, but I haven't seen any other website or bike magazine comment on this yet. What we have here is an Art Deco concept Henderson motorcycle built in 1936 by O. Ray Courtney. It has an inline 4 cylinder engine longitudinally mounted in the frame, which must make the rear cylinders extremely hot with all that bodywork covering it. The more modern motorcycle is the Yamaha Gen-Ryu hybrid concept of 2005 which seems to borrow most of its styling elements from the Henderson. Notice the vertical grill has been turned into a vertical headlight array of LEDs. I love the way they modernized the design while keeping the retro theme. I wonder if James Parker had anything to do with this design as I see his front suspension ( Yamaha GTS ) on the front of this bike.
Monday, August 19, 2013
The electric motorcycle seems to have been around a lot longer than I thought. This Harley Davidson electric seems to be from the early 1970's as evidenced by the ill-fated boat tail rear fender and drum front brakes. What I find interesting is the chain sprocket is underneath the motor hinting at a transmission which is just now being implemented on electric bikes by Brammo. The cafe styling is a nice touch, but makes me wonder how fast this thing was expected to go and what kind of electronics were hidden underneath the faux gas tank. I can't imagine it would be very fast with those heavy lead-acid batteries. This is the only one I have ever seen, so I believe it is just a prototype. That is assuming it was actually built by Harley and not some home built special with Harley logos on the tank.
I'm sure very few people ever knew this existed. This video shows just what kind of rare motorcycles will show up at Pebble Beach. Also an interesting history of the Opel brand which I thought only made cars.Jay Leno may not be my favorite late night host, but he is definitely my favorite motorsports educator.
Finally getting started. Completely new to this blogging thing, so please be patient.Hopefully this won't be too disastrous. This is a beautiful Norton Commando I got to check out at the AMA races in Atlanta. The whole cafe racer craze is in full swing now, but I'm betting this bike was like this for a long time. Picture quality is a little rough as it was taken with my phone, but it will get better.
