Vetter Mystery Ship
VETTER MYSTERY SHIP
Designed to Earn Craig Vetter a Place in History.
John Ulrich
"It's important to me to have a place in history," Craig Vetter told a group of journalists assembled at his 38-acre mountaintop studio for the introduction of the Mystery Ship. "I want to be remembered as a person who made a contribution."
Vetter, 36, has touched motorcycling before. His Windjammer changed the look of motorcycle fairings and spawned a decade of imitations. A whole flock of Japanese machines carry the influence of Vetter’s early-70’s transformation of the dowdy BSA Rocket Three into the sexy Triumph Hurricane.
But those influences came after the fact. The primary motivation was not to influence per se.
The Vetter Mystery Ship is different. It is an outright attempt to influence, to impact, to carve its creator a niche in the history of motorcycling.
“I’m interested in building legendary machines,” explains Vetter, “and I’m doing everything I can to build legendary machines.”
A designer’s desire alone is not enough to launch a motorcycle, a designer’s personal ideals not enough to insure its acceptance. Someone must buy the machine, and must have a reason for buying that machine.
“We have double digit inflation,” says Vetter. “What can you do to beat doubledigit inflation? Well, you can make wise investments. But how can you make a wise
investment in the thing you love, motorcycles? You can buy old bikes, but you can’t ride old bikes.
“The Mystery Ship is calculated in every way to be what it is, which is an investment that takes the form of a motorcycle. The Mystery Ship is a piece of art that you can drive. A piece of art that takes the form of a motorcycle.”
It could be said that a Mystery Ship is a Kawasaki KZ1000, and indeed, that is what it begins as. But before a KZ1000 becomes a Mystery Ship, it receives extensive chassis modifications based on the 1978 Vetter Superbike Production racebike, a set of Dimag magnesium wheels, a Yoshimura exhaust system, 29mm Smoothbore Mikuni carburetors, Mulhol->
land shocks, fork modifications and a fiberglass fairing/body designed by Vetter.
It takes two days for the small Vetter crew to complete the frame modifications, including frame reinforcing, replacement of the stock steering head with a larger, relocated head, shock laydown, and swing arm bracing. Building a body takes four days alone. Assembly requires another four days.
The price tag is $10,000.
Vetter wants to build 200 Mystery Ships, saying that fewer than 50 isn’t enough to make a bike a legitimate part of history and that more than 400 is too many to be collectable. Seven were sold (but not yet built) before the press conference. Each completed machine comes with certificates of authenticity and its own number, one to 200.
The basic Mystery Ship engine is internally stock, but several stages of Yoshimura modifications or an R.C. Engineering turbocharger can be ordered as extra-cost options. Paint color is optional.
Despite the race-bike modifications underneath the sleek glasswork, Vetter expects that Mystery Ships will spend more time parked as the centerpiece of an executive office than ridden down the road. But in the event an owner pitches away his Mystery Ship, replacement parts will be available.
The finished, ready-for-sale Mystery Ship has undergone changes from the prototype stage. The original bike had a curved plexiglass mask fitted over the nose. But the plexiglass diffused the light from the quartz headlight, and couldn’t pass the California state standards for motorcycle lights.
The mask, which incidentally gave the
front of the fairing the same shape as the leading edge of a wing, was removed. That solved another problem: the front end of the bike got airborne—actually lifting off the ground—at speeds around 130 mph. On the prototype, taping a cardboard air dam under the chin of the fairing stopped the lift, but looked tacky. Experimenting without the air dam, crew chief Bob Seim installed air caps and a pressure gauge on the forks and pumped in 10 psi with the bike’s wheels on the ground and a rider aboard. At 90 mph the front-end lift was enough to make fork air pressure drop to zero.
Whether or not the finished, ready-forsale version lives up to its proclaimed excellence depends upon the basis for evaluation. Judged against current winning Superbikes, the Mystery Ship frame is exactly what it is: a 1978 AMA Superbike Production chassis. Even the theory behind brace placement in the chassis is called into question by 1980 Yoshimura and Moriwaki frame modifications.
But the Mystery Ship is sold as a street bike (although a race version is being discussed). On treaded street tires, the bike works pretty well, starting just the barest hint of an underlying wobble in 90-mph bumpy sweepers, a hint so faint that most riders couldn’t detect it. And it is possible that suspension modifications could eliminate that hint.
The crown jewel of the Mystery Ship, and the thing Vetter does best, is its fiberglass. Wind protection is perfect at speed, with no wind blast at nose height and no annoying eddies of air swirling around the sides of the fairing. Seating position is excellent, following Vetter’s demand that the rider and machine be somehow connected, the rider wrapping his arms and legs around the motorcycle. It isn’t too radical, doesn’t go too far for comfort like the clipon-equipped original café racers. But neither does it put the rider too upright. Peg, bar and seat positions are nicely in balance.
The question, of course, is whether or not 200 people will part with $10,000 each to buy, admire, cherish, maybe even ride a Mystery Ship.
“I have no way of telling if there are 200 people who will spend $10,000 for a motorcycle,” admits Vetter. “This whole thing is extremely speculative and if I couldn’t afford to write the whole thing off I wouldn’t have started.”
But Vetter is quick to add, “If I make 200 I’ll lose my ass. There’s no way I can make money on the Mystery Ship. There’s too much time and money invested in it.
“I did it because I want it.”
Motorcyclists who want their own Mystery Ship can contact Vetter at Mystery Ships Inc., 4420 Edna Rd., San Luis Obispo, Calif. 93401. 19
