The Barn
THE BARN
ERECTION A SHRINE TO THE CLASSIC ITALIAN ROADBURNER
JOHN BURNS
IT'S NOT SO MUCH THAT SOCIALIST layabouts like myself despise the rich as much as we despise the things they choose to do with their wealth: polo ponies, investment Ferraris that never approach redline, unintelligible art, raw fish and the eggs they lay, GQ clothing, French-cut poodles...don't get me started.
Saturday afternoon before the 1990 USGP, in the hot tub atop the Monterey Bay Inn-the one extrava gance per year Cycle magazine, my former employer, used to pop for-I met Guy Webster. We're talking right on chi-chi Cannery Row, wine instead of Schlitz, hotel-supplied robes-pretty impressive to a yokel such as myself. Webster, in his late 40s and going gray, didn't really look the biker type there in the tub; I had him more pegged as a member of the local gentry who'd whine about the noise if I men tioned I was there for the bike races. But we started yakking, and it turned out the shiny new Ducati 85 1 I'd spied in the hotel garage belonged to him. He'd ridden up from Ojai, 200 miles to the south. Well, that called for a reclas sification.
Webster mentioned in passing that he had a few more interesting Italian bikes back home, if I'd ever care to drop by when in the neighborhood.
About a month later, I rode up to Ojai, followed the directions a few miles out of town to Webster's little, er, compound. We went into a well equipped garage/workshop with a cou pie of greasy bikes-in-progress, gears and tools strewn about. Is this what I rode a hundred miles to see?
So then Webster says let's go out to the barn. I hadn't noticed a barn, but we left the garage, turned the corner and, yeah, there was a barn 50 yards out through the weeds and grasshop pers, looked like something about a century old. He opened the door and I walked inside and my jaw hit the floor.
Ducatis, Laverdas, (Juzzis, Morinis, MV Agustas, Bimotas in phalanx; about 30 bikes total, every one in gleaming, spotless condition on a spot less floor. Light coming in through skylights in the vaulted ceiling, bounc ing off all that chrome and paint-the effect was of a cathedral. I caught my breath finally and fled back to the office: We have to do a story about Guy Webster's collection!
Unfortunately, there's a feeling among many cyclists that the only pos sible motive for such a collection must be pure greed, and that focusing maga zine attention upon such a collector will only inflame jealousy and class warfare, and drive perfectly ridable motorcycles into the same unreachable parking garage now occupied by yintage sports cars.
I can understand that fear and I can be as covetous as the next underpaid stiff, but you don't have to talk long with Webster to understand that money is not it, not it at all. He loves these motorcycles, each and every one, and knows each one the way he knows his own children. Most of all, he rides them. and not just to prove a point.
To Webster, what he's done in bringing these machines together is a sort of public service, like a museum. Or a reli gious gathering place. To see just one of these bikes parked along the street one day would be a treat; to see them all at once is very nearly a dream.
Anyway, the story never happened at Cicle, but I never forgot about the barn.
It had beeti about two years, then, when I called Webster back: "Say, do you still have the three Agustas and stuff?"
"Ah, well, John, actually I have five Agustas now. I've got a Tesi and some other things since last time you were here," he told me.
T he barn has been expanded. It's not even a barn, really. It's a purpose-built building designed by Webster to look like an old barn. When you enter the door, you stand at the foot of the nave. Along the right aisle stand Ducatis: 650 Pantah, 500 Pantah, 750 Sport. 750 Super Sport, 900SS Imola, two perfect, Christmasy Hailwood replicas, a few Guzzis, including an early V7, then some Laverdas. Upon chest-high shelves against the wall, like sta tions of the cross, are a couple of Dianas and a 450 Silverstone racer Single wearing scaled-down Sport clothes.
Along the left aisle stand, first, a parallel-Twin GTL500 Ducati, a new Ferracci-kitted 750 Sport Ducati, and a Harris-framed Monomille Ducati next to another exotic 600cc Pantah-engined special. From there, we merge into the Birnota section, with a YB6 (FZRI000-powered), next to what might be my underdog favorite, a voluptuous little dbl (with an Fl engine). It looks small squeezed in there between the YB and the Tesi. You can't tell by looking, but when you sit on the dbl, the rear of the tank is concave and your abdomen fits there perfectly. The word "mistress" comes to mind. Let's see. ..there's an early SB4 Bimota with an 1100 Suzuki motor. Am I leaving a Bimota out?
Then there's a late-model Ducati 888. Then come more Laverdas~ it's easiest to say Webster has one or two of each, the rarest of which is a Motoplast-framed 1200 Triple. SF2, SFC, RGS, Mirage~ any one of the Laverdas could vie for "Most Beautiful Bike of the Century".
While your eyes are teasting, your ears try to keep up with Webster. Seems there's a difference of opinion as to what Laverda meant by SF2. SF stands for Super Freni. which means great brakes, the 2" may signify the two front discs, or it might denote the second modification of the bike, with close-ratio this and that. Webster knows a lot about these bikes (or sounds that way to someone who knows less), but he says he doesn't know as much as some Italian collectors. Phil Schilling, who lives close by with his own collection, reputedly knows all the Ducati serial numbers.
And then, after supphcating along the length of the nave, you reach the altar where the MV Agustas dwell. On the right are a 350 Twin Elettronica from 1973, so called because of its electronic ignition, and a 350 Ipotesi. Alongside the Twins sits a perfect, blue-and-red, unrestored 750S four-cylinder. Right now, there's a late-model Gilera Saturno stable pony in the middle of the Agusta sandwich, and on the other side of it are two more Agusta fire engines, an 850SS Monza and a Magni-kitted 750S America. The Magni is probably the most "collectible" bike in the barn.
The story, according to Webster, is that Count Agusta didn't want his factory team to have to face competition from Agusta-riding privateeros, so Agustas sold to the pub lic were all pretty heavy and shaft-driven. When the Count passed away, Arturo Magni-MV race director-made a chain-drive conversion available. Included in the kit were those four black megaphones, magnesium wheels. etc. It is very red.
eli, each bike has a story and there's not room for 50 of them here. Fortunately. the words are probably less important than how these motorcycles look. Webster is an artist, a self-confessed aesthete. When he discov ered Italy, it wasn't the bikes alone that impressed him, but also the way the Italians dressed for the ride. Where Americans show up at Loudon in T-shirts and jeans, the Italian fans at Imola and Mugello (on the outskirts of Florence, where Webster lived and went to school, and where two of his children live now) would make the occa sion a fashion show as well, appearing in custom leathers to match their hikes. Webster became an Italonhile.
These motorcycles, beyond being products for sale, are rolling manifestos of late-2Oth-century Italian thought: beautiful and fast, but casually so, loud when necessary, outrageous but sophisticated, flirtatious, pricey-something to do with high-speed mountain runs culminating at out door, checked-tablecloth cafés on ancient cobblestone streets. Maybe the walls of this town were here a thousand years before me and will be here a thousand years hence, but they will damn sure note my passing. I'm alive.
We decide to ride into town for lunch. Webster mounts his everyday beater, a Mark I Guzzi customized with all his favorite bits, with higher compression, lightened flywheel and a very robust exhaust note. Trevor Dunne, who runs DynoCycle in nearby Santa Barbara and is sort of Webster's partner-in-bikes, chief egger-on and mechanic, hops on the six-cylinder Benelli Sei he's just finished rebuilding after a year of parts-gathering.
Would I care to ride Webster's newest toy, a fresh-off the-boat, not-for-the-U.S. 900ie Cagiva? This is a dual-pur pose thing looking much like the old Elefant, but with the fuel-injected Twin from the Ducati Paso 907ie. I didn't need to be asked twice. Santa Barbara's about 30 miles away if you go the back way. and Dunne says the 900ie holds the record. I believe it.
We rode to a Mexican p'ace, sat down, had some beer and tacos, and I felt it was my obligation as a journalist to dig into the man's portfolio. Where did the money come from, Guy? Spill your guts.
It helpsto be born with a lot of it. Singer Dean Martin gave Webster his first motorcycle, a tricked-out Triumph Bonneville built by Bud Ekins especially for Martin-com plete with "Deano" embossed in the tank. Webster was a Beverly Hills neighbor. Martin slurred to him one day, "I don't wanthis, you wanthis?" and gave Webster the Triumph. But Webster has worked. Remember Wet, the avant-garde publication that was known as "the magazine for gourmet bathing"? That was Webster's. Now he does album covers and commissioned paintings.
o, yeah, there's no way of getting around the fact that Webster is one of `~them," but at least lie's not an insuf ferable snob about it, even though in-depth reporting did uncover a yellow Ferrari Dino hiding under a cover in the main garage. Still, he's not totally out of touch with the real world. Back in the shop, for instance, Dunne is working on getting more power from Webster's extremely trick Gilera Saturno Piurna roadracer-very probably the only one in the coun try-but with a relatively mild 500cc motor that is way out powered by heavily modified, bigger-displacement Singles in its class. Dunne's tired of being sawed down the straights. He mentions to Webster, subtly, that famed tuner Jerry Branch wants to work on the bike's head, but it will cost about S350. Webster has to think about it for a few seconds before he consents. Dunne won't iieed to be told twice.
Is Webster's collection a let-'em-eat-cake example of capitalism at its most heartless, then? Does it exploit the proletariat? Is it a bad thing? Those of you spinning with rage (sure it's not jealousy'?) at the thought of one man own ing all this bright and loud happiness will be relieved to learn that now, as of the newly acquired Bimota Tesi, Webster says the collection is complete. He's got one each of his favorite art, circa 1965 to 1992, about 50 bikes in all.
The Barn is full.
