Raging Buell

RAGING BUELL

ROUNDUP

SO, THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS when you let an old hotrodder loose on a Buell S1 White Lightning. Bob Dron is owner of Oakland Harley-Davidson, a forward-thinking dealership complete with its own Design Center. When he’s not overseeing operations, or tooling around in his supercharged Chevy Suburban, or noodling on his latest 1950s lead sled, Dron is the man responsible for some of the country’s most outlandish Harley customs, including his luscious “Royale,” which nabbed topbuilder honors at the 1992 Oakland Roadster Show.

What you see here is the Dron Mk.I concept bike, a White Lightning shorn of its stock skin and embellished with some truly eye-popping bodywork. It’s executed in handhammered aluminum, the mallet-wielding done by Steve Moal and Jimmy Kilroy at Moal’s Automotive Body, one of Dron’s consistent co-conspirators. The astoundingly bestriped and be-checkered paint job was laid on by master sprayman Steve Faraone.

“Buells have lots of function, but they’re awfully bare-bones,” says Dron. “They need some styling.” To that end, the Mk.I went the cafe-racer route-a “modern English look,” explains Dron-complete with an oversized, quasidustbin fairing. There’s also a touch of Ferrari Testarossa in the “gills” that stylistically tie fairing to frame.

As an exercise in building a jaw-dropping showbike, the Mk.I is an unqualified success, though there’s little hope that anything like it will reach production. Still, response to the bike has been strong, with many customer inquiries about Mk.I aftermarket kits. “We’re getting a lot of questions, but when you’re pounding body-

work out of metal, it’s a matter of economics,” says Dron. Less-expensive fiberglass copies remain a possibility, though Dron doubts the numbers are there to make the effort worthwhile. -David Edwards