Dan Gurney's Alligator: Alternative Corner Carver
DAN GURNEY'S ALLIGATOR: ALTERNATIVE CORNER CARVER
ROUNDUP
YOU THINK YOU KNOW what a motorcycle should look like? Think again. What you see here is the Gurney Alligator, American carracing legend Dan Gurney’s completely different take on what aspects of two-wheeled design should be emphasized.
Conventional sportbikes are tall, with short wheelbases to make them turn quickly. This limits their acceleration and braking by making them prone to wheelies and stoppies. Gurney’s concept has some extra wheelbase that may slow steering somewhat, but its center of gravity-another important aspect of swift turning-is so low that the Alligator flicks into corners very quickly. Under acceleration and braking, the Alligator’s lower eg and longer wheelbase allow it to generate higher peak values without lifting its wheels. And why not? Orthodoxy is not destiny.
Gurney has been working on this concept for nearly three decades. He initially moved in this design direction because he is tall, and his Montesa dirtbike made him feel as if he were pitching forward when going down hills. Ever the innovator,
Gurney removed the seat, put a pad on the frame rails and tried riding that way. It felt better. The Alligator is that concept, taken to its logical extreme. The top of the drivechain and the front of the rear tire now define the riding position. You sit in this motorcycle, rather than perch on top of it.
Gurney’s business, All American Racers, is race cars, but the Alligator project has been his stamp collection, his serious hobby since 1976. The Alligator shop has its own tools and staff, existing only for this purpose. And it is a fabulous recreation. The motorcycle in its various versions has been occasionally sighted in rapid movement on various Southern California backroads, and select journalists have ridden it. Their responses? Intense interest in the entirely different feel of this machine. Former 500cc World Champions Eddie Lawson and Wayne Rainey have also ridden it. Their responses? “The things our Grand Prix bikes had the most trouble with, your bike does well.”
Development began with the Honda XL350-powered Al and has progressed to the current A4A, which has carbon-fiber bodywork of the kind that flows constantly from the autoclaves of the racecar industry. Current power comes from a Honda XR600-based Single with a modified fuel-injected cylinder head which, for the moment, remains air-cooled (that’s what the second “A” in A4A means).
Styling? “I’ve always admired the dustbin,” Gurney explains. “I don't care if the styling is no good. I want function.”
The tailed dustbin was the direction in which roadracers were moving toward in 1957, when the FIM banned streamlining behind the rider and decided front wheels must be bare-naked. Modern motorcycles are therefore aerodynamically “dirty” open-backed wedges, shoved through the air by sheer power, making little attempt to close their turbulent wakes. So far, the Alligator has achieved 139 mph on its reported 70-plus countershaft horsepower, with 150 mph as its target.
An important goal of this motorcycle is to give the rider the feeling that he’s not 100 percent committed in a corner, that he has some latitude instead of zero room for error. “We’ve achieved this almost to the degree we wanted to,” says Gurney.
We all have projects and ambitions. So what does Gurney plan to do with his? “My socalled strategy is to build about 30, keep some, pre-sell the others and then see what crops up,” he replies.
Can it all work? I think it can. We are still in the longest economic boom in living memory, and this country is filled with people who can have essentially anything they desire, people who want the unique, very individual thing that no one else has. The Alligator is it.
Kevin Cameron
