Mythbusters

Mythbusters

UP FRONT

David Edwards

I ALWAYS GET A LITTLE NERVOUS WHEN mail arrives from anybody connected with the Vincent Owners Club. Apparently there is no statute of limitations on myth busting.

See, back in 1965, to commemorate the 10th anniversary of Vincent-HRD boarding up its factory doors, Cycle World road tested one of the last Vincents built, a 1955 Black Lightning. The model’s legend was by then at full song. Excruciatingly hand-built. Engine cases cast from melted-down Spitfires. Fastest production motorcycle in the world. Easy buck-fifty straight off the showroom floor. Too much machine for most mortal men.

Freshly tuned but wearing no street equipment, our mighty Black Lightning was taken to Riverside Raceway for its magazine shakedown. Though without byline, the test was undoubtedly penned by the late, great Gordon Jennings, CW’s Technical Editor, tuning wiz and resident roadracer, a man possessed of a sharp quill and an even sharper wit.

“Handling was enough to make brave men blanch,” he began ominously. “Someone once told us that Vincents feel as though they have a hinge in the middle, but in riding the beast we quickly discovered that the hinge was a ball joint”

Uh-oh, this was not going well.

“No motorcycle we have ever tested has flexed in so many different directions at once,” Jennings continued. “Get the bike into a fast turn, trying hard, and it sets up a really heart-stopping shudder and waggle. The Vincent would, fortunately, track quite nicely when running straight, but on a road course-or even an ordinary roadsooner or later you have to turn, and that’s when the trouble starts. Also, it is necessary to decide well in advance what you intend to do about a corner, because the brakes aren’t good enough to permit any last-minute changes in plans.”

Jennings was not finished with his debunking.

“The Vincent motorcy cle may be fast but it is an evil-handling beast with simply awful brakes,” he summed up. “Potentially (and by this we mean unless ridden with great restraint) it is the most dangerous motorcycle ever to come our way-and we are not sorry in the least that it is no longer being made.”

In conclusion, though, it’s clear that Jennings took no great joy in his negative findings.

“The legend is so much better than the motorcycle that we cannot but feel that in abandoning the legend for the truth we have made a bad exchange.”

Oh, boy, did we get letters. Still do. But a recent e-mail (yes, they are very au courant at the VOC) had nothing to do with our infamous test. Instead, long-time club member Bill Hoddinott wanted to remind us that March 14 marked the 100th anniversary of founder Philip C. Vincent’s birthday.

“A great deal has been written about Phil Vincent over many, many years and all of us who love the marque feel we know the man quite well. He was a young man who loved motorcycles and this drove him at the tender age of but 20 to scrape together the money to buy the established HRDname. He proceeded to set up a very small company, with just a few hands, to manufacture his own machines because he had some ideas and believed he could show the world something new,” wrote Hoddinott, who bought his first Vincent, a used 1952 Black Shadow, in 1960 for all of $440.

It was in 1927 that young Phil, a 19year-old Cambridge engineering undergrad, came up with a radical new frame that was 50 years ahead of its time, featuring a multi-tube perimeter design with a swingarm setup not unlike Yamaha’s Monoshock system of the mid-1970s.

“The motorcycle will never amount to anything of value as long as its suspension is little more advanced than that of a Roman chariot,” he said, referring to the boneshaker rigid frames of the day.

After the war, with engineering acumen from “the other Phil,” Australian Phil Irving, Vincent came up with the brilliant “boneless wonder” of a frame-in effect a non-frame with everything hung off the engine.

Says CWs current Tech Editor Kevin Cameron, “When I first learned about Vincents, it was their performance that had my attention. A few years passed and they assumed mainly antiquarian status.

I learned more again, and in time realized that the postwar Vincent Twins illustrate a process of arriving at simplicity, partly by coercion and partly by design. Either way, frameless construction pioneered by Vincent has now become a normal way to build motorcycles. An abbreviated structure joins the steering head to the engine, and a triangulated swingarm, pivoting on the gearbox, are all that’s needed. Historically aware engineers like the late John Britten have given credit where credit is due. Functional simplicity is the best reason to remember and respect the Vincent name.”

But as Hoddinott rightly points out, there would be no machine to remember if not for the man.

“We venerate Phil Vincent today not only because he built wonderful motorcycles that we and the world have enjoyed for so many years, but also because as a man, Phil set an excellent personal example. He was the embodiment of all the traditional values-honesty, courage, intelligence, determination, hard work and love of family. Philip Conrad Vincent was a special man. You’ll never see his like again!”

That seems an understatement. So happy birthday, Mr. Vincent, wherever you are. No hard feelings, I hope. □

For more on Phil Vincent’s centenary\ plus a counterpoint to our original Black Lightning road test, go to www.cycle world.com.