The Quail Motorcycle Gathering
THE QUAIL MOTORCYCLE GATHERING
Growing in size...and in prestige
PEOPLE SHOW THEIR CLASSIC MOTORcycles because, like the stock of major corporations, the value of the bikes depends upon the collective opinion of interested persons. I could restore an early Yamaha TD1 and keep it in my office, but then I’d be like the metallurgist I once met who had no one to talk to; the things that really interested him were completely opaque to his family and friends. So, I would show my TD1 in hope that I would meet someone who gave a damn. Even better, I might meet someone who could add to what I know and to my interests. Being interested is being alive.
There is also, I learned, a financial motivation. Showing at a prestigious venue can add to the value of your bike—even if no award is won. This is a case of being known by the company you keep.
The proper name of what most people simply call “The Quail” is “The Quail Motorcycle Gathering,” held on the pleasant grounds of the Quail Lodge in Carmel, California. The rest of the year, the attraction there is golf. As I looked around, here came a radio-controlled golf bag cruising past, followed by its golfer, poking at his remote.
Friday’s event is a road ride that ends at nearby Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca. It’s agreeable to see classic machines that are ridden often and thoroughly understood by their owners; nothing came out of a climate-controlled van. A red Vincent, a Guzzi Falcone with its external flywheel rotating “backward,” and the winner of the Cycle World “Elegance in Action” award, a 1966 Velocette Thruxton owned by Richard Varner, were remarkable for the casual ease with which they started, ran and delivered transportation.
On the springy grass in the Saturday show were bikes ranging from an early pocket-valve Indian and a side-valve 1939 Brough SS80 (which won Best of Show), to the insistent craftsmanship of Ian Barry’s Vincent-powered Black Falcon, to a plain-vanilla Honda RC30 and pedestrian-looking 1960s Ducatis. A special center of interest was Rollie Free’s “flying red horse” Vincent record bike (yes, the one he rode at Bonneville in his bathing shorts, lying down, to a 150-mph record), and I stood a long time looking at a sparkling Model 90 Sunbeam TT bike.
The auction reminded us that values can go high. Steve McQueen’s 1971 Husky motocrosser brought $144,500.
Insiders seemed a bit reserved, having hoped the level of entries would rise to something like the Half Moon Bay show, with its multiple MV racebikes, numerous prewar TT Nortons and a Mike Hailwood RC181 500. They patiently explained to me that prestige begets prestige; as the Quail rises in the estimation of potential entrants, they may appear. It is a bootstrap process.
I enjoyed the calm atmosphere at the Quail. We were sealed off from the perpetual din of mass marketing as surely as if we were lunching on the pier at Newport. A classic bike is an island refuge in the flow of time, an opportunity to celebrate the familiar in an iWorld that threatens to leave us behind.
—Kevin Cameron
