The Seven-Year Niche
THE SEVEN-YEAR NICHE
CW FEATURE
THE QUAIL MOTORCYCLE GATHERING
FUELED BY PASSION FOR A BEAUTIFULLY WIDE SWATH OF MOTORCYCLING, THE 2015 QUAIL MOTORCYCLE GATHERING PARTIES ON
John L. Stein
After seven years, The Quail Motorcycle Gathering, held this past May at the Quail Lodge & Golf Club in Carmel, California, has not just remained faithful to its vows, but it has withstood the test of time.
The Motorcycle Gathering has maintained a consistently top-quality participant experience, particularly defined by quality and service. Its welcoming nature to not just classic bikes but to the greater compass of motorcycling is unique.
Where else will you find a 1912 Pope and a 2015 Kawasaki Ninja H2R sharing the same green? Where else might you hear 15-year-old Delaney Ann strumming and singing for an audience of Dockers-wearers and hip neobeatniks? Where else will you find national champions Gene Romero and Mert Lawwill benchracing like they were chilling in the pits during the filming of On Any Sunday?
Nowhere.
“I didn’t know what to expect, but what I saw there was unbelievable,” Romero said. “It was like you went to motorcycle heaven. I met old friends, and I saw motorcycles I had never seen before. I can’t stress enough how nice all the people were.”
And that’s exactly the mission and the point of The Quail Motorcycle Gathering. Driven by cofounder Gordon McCall and supported by the swanky lodge and golf club, the event is now deservingly a staple of the West Coast bike year. Only the Southeast’s growing Barber Vintage Festival rivals it, and they’re not altogether the same thing anyway.
This year, 366 motorcycles were on the field, grouped in private collections as well as judged categories such as Antique, American, German, Italian, and Japanese. Organizers also added A Tribute to Military Motorcycles where we got to see the bikes our dads or granddads used in the fight for freedom, a Formula 750 Group (think Yamaha TZ750), and even heathen choppers!
A TZ750 owned by designer Jeff Palhegyi won the F750 show class. Wearing chassis number 0001 and with just a few races under its belt, the bike is highly original, and Palhegyi believes the engine has never been out of the frame. “More than production bikes, I enjoy the old racing parts, the magnesium and titanium and safety wire,” he said. “The cruder the parts, the rougher castings, the worse they are, the better!”
Romero’s comment about finding bikes he’d never seen before is dead on. One stunner was the 1969 Münch Mammoth TTS of Mitch Talcove, which won top prize in the German category. Marrying an i,i77cc transverse-four NSU car engine to a Münchbuilt chassis and bodywork, it clearly established the “literbike” architecture that survives today. And it was trick, with magnesium brakes, rear wheel, outer cases, chaincase, and rear fender. Sadly its timing was über-unlucky, as soon after the ink had dried on the blueprints, Honda launched the CB750 Four. Game on. Game over. Talcove estimates about 250 Mammoths were ultimately built, with half of them surviving in some form today. Restored, they’re roughly worth the same as a good Vincent Black Shadow—$200l or so. Even after commissioning a three-year restoration, Talcove still rides his. “It’s a heavy bike,” he said. “While it sticks fine in the sweepers, it’s cumbersome in the twisties.”
As always, Lawwill was at the event, quietly showing the ball-jointed prosthetic wrist and hand assembly he originally developed for injured friend Chris Drayer. “In 2000,1 contacted a couple of prosthetic companies about going into production,” he recalled. “They said, ‘Don’t bother because for 90 percent of amputees life’s over, and of the remaining 10 percent, no one would be interested in riding a bicycle or motorcycle.’ I said, ‘Baloney! They just don’t know they can.’ ” To date, some 300 “Mert’s Hands” have gotten disabled athletes back on their motorcycles, bicycles, and snowmobiles. Lawwill’s newest device is a prosthetic elbow for upper-arm amputees. Its special feature is a shock with magnetorheological fluid that can change from zero to high viscosity in milliseconds, enabling a racer’s elbow to be “locked out” going downhill, allowing full control. With this, Lawwill is creating a true cyborg rider.
For the second year, Cycle World played a more significant role in The Quail Motorcycle Gathering, with a Saturday-morning ride that attracted 70 riders and coddled them with breakfast (and the chance to roll with staffers like Editor-in-Chief Mark Hoyer—on a 1975 Honda Gold Wing to help celebrate the bike’s 40th anniversary). The Cycle World Tour Award went to a Japanese bike, the nicely modded six-cylinder 1980 Honda CBX of Dean F. Ruston. A lovely and painfully original 1951 Mondial 125 Bialbero GP racer won Best of Show.
The breadth of attendees at The Quail event seemed as broad as the bikes, from kids up to seniors. As a sweeping generalization, it appears the old guard (boomers and earlier) are largely into executing perfect restorations up to 1970s bikes, while millennials have jumped into customizing full on. Two outfits displaying modern powertrains wrapped in retro-themed bodywork included Revival Cycles (using Ducati and Harley-Davidson V-twins brought to The Quail) and British Customs (Triumph twins). In between were Gen Xers, whose populace aligns either (or both) way(s). Crammed into a paragraph, it all might seem a little fuzzy. But on the show field, where you see a Dude Dynasty-looking guy with an alloy-bodied modern Ducati café racer, a young dude with a liquid-cooled motocrosser-based bobber, or a middle-aged accountant type guarding a perfect Honda CL350, it all starts to jell. We like what is relevant to us, in our world, in our time.
Likes. Relevance. World. Time. Those are all big things, each with their own density, mass, and force. But like the tumbling of gasses inside a four-valve cylinder head, on the five acres of lawn at The Quail golf course on a cool Saturday last spring, they all found a way to mix together, work together, and hang together. The very health of the motorcycle industry and culture was on display, with the next generation stepping in and taking the sport and lifestyle into a new chapter built upon those who have come before it.
