Bear Tracks | Which bike would you buy for a million bucks?

A million dollar sale raises the question: just what are motorcycles for? Bear heads to Palazzo del Ghiaccio for the CMM MAD exhibition to see these rare machines...

A Cyclone board track racer, restored to within a fraction of a millimetre of its bright yellow life, has sold at auction for more than a million US dollars, becoming the first motorcycle to reach that level. Forgive me for not whooping and hollering all down the Vegas Strip.

König’s 500cc two-stroke race bike looks pretty conventional – you’d never think that a Kiwi mechanic had built it from scratch.

This is a machine designed to be used in a sport that no longer exists; it will never be ridden (which, as the buyer has possibly forgotten, is what motorcycles are intended to do); it is in fact not really a motorcycle at all but a collectible, just like a vintage Golden Fleece fuel pump or a Castrol oil can. It will no doubt disappear into a private collection.

Read previous Bear Tracks articles here…

This thing has no practical use whatsoever. It’s too big to use as a paperweight and too fragile to stick on a plinth outside your house. It is rare, that’s true. Only some six Cyclones are thought to remain of the 300 or so built. Is it impertinent of me to note that there are many other motorcycles that are not only even rarer, but also more interesting?

The world’s only Moto Major will never win any beauty contests, but it’s fascinating once you start looking at it.

Take Salvatore Maiorca’s Moto Major. The Turin-based designer created the 350cc motorcycle in 1948 in association with Fiat, who were pleased to see their design technology and prototyping equipment demonstrated. The bike is not only unique but also a tour-de-force of fascinating technology. Its flowing, all-enveloping fairing is not fibreglass but steel; suspension is by rubber cylinders inside the wheels; those jet-like silver attachments are the exhausts. Maiorca’s intention was to produce a truly avant-garde motorcycle both mechanically and aesthetically, and except for the unfortunate colour he succeeded. Sadly, the Moto Major would have been expensive to build, and Fiat was not really interested in manufacturing it in quantity. Its existence was enough.

MV Magnis look unconventional, and each one is unique, but they all carry the unmistakable stamp of Arturo’s genius.

Today, the Moto Major is owned by a member of the outrageous “club” Collezione Motociclista Milanese (CMM). Members own an eye-popping bunch of rare and often unique motorcycles and make them available for Moto Arte Design (MAD) exhibitions. These are held at irregular intervals to coincide with EICMA, the annual Milan motorcycle show. I have been fortunate enough to get a look at two MAD exhibitions, including the first one back in 2007.

I was talking to CMM member Roberto Crepaldi on his CR&S stand at EICMA when he mentioned the exhibition at the Palazzo del Ghiaccio to me. “You must see it,” he said, “many interesting motos of my friends are there.” Coming from a man who owns a Britten, that recommendation carried weight. And since the bikes came from several different private collections, I would not normally have had the chance to see them together. I was on the bus out to via Piranesi and the White Palace that afternoon.

It might seem weird to put a boat engine into a motorcycle frame, but the Thais adapt V8s out of cars for their longtail boats so fair’s fair.

Some of the motorcycles on display were not only unique, but also from unique sources. Fiat might have been an unexpected sponsor of a motorcycle design, but what about boat engine builder König? They became a motorcycle manufacturer after Kiwi Kim Newcombe started work there.

The bike has taken part in more competitions than any other Britten and has an enviable success rate of 50 per cent wins from more than 40 starts including Daytona…

Newcombe thought König’s 500cc two-stroke engine had potential in the motorcycle World Championship. With the enthusiastic support of management, he built a frame and the resulting bike took 10th place in the 1971 West German Grand Prix. More success followed and the bike, ridden by Newcombe, finished second in the 1973 Grand Prix – behind Phil Read and ahead of Giacomo Agostini on their MVs. More engines were produced and were quite successful in sidecar racing, but as far as I can tell the original bike remains the only one built.

Yes, it’s a real Britten! The man himself approved the unconventional paint job and gave it the nickname “Black Beauty”.

While we’re talking unique, let’s talk black Britten. If you have ever seen another one of John Britten’s V1000s in the metal, you will be surprised by this motorcycle’s paint. All of the other nine bikes are blue, while #003, the Britten-CR&S in the photo, presents in the CR&S racing livery with the checkered line. John Britten himself bestowed the nickname “Black Beauty” on the bike. Belying its immaculate look, the bike has taken part in more competitions than any other Britten and has an enviable success rate of 50 per cent wins from more than 40 starts including Daytona.

Do uniquely modified bikes count as unique? When the MV factory closed in 1977, Arturo Magni, who had been MV Agusta’s Sports Director since the 1950s, decided to reverse a fateful decision of Count Agusta. The Count had decreed that street versions of MV’s extremely successful bikes should have heavy shaft drives to prevent “untrained” riders from riding the bikes in too sporty a fashion.

stamp of Arturo’s genius. 6 The combination of a Vincent engine with a Norton frame produces a Norvin, but no two are the same.

Along with his son, Magni converted MV four-cylinder bikes to chain drive. I’ve ridden a 750 America with the original shaft drive and can only imagine what the bike would have been like with a chain. The Magnis added capacity increases to 830 and even 860cc as well as the famous curved exhausts you can see, electronic ignition, a dry clutch and much else. I would suggest that each bike was effectively unique. As well as chain drive, the bike in the photo has just about all of the Magni accessories that were ever available. It even has an aluminium tank made by Arturo Magni himself.

Café racers fall into a similar category to Magni MVs, although each was designed by its owner. They emerged from the collective mind of youthful British motorcyclists and manifested in a remarkable variety of machines. Whatever your opinion of the café racer movement and whichever of the motorcycles it produced speaks to you most strongly, you would have trouble denying that this bike represents the epitome of the concept.

Combining the best racing frame built at the time, the Norton Manx’s “featherbed”, with the power of Vincent’s 1000cc vee twin the Norvin is a work of art. A rideable one, which continues to bellow its way along country lanes to this day. True café racers were produced by craftsmen, not factories, and each one differs from the next. This example was built in Turin at the beginning of the 1960s with a 1953 Vincent Rapide engine, Fontana drum brakes and Ceriani forks.

What do you think? Would you buy a Britten (even though there are ten of them) or a one-off Magni MV or café racer rather than blowing a cool mill on a Cyclone board tracker?