John Surtees, left, shows off his Vincent special – a Rapide engine in a Manx Norton frame
Surtees Archive
This year’s Goodwood Revival (September 18-20) pays homage to a short-lived but legendary motorcycle maker. Vincent Motorcycles was founded in 1928 and bankrupt by 1955 but the machines produced by the company during that brief period can still make grown men shudder.
Gonzo journalist Hunter S Thompson was obsessed with Vincents, writing in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas that the Vincent Black Shadow is “pure hell on the straightaway – it’ll outrun an F-111 until take-off”.
The marque was founded by 20-year-old Cambridge engineering undergraduate Phil Vincent, whose brilliant mind influenced motorcycle design for several decades, even though initially he wasn’t taken seriously.
“A young motorcyclist presented himself on a strange and remarkably ugly motorcycle he had ridden down from Cambridge,” wrote the editor of The Motor Cycle of their first meeting. “Mr Vincent told me he was going to become a motorcycle manufacturer. The machine he was going to produce was a spring-frame motorcycle with a triangulated unbreakable tubular frame. He said there would be no difficulty over money because his father owned an estancia in South America.”
“Gonzo journalist Hunter S Thompson was obsessed with Vincents”
Vincent set up shop in a garage in Stevenage, north of London, then purchased the remnants of the bankrupt HRD brand, so his first motorcycles were named Vincent HRDs. They weren’t much good either, because their proprietary engines were unreliable, so Vincent and newly hired engineer Phil Irving (who later worked for the Brabham Formula 1 team) set about designing their first complete motorcycles.
The Meteor 500cc four single arrived in 1935 and was soon followed by the Rapide 1000cc V-twin, equipped with seminal cantilever rear suspension. Both just in time to be overtaken by world events. During the war, Vincent manufactured munitions, though all the while his brain was alive with new ideas which he hoped to put into practice once peace broke out.
These are happy days for Aprilia, which leads the MotoGP constructors’ championship for the first time in its history. And there’s no one better to tell its story than team manager Paolo Bonora, who joined Aprilia in 2002 to do pioneering electronics work on the Cube MotoGP bike
Thus the Series B Rapide of 1946 was radically innovative, eliminating the traditional tubular steel frame by incorporating the engine as part of the chassis. This, plus combining the engine and gearbox – not yet the norm – and pivoting the swingarm off the back of the gearbox allowed a shorter wheelbase for quicker steering. Ducati’s current Desmosedici MotoGP bike pivots its swingarm off the gearbox for the same reason.
The entire motorcycle was, in fact, beautifully thought out, not only to maximise performance but also to reduce maintenance and improve aesthetics, with oil pumps, plumbing and so on built-in rather than attached externally.
The Series B was good for 110mph, making it the world’s fastest production motorcycle of the time. But Vincent wanted more. Next came the 125mph big-port Black Shadow and the Black Lightning race bike, the latter made famous by Rollie Free, who rode one to the US motorcycle land speed record, wearing only swimming trunks. Black Lightnings broke speed records the world over.
At the same time the booming V-twin became the dominant force in the 1000cc Clubmans TT on the Isle of Man. This was an amateur event but that didn’t bother Vincent, who preferred building motorcycles that could be raced by privateer riders to making one-off factory specials, which bore little resemblance to production machines.
The two Phils – Vincent and Irving – also produced an upgraded Comet, the Grey Flash, for racing in the 500cc class.
One of these was bought – in bits for £70 – by London motorcycle dealer Jack Surtees, for his 16-year-old son John, the only racer to win the greatest prizes on two and four wheels, the MotoGP and Formula 1 championships. Surtees junior scored his very first victory aboard the Flash in 1950 and joined Vincent as an apprentice engineer the following year. “Working at Vincent’s was a key step in my development as a competitor who could fully understand his machinery,” recalled Surtees, who commuted between home and Stevenage riding borrowed Rapides or Black Shadows.
Three decades later Surtees was still in love with Vincents, restoring his Grey Flash and rebuilding a Black Lightning special he had first put together in the 1950s.
Sadly, the brilliance of the two Phils and the reverence in which their creations were held were not enough to keep Vincent on the road. Selling expensive motorcycles during the post-war years of austerity was never going to be easy, whatever their reputation. The last Vincent came off the Stevenage production line at Christmas 1955.
Five Vincents will be at the Goodwood Revival weekend: a Black Lightning, a Black Shadow, two Rapides and a Grey Flash, which will wear No97, the same number Surtees used on his Grey Flash at Goodwood in 1951. If you don’t see them you will hear them.
