Do-it-yourself culture has been popular for years, a lasting tenet of the American character. It’s inspiring to see people get off their couches and flip a house – or even flip a pancake. This culture extends to the motoring world, too, with plenty of backyard mechanics working on muscle cars and tinkering with motorcycles.
Building a custom bike is nothing new. Post-war America was treated to a flood of motorcycle manufacturers when aircraft builders went back to their peacetime endeavors. This quite literally gave counter-culture mobility in the US – think Easy Rider, Hell’s Angels, and you get the picture.
Customizing motorcycles was a way to identify one’s self with a particular culture in Europe, too. In Italy, Germany and England (no coincidence that these countries produced the most motorcycles in Europe), hipsters known as rockers built street racers, while their American hippie counterparts built custom, long-range cruisers to explore the vastness of the States.
The Rockers in 50s and 60s Europe, especially England, modified motorcycles that were low, fast and light. They built what were known as café racers. Café racer also referred to the person racing the bike.They chopped-off the fenders, cut-down the seat and lowered the handlebars to create a racing position, and endlessly modified the engines to achieve a “ton.” A ton was the name given to achieving 100 mph between cafés located at specific intervals on the then newly built British highways. It could also refer to racing a loop from one café to another and then back before the end of a rockabilly song on the jukebox.
The Beatles were once asked in a famous press conference whether they were mods or rockers, to which Ringo Starr famously answered, “We're mockers.”
Music and motors were intrinsically a part of both the mod and the rocker cultures. The mods listened to ska and soul and customized Vespa and Lambretta scooters, while the rockers sought the “ton” on modified Nortons, BSAs and Triumphs, with the sounds of late 50s and early 60s rockabilly artists like the Big Bopper, Elvis, Eddie Cochran, Bill Haley and Carl Perkins.
The rocker motorcycle culture has merged into today’s general motorcycle enthusiast culture. Rockabilly culture has seen its share of revivals over the years, and café racer culture has seen a few revivals of its own. We are in the midst of one now.
2008’s AMA Vintage Motorcycle Days event, a national event held at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course in Lexington, Ohio, featured Triumph as the marque of the year (BSA was the featured marque in 2009). Among the many different types of vintage motorcycles were hundreds of café racers of various makes and configurations, proving the café culture is still strong among vintage motorcycle enthusiasts.
Triumph is currently selling a production café racer called the Thruxton, named after the: “racetrack where Triumph ruled the roost. Inspired by the Ton Up Boys of the 1960’s.” Norton, who has been making production racers since before World War II, is now building and selling factory-built café racers. They are out-of-the-box racers that combine modern suspension and engine technology with classic café racer aggressive style.
Whatever one decides to ride, there is a support system in place to keep one’s bike on the road. VinMoto is “not a club,” as the website states matter-of-factly. It’s a virtual place to connect with other vintage motorcycle enthusiasts. Keeping a 40-plus-year-old piece of machinery in safe working order often requires advice from various specialist, expert sources. The VinMoto support system is organized into email lists for “talking shop, sharing ideas, tips and tech info, swapping parts, organizing rides, weekly events, etc.” Eleven cities are involved, and Cleveland is the newest.
A running conversation between Phil Waters – scooter/motorcycle expert and owner of Pride of Cleveland Scooters in Lakewood, Ohio – and the creators of VinMoto began at last years’ AMA Vintage Motorcycle Days. It was then decided to make it official. Tuesday night is the regular night to meet and ride, the location for which is usually posted a day or two ahead of time on CleVinMoto's Facebook page.
Café Racers are the ultimate combination of sexy sleekness, brutal power, nostalgia history, and just plain old fun. If you are into motorcycles, checking these events out will get you instantly hooked.
To learn more, visit CleVinMoto's website, and follow them on Facebook.
