Here’s a great short video to get the blood flowing! A customized Scrambler taken through its paces in a derelict urban setting; great stuff!
A Fast Triumph at Bonneville ~ Gotta love the color!
Von Dutch tank on a 70’s Bonnie
Here’s a beautiful lightly custom Triumph, bobbed and given a nice monochromatic appearance centered on a tank painted and pinstriped by the hand of Von Dutch (a.k.a. Kenny Howard); motorcycle and hotrod custom painter and pinstriper extraordinaire from the sixties. This bike sold recently at an auction of Bud Ekins items by Bonhams.
Bud Ekins 1930-2007
Triumph motorcycles in the sixties can’t be discussed without mentioning Bud Ekins; one time owner of a Triumph dealership in California, desert racer and Syeve McQueen stand in (“The Jump” on The Great Escape) he appears to have an old school coolness when atop his bikes. He ran the ISDN (International Six Days Trial) winning a gold medal 4 times and silver once, no mean feat.
Logos and branding
Kawasaki W800 – Bonnie lookalike
Several years ago Kawasaki came out with the W650, a short lived cult classic which had the looks of a British twin, even more so than the then newly debuted Triumph Bonneville, and the unleaking, electric unfailing reliabiliy of a modern bike. Well Team Green have come out with a larger one, to compete directly with the Bonnie perhaps, but this time in classic Kawasaki colors of the time. This should sell by the truckload… sign me up!
Some Triumph specific locations in and near Chicago
Making the Triumph look Vintage
Bonnies on the Silver Screen
Racing Bonneville
Judge Dredd – Lawman of the Future
Motorcycles in Comic Art 2000AD INFERNO
One of the outstanding pieces graphically was the story Inferno; loosely based on the movie Rollerball (the sublime 1975 version NOT the 2002 one!). A future sport being a mix of Football, Basketball, Baseball, Speedway, MotoCross, Kung-Fu based in an arena of cinders with jetpacker flyers and a healthy dollop of ultraviolence thrown in. Artie Gruber being one classic character. Massimo Belardinellis bikes were sumptuous choppers with outlandish engineering and cool riders with harpoon-line powergloves. Sadly the plug was pulled due to the overly violent nature of of the action.
Motorcycles in Comics – 2000AD
Back in the late seventies I read the then new comic 2000AD ~ fantastic and violent stories of the near future. Classic artwork by the likes of Pino, Ezquerra, Bolland and Belardinelli graced the pages. I would devour these stories again and again until the pages were threadbare. I would then draw the action scenes and allow the oft featured bikes to soak in to my subconscious. One early story M.A.C.H. 1 centered around a character called John Probe, with superhuman strengths (man activated by compu-puncture hyperpower! `~ “Six Million Dollar Man”?) Many of his stories involved bikers on the top models at the time, as well as a few fantastical ones.
Enjoy the art…. beginning with Probe gunning the throttle of a Benelli Sei.
Another early story involved the invasion of Britain by some ficticious Eastern Block country called Volga; it took the rough edged resistance leader, Bill Savage, a lorry driver armed with his shotgun and working class quips to save the day. However the Volgs were armed with fast sportsbikes equiped with machine guns.