Original subtitles

[film whirring]

[engines roaring distantly]

[engines roaring]

[soft music]

[engines continue roaring]

- [Marty] Riding flat out with his feet out the back

and in a bathing suit, sneakers on his feet,

probably the most famous motorcycle photograph ever.

- [Ewan] During the 1940s and '50s,

Vincent set more speed records than any other manufacturer.

It proved that the Vincent Motorcycle

was the work of a genius.

With the aid of unearthed family films and recordings,

this is the untold story of Philip Vincent.

- The reason guys write songs about Vincents

is because it's arguably hard to find

a more iconic motorcycle.

- [Commentator] Bob Burns roars past

three shattering, ear-splitting runs on Black Lighting.

- A true a hundred-mile-an-hour motorcycle.

- [Alain] Without any doubt,

the most famous bike of all time.

- [Ewan] Today, collectors have paid over a million dollars

for bikes which carry the Vincent name.

- Well the Vincent, it's like a mythical beast

and very few are able to get their hands on one.

[engine roaring]

- It was a short while, that they were really big,

but it's so important that it still lives on.

- [Ewan] Who was Philip Vincent?

How did his machine set so many records?

Sell today for millions-

- [Auctioneer] Well done, the Aussies.

- [Ewan] Yet their designer end his days in poverty.

- [John] They were there to make motorcycles

and they forgot about making money.

- [Dee] He was becoming less coherent

and he'd start to wander off in flights of fantasy almost.

- [John] And a very aristocratic lady

that he courted for a long time and totally lost out with.

- I did say to him one day,

"Well, why don't you ride a motorbike anymore?"

and he said, "Well, I can't now."

"If you can't do it anymore, do you love it as much?"

- [Ivan] He said, "I'm going to let you know

that maybe in the next few weeks,

this company's not going to exist anymore."

- I think the strain of it all, you know,

shortened her life and his as well.

- [John S.] The tragic thing for Vincents

and for Mr. Vincent was that accident because-

[camera clatters]

he was a changed man.

[wind whistling]

[engine roaring faintly]

[wind continues whistling]

[recorder clicks]

- [Ewan] Vincent had no interest in staying in Argentina.

His family, typical of the colonial upper middle classes,

saw his future in England

at one of its most exclusive

and most expensive private schools.

[jaunty music]

- [Ewan] Harrow boys, Harrovians,

were known to be arrogant, ambitious, standoffish,

and Philip Vincent could be all of these.

- It was while he was at Harrow,

he started drawing motorbikes.

He kept little books with masses of drawings there.

And indeed, one of those drawings was the first one

where you saw the V-twin engine design.

[jaunty music continues]

- He was mad about bikes

and apparently, he even had a motorbike at Harrow

that he tinkered around with.

And that was his driving force.

- [Ewan] Fees then, as now,

were out of reach to all but the very rich.

The school turned out bishops by the hundred,

generals by the dozen,

and no fewer than six prime ministers,

but only one motorcycle designer.

His privileged upbringing imbued him with a quality

which would be tested to the limit during his lifetime.

A breathtaking self-confidence.

- When he was finishing at Harrow,

his father said, "Well, you better go

and do mechanical engineering or something at university,"

so he got a place in Cambridge at King's College,

but he felt it was just all too slow

and all too old-fashioned.

He said, "They're not keeping up with things.

I'm going to build my own motorbike."

- [Ewan] By the time he went up to Cambridge

to read engineering in 1926,

the quest for speed had become a global obsession.

[engine roars]

- [Commentator] On those wet, slithery sands,

people held their breath as time and again,

Blue Bird made her runs.

Gearbox troubles, speeds just short of the record,

but finally a triumph.

The new world's record stood at 174 miles per hour.

- [Ewan] And there was no more famous

or dangerous theater of speed than The Isle of Man TT.

Since 1907, races on the island have claimed over 250 lives.

Few better to provide this passion

than Vincent's teenage hero, First World War fighter,

and TT winner, Howard Raymond Davis.

- My father absolutely worshiped HRD.

- [Ewan] Howard Davis remained the only competitor

to win the TT on a motorcycle of his own design,

and the only one to win the Senior 500 race on a 350.

- [Ewan] His team of riders

were some of the most talented and bravest.

- [Ewan] Vincent was becoming obsessed

with building his own motorcycle and impatient to do so.

In 1928, his time at Cambridge University

came to an abrupt end.

[gentle music]

- Eventually, the college master

wrote a letter to my grandfather saying,

"I think you need to remove your son.

He's spending far too much time

playing about building motorbikes

and not enough time in lectures."

So of course, my grandfather confronted him with the letter

and said, "Right, what are we going to do about this?"

So my father said, "What they're teaching me is all old.

I've got my own ideas; I've got new ideas.

I want to build those."

And my grandfather at this point said,

"Okay, that's what we're going to do."

[gentle music]

- [Ewan] One of the family ranches in Argentina was sold.

For the sum of 450 pounds.

At just 19, Philip Vincent

became the world's youngest motorcycle manufacturer.

- The fact that HRD's name had become available

made it the obvious choice

to buy it and to start manufacturing.

- [Ewan] A factory was found in Stevenage

and the Vincent HRD was born.

- He was an absolutely hardcore motorcycle enthusiast

with a vision of some unique

and beneficial redesigns of the basic motorcycle.

- [Ewan] With his closest friend, Bill Clark,

Vincent would travel and compete in trials across the UK

promoting the motorcycles by riding them.

Clark was a brave, gifted rider

and one of the few believers in Vincent's radical ideas.

- [Ewan] A young man with a vision, with money,

but no experience of business.

It was the gambler's first roll of the dice.

[troubling music]

A year later, the stock markets

of London and New York collapsed.

Vincent was in trouble.

With the factory on the edge of folding,

Clark had persuaded his father to make a cash injection,

giving the firm breathing space

to weather the worst of the depression.

It was a gesture Vincent would never forget.

The company would be selling highly-expensive motorcycles,

in a country which, as J.B. Priestley observed,

was becoming one of-

- [Tim] Slums, fried fish shops looking much worse to me

than some of the French towns I saw at the end of the war.

- [Ewan] Yet Priestley spotted an emerging world too.

Then as now, there was more than one Britain

and this was one of-

- [Tim] Cinemas and dance halls and cafes,

cocktail bars, Woolworth's, motor coaches,

factory girls looking like actresses.

- [Ewan] Vincent's customers would be from this Britain

dashing early street racers known as Promenade Percies.

A million motorcycles took their owners to work,

but to this cohort,

style, performance, speed were everything.

[engine roaring]

[mellow didgeridoo music]

Some 7,000 miles from Argentina,

another maverick was growing up.

Like Vincent, isolated in a sprawling outback,

he too would drop out of college.

Phil Irving was also as driven, confident,

and prodigiously bright as his future partner.

He crossed to England from Australia

on the back of an HRD sidecar outfit,

and in 1931, joined the firm.

Lennon had met his McCartney.

[shutter clicks]

What was the secret

of motorcycling's most successful partnership?

Vincent's grandson visits Phil Irving's widow

to find out. - [Phil] Hello, Edith,

nice to meet you. - So lovely to meet you too.

- [Phil] I feel like I've waited my whole life for this.

- Yes.

- Yeah, it's funny,

that's obviously quite special to you.

- [Edith] Well, any photograph of Phil

is special to me, of course.

[laid-back music]

When I was studying,

I would have to read and read and read and read something

to make sure it stuck in.

Phil would read a page and that was it, it was there.

If geniuses are what people say geniuses are,

he definitely was because I had to live with him,

but there were times

when he was not an easy man to live with.

I just loved him like mad.

- Irving was a rough, tough sort of a guy.

- He was a very cool customer,

always straight to the point,

and an engineer who would hand grind a cam

and do it as best as a man who'd been doing it for 20 years.

He was a practical man down to his marrow

and yet capable of understanding anything

to do with higher mathematics or torque figures

or anything to do with spring rates,

anything that's just,

might as well be Dutch to a lot of people.

- Phil's theory was it's all common sense.

And that was Phil.

You do have to have the opportunist, which was Phil Vincent,

and then you have to have the realist, which is Phil Irving,

and between the two, they'll end up with a success.

Each needs each other to make it work.

- Irving would quite openly say

if something was crazy or not.

And I think there was an honesty between them.

- They got on fairly well basically.

Had their arguments, of course, naturally,

but your Phil had some wonderful ideas,

but sometimes they'd get a little bit above the top

and Phil would very gently bring him back down to earth.

And that's how the bike in the finish got designed

with its engine the way it was.

It's beautiful.

- [Ewan] The location of the factory in Stevenage

was as unconventional as the company itself.

30 miles north of London yet far removed

from the industrial heartlands of the British Midlands.

- When I went out there on the Green Line bus, I thought,

this is a hell of a nicer area

than living in the middle of Birmingham, for example.

- [Ewan] Philip Vincent's self-belief and vision

helped recruit the best motorcycle minds of the day.

It was a playground of two-wheeled talent.

- It was like a very early iteration

of the sort of campus

a company like Google would have today,

where you have a lot

of extremely high-level, intelligent people

that are at the forefront of what they're doing

and they're in this one place working on it together.

- [Ewan] Factory riders lacked access to a racetrack,

but they still needed to test at speed.

A game of cat-and-mouse with the local police

became a regular occurrence.

- The thing was that Vincent motorbike was way faster

than any of the vehicles the police had,

so they'd be up there waiting to catch them for speeding

'cause they knew they were going to test the bikes.

- [Ewan] Mostly their luck held,

until George Brown, the fastest of the test team,

was arrested for clocking up nearly 110 miles an hour

on the Great North Road,

only for the magistrate to declare that-

[gavel banging]

"110 miles an hour on a motorcycle is impossible.

Dismiss the charges."

And warned the police

not to waste the court's time in the future.

[engines rumbling]

The factory had entered a team into the 1934 TT.

Vincent decided his bikes were ready

to go up against the best in the world.

[engines roaring]

- [Ewan] Bought-in engines from JAP let them down badly.

Top speeds were 10 miles an hour below the leading Norton's.

Vincent swore he never wanted

to see another JAP engine again.

Irving announced that he could design a better power unit

with his hands tied behind his back,

but could he?

Could the factory build it?

The decision was made to try,

a massive undertaking for a small firm.

What's more, the new 500cc engine

would need to be designed, manufactured,

and tested in just a few months.

- It wasn't until Irving arrived on the scene

that they had the confidence

to go ahead with their own engine,

which was, you know, a very brave thing to do.

- [Ewan] The Comet was light, it was powerful,

but would the new single-cylinder machine

have any chance against the might

of Norton, Moto Guzzi or Velocette?

[film clicks and whirs]

In June, 1935,

the factory team, Vincent with a Cine Camera,

set off for the TT.

[mellow music]

After the disaster of 1934, another poor showing

could prove fatal for the young company.

[engines roaring]

One lap of the Isle of Man sees thousands of gear changes.

Bike and rider are steadily punished.

The factory showing was impressive

with finishes at 7th, 9th, and 12th.

The small firm pioneering rear suspension

and untried power units was firmly on the map

and his many skeptics were silenced, at least for now.

Vincent was quick to make the most of the results.

His dream of building fast, innovative motorcycles

was, at last, becoming a reality,

but the customers wanted more.

- [Ewan] A Stevenage-built one liter V-twin

had long been his dream.

- [Ewan] Like the Vincent, the Brough was hand built.

Each one came with a guarantee to reach 100 miles per hour.

Riders included Lawrence of Arabia.

George Brough was a marketing genius.

He somehow convinced customers

that his motorcycles were built by men in white coats.

His chutzpah seduced

the world's most prestigious car maker too,

and Brough was sanctioned to sell the bikes

as "the Rolls Royce of motorcycles."

The new machine would need

to surpass the Brough in every sphere;

be lower, lighter, faster, but how?

Based on what?

- [Jay] This is a 500cc single bike,

and of course, this is the Series A V-twin.

The rumor is that, you know the old story

that Phil Irving was sitting at his desk

and someone laid a piece of tracing paper

with a cylinder on it next to that,

"Oh my God, a V-twin, look at that."

I find it hard to believe

that a brilliant engineer hadn't thought of that already.

- When Phil first designed

that high-camshaft engine of the Series A,

no one had produced a V-twin with such a short wheelbase

or with such handling.

From a business point of view, someone must have accepted

it would cost as much as a Grand Prix machine

and the forecast that there would be enough people

with that amount of money ready and willing to pay for it.

- [Ewan] The 1937 Rapide stunned the buying public

with a top speed of 110 miles per hour.

It was the fastest motorcycle in the world.

[light jazz music]

Vincent seemed to have got all he ever wished for.

His motorcycles were setting records, winning races,

and plaudits from the press.

His secretary, Ethel Chelsom, became his lover,

sharing his passion for the good things in life,

fast motorcycles, exotic cars, international travel.

- Naturally, human beings speculate

about the boss and his private life

and at times unkindly perhaps,

but the fact is she was his secretary for so long

and we thought, well, surely to goodness,

it wouldn't be that farfetched if he finally popped the word

and said, "Let's get married."

[air raid sirens blaring] [artillery booming]

[serious music]

- [Ewan] For Vincent, there was no time

for plans of marriage.

Once again, the future of the small firm was in the balance.

The war was a hammer blow for the company.

The machines they built were unsuitable for military use,

racing stopped virtually overnight

as a young John Surtees witnessed.

- Although I was taken to races before the war,

I don't remember anything about racing during the war

because there was no activity.

- [Ewan] For Vincent himself, it meant finding a lifeline

of war work to keep his company afloat.

- Sort of besotted with people going off to war

so they had women working there making munitions.

- [Ewan] Philip Vincent's contacts would prove useful

in securing access to senior government personnel,

but his arrogance could cost him dear.

A dispute over the design of some parts soon escalated.

[door slams]

[bright music]

- [Ewan] Miles from the Luftwaffe's bombing targets

of London, Coventry, and Liverpool,

the factory's eccentric location

was in some ways a blessing.

Stevenage suffered privations,

yet for a young man of means in a reserved occupation,

life went on.

Once again, there was more than one England,

But in 1943, the war became all too personal for Vincent.

Bill Clark had risen quickly in the RAF

to become a squadron leader

flying Stirling bombers out of RAF Chedburgh.

On a freezing night in February,

his crew were first out of 10 bombers headed for Hamburg.

Just six returned.

The flight wireless operator

who survived due to Clark's bravery that night

would recall the events later.

- [Tim] On the outskirts of the target

flack hit the fuselage.

At the same time, the upper gunner fired two bursts.

The enemy fighters' second burst

set fire to the incendiaries.

At this moment, an enemy Junkers 88 shot one engine out.

The rear gunner reported another enemy fighter,

who was then killed.

The captain, with the presence of mind

to fly avoiding the sea to give his crew an opportunity

to bail out over land.

After the enemy fighter broke away,

the engineer bailed, then the bombardier.

As I reached the front escape hatch,

the captain was still at the controls.

Squadron Leader Clark's final words were,

"I'm sorry, chaps, I couldn't do better than this."

- [Ewan] When Dutch civilians arrived

at the wreckage of the Stirling,

his body was still at the controls.

Bill Clark's son, Michael, Vincent's God's son,

was just three months old.

[gentle music]

[strained music]

- [Ewan] They looked towards a land fit for heroes.

The riders who had lost friends and loved ones,

had witnessed indescribable horrors,

deserved nothing less than an all-new motorcycle.

As George Orwell put it, "We grow greater or we grow less."

- [John S.] How many peoples all went along and,

you know, treated the engine as a stressed member?

We'll put a steering head on this,

put a rear suspension on there, and that's it.

- [Ewan] The new design would dispense of a frame altogether

leaving behind the last vestiges

of the Edwardian motorized bicycle.

Against the odds, the small company achieved

what giants Triumph and BSA found impossible.

The Series B Rapide launched in 1946,

a generation ahead of its predecessors and its rivals.

[mellow jazzy music]

For Philip Vincent,

a motorcycle was always more than a vehicle,

it was a statement, an expression of his ideas.

- [Ewan] New ideas, quality were everything.

He looked down on his rivals with disdain.

- [Ewan] It was a sign of Vincent's ambition or arrogance

that a world scarred by war

deserved a 110-mile-an-hour motorcycle

which no one needed and few could afford.

- Each one was essentially hand-built,

so consequently, you can't put out that many a day.

- For a factory that was making a hand-produced product,

it was by no stretch of the imagination,

a mass-produced motorcycle,

- [Jay] They'd build one, "Whew! Ah, Nigel, well done.

Let's take the day off. Whew.

What? We have to build another one tomorrow?"

You know?

I mean, it just, mass production

really was not something that they did very well.

[ethereal music]

- [Ewan] Grandsden Aerodrome near Stevenage,

Vincent took the chance to try out his new models

on a closed circuit.

[engine roaring]

He wasn't wearing a crash helmet.

The gearbox seized at over 80 miles an hour.

[camera clatters]

- I've been led to believe, but believed at the time.

Okay, I knew he'd crashed and he'd injured his head,

but it's only since then that I've been told

that he was in a coma for God knows how long.

- Anybody who gets injured is a tragedy,

but it was also a tragedy

in that it had that ongoing effect.

- [Ewan] Vincent suffered severe head injuries.

The full extent of these would not emerge until much later.

[spirited music]

- [Ewan] It would be the first of several visits

which had the potential

to transform the fortunes of the company.

[rustic folksy music] ♪ Said Red Molly ♪

♪ To James ♪

♪ Well, that's a fine motorbike ♪

♪ Make a girl feel special in any such a way ♪

- [Ewan] Whilst post-war Britain suffered major rationing,

everything from food to petrol was in short supply.

The U.S. had open roads, cheap gas,

and some of the bravest, most skilled racers in the world.

♪ It's a Vincent Black Lightning, 1952 ♪

[engines roaring]

- [Ewan] Rollie Free was one of them.

In the late 1930s, he'd scored numerous victories

on two and four wheels.

Harley Davidson had held

the American motorcycle speed record since 1937.

Free and the wealthy John Edgar had read about the Vincent.

They'd seen the early models

which made their way to the U.S.

Edgar wanted to own America's fastest motorcycle

and Free wanted to ride it.

[engines roaring]

- [William] My father went to see Mickey Martin,

who was the local Vincent dealer in California,

and talked about a Vincent to run in Bonneville.

Mickey Martin wrote to his friend Rollie Free

and told Rollie that John Edgar was going to have a Vincent

to take to Bonneville and if he would like to ride it,

and of course, Rollie being Rollie, the answer was yes.

[light music]

- [Ewan] In California, Vincent held meetings with the pair

and dispatched an order to his factory.

- Meeting Philip Vincent for dinner in Los Angeles,

my father thought that Philip was a bit odd,

but after a couple of scotches

and realizing how totally dedicated Philip was,

they got along well together.

- [Ewan] A prototype Black Lightning

was built in six frantic weeks.

Testing in England on public roads

was limited but promising.

- Ted came down there

and he had Rollie Free's Vincent engine in a slave frame.

It was on the Vincent two-inch pipes,

and, you know, the Lightning pipes.

He didn't turn into the factory, he just wound that thing.

Now they would do about 90 in bottom gear.

And he rode it up to the village of Graveley,

where we used to have a warehouse,

and turned around and came back.

He got there and clocked in before I did. [laughs]

- [Ewan] The bike made it to the USA just in time.

Harley's record stood at 136 miles per hour.

Vincent assured Free and Edgar the machine could reach 150,

but could it?

It was barely run-in.

Could Rollie Free do it?

He was 47 years old.

All his major victories had come years earlier

and he was out of shape.

- Free was just a little plump from being,

you know, past his prime.

And there was something about hamburgers,

and if, you know, if I would've cut back and...

- [Ewan] The Salt Flats in Utah

sit at an elevation of over 4,000'.

There's plenty of space, but the air is thin.

It's unkind to engines.

The surface is hard-packed rock salt,

which can split and splinter without warning.

Any rider taking a high-speed fall on a motorcycle

risks broken bones,

but the greatest danger at Bonneville

is not broken bones, it's abrasions.

A blowout, a seizure, a speed wobble,

and the surface would act like a grinder.

As the day unfolded, it turned out Rollie Free

would risk more than anyone before or since

in pursuit of a record.

- [Rollie] Every chance I got

when I got to ride the Vincent, of course,

and found out how fast it was,

I couldn't wait to go up to get a record from him.

[engine roaring]

- [Jerry] Rollie made a total of eight passes that day.

In other words, you go up and you come back

and you have to take an average of those two runs.

- [Ewan] Adjustments were made, sprockets changed.

144,

and then 148,

but the magic 150 seemed just out of reach,

and then Rollie stunned everyone.

- [Rollie] I took my clothes off, did a strip tease.

- [Jerry] Is that wind resistance or weight?

- [Rollie] Yes, wind resistance, wind resistance.

[uplifting music]

[engine roaring]

[engine continues roaring]

[shutter snaps]

[flash bulb plinks]

[shutter snaps]

- Well, this was probably

the most famous motorcycle photograph in the world,

and it might still be to this day.

I can't think of another iconic photo

that flashed around the world like this did back in the day,

You know, 150 miles an hour just wearing a bathing suit,

if you fell down, you fell down on salt.

Talk about rubbing salt in your wounds, oh my God.

- [Rollie] I made four runs that I truly do not remember.

They carried me in and put me in a motel with ice packs.

I'd have blacked out.

- The record was set, and I'm not saying

that it would not have been set with the leathers,

but it wasn't, and it didn't

- [Rollie] See, Joe had owned the record for 11 years,

I owned it for 21.

Or the Vincent did, I should say,

I didn't do anything except ride the damn thing.

Oh, you can go to sleep on the bike, it handled so good.

- [Interviewer] Mm-hmm.

- [Ewan] The runs made headlines around the world,

but Vincent and LA dealer, Mickey Martin,

wanted more than posters and press reports.

A radical and illegal plan was hatched.

Today, it would be called guerilla marketing.

[mischievous music]

A young LA racer was hired to travel hundreds of miles

from Los Angeles with one mission:

find the fastest bike or car in a town,

take them on and win.

That racer was Marty Dickerson.

- I didn't have a job at that time,

and a distributor for Vincent

had 28 brand new Rapides still in the crates

and he wasn't selling any, so he offered me

that if I would do it, he'd pay the expenses.

He couldn't pay me any salary or anything,

but I could get a commission if I sold any bikes,

so I agreed.

- [Ewan] Often run at night on the edge of town,

the special Harleys, Indians, and hot rods, which competed

were expertly tuned and fast.

Local riders and drivers

knew every bump and kink in the roads.

Marty was on and out-of-the-crate Rapide, no special parts,

no friends on hand to help, miles from home.

- I went into a drive-in restaurant,

parked out in the parking lot.

Then there was a big crowd of people around my bike.

Well, it turned out they were a bunch of bikers

and one guy says, "You ever race it?"

I thought about a bit,

and I said, "Well, that's what I'm here for.

Yeah, I'll race it."

[contentious showdown music]

The guy showed up with his '32 Ford Roadster,

it was a big engine in it.

And he looked down at the end of his nose like,

"Huh, another motorcycle."

I followed him out in the middle of nowhere.

It was pitch black dark.

And he gave the nod, and I screwed it on and I left him.

[engines roaring]

But he began to catch up with me,

and I went into third gear a little prematurely,

and it started misfiring, and sputtering.

He passed me, and I shifted into fourth gear.

I went by him like he was standing still.

He was a poor loser. [chuckles]

I met Phil Vincent

at Vincent Martin's distributorship in Burbank.

I asked him if it was feasible

that I could reach 135 miles an hour

on 8:1 compressions and regular pump gasoline.

He said "Yes, it's quite feasible."

And then I asked him, "Well, is it possible

that I could obtain some Lightning cams and exhaust pipes?"

He said, "Well, we might possibly be able

to provide you with that."

I said, "Well, how much do you think that'll cost me?"

He didn't even hesitate, he just looked down at me

and he said, "Son, speed is expensive." [chuckles]

He was so right. [laughs]

- [Ewan] Marty would go on

to reach 177 miles an hour on a Vincent.

The factory could see a market

for what would become the very first superbike,

[subdued music]

and perhaps the most famous name in motorcycling.

The new model was tuned

to reach an amazing 125 miles an hour.

Yet the Black Shadow very nearly didn't happen.

- It was a name that resonated, a Black Shadow.

Well, I mean, to call a motorcycle a Black Shadow

was really a minor triumph.

- Yeah, Strummer wrote this lyric for "This Is England"

and it starts off, "Black shadow of a Vincent

falls on a Triumph line.

[engine rumbling]

I've got my motorcycle jacket

but I'm walking all the time."

And personally, I feel all motorcycles should be black.

- [David] The best model made was the B Black Shadow.

It's a toy to ride compared with a heavier bike.

[subdued music continues]

- [Ewan] Montlhery, spring 1952,

the scene of the Vincent factory's record attempt

to maintain 100 miles an hour for 24 hours.

Since the 1920s, the purpose-built circuit

has been the destination

for Europe's fastest riders and drivers.

Its banked corners rise to near vertical.

It's fast, dramatic, and dangerous.

Tuned Black Shadows were shipped out

to the banked circuit near Paris.

As advanced as the motorcycles were,

the Britain the team left behind that May was,

as George Orwell noted,

a country still struggling to recover from the war.

Would the machines be up to the task?

Who would ride?

A young factory apprentice, John Surtees,

joined some of the top names from the UK and France.

- They looked around and who did they see?

An apprentice who'd been racing and everything else

and, "John, would you have a go?"

- [Ewan] Surtees' father, Jack, sold and raced Vincents,

and John's first taste of competition

was in the family sidecar.

- So I went out and I did some laps.

[exciting music]

The big thing about the bankings, of course,

is hanging on to them.

People said normally it's so bumpy,

I mean, whether it happens to be cars or bikes.

The bankings do the steering for you.

Your main problem you only need to watch is

being at the right place going on, and the place coming off,

and not, obviously, going over the top.

- [Ewan] They circulated for hours

at speeds of up to 140 miles an hour.

The searing heat wasn't the only challenge.

Tires, riders, engines, all took a hammering.

Their ambition was to maintain a speed

of 100 miles per hour for 24 hours.

That eluded the team,

but eight world endurance records were claimed that day.

[exciting music continues]

[fireworks popping]

His machines had become,

as the advertising accurately claimed,

the world's fastest standard motorcycle.

Vincent's confidence was at an all-time high.

In a letter to a customer, he wrote that 130 miles per hour

was just so low for one of his machines,

that we should not bother to advertise it.

- That time the English had

the world's fastest motorcycle,

the world's fastest saloon, the Bentley Continental,

and of course, the world's fastest sports car, the XK120.

Those were pretty heady days.

- [Ewan] The Vincent was now the motorcycle

for the well-heeled mavericks around the world,

who were determined to enter the record books.

And there was no one more maverick

or more determined than Mad Jack Ehret.

[desolate music]

- [Bill] It's good to see the old thing again.

And it's pretty much the condition I remember it last,

except that it's lost about half a hundredweight of dirt.

- Literally when I walked up to the bike,

well A, it's probably cleaner than I've ever seen it

'cause dad was, for all his faults,

he was a great rider, but he wasn't a show pony

and I don't think that he'd ever polished

a bike part in his life.

- As a result of his unarmed combat,

he was scared of no one.

One motorcycle club asked him to leave

because that year he won everything.

- [Ewan] Just a handful of the 31 Black Lightnings built

made it to Australia.

- [Bill] There was a company on Parramatta Road

called Burling and Simmons.

It just sat there and Jack had a mate that said to him,

"If you don't buy that motorbike, and somebody else does,

you're not going to be King of the Kids anymore."

- [Ewan] Realizing the potential of the Lightning,

it was faster than a full Grand Prix race bike,

Ehret decided to go for broke

and set a new Australian land speed record.

Jack strong-armed the local authorities

into closing the road,

and persuaded Australia's Auto Cycle Union

to sanction the runs.

On a January morning in 1953, he went for it.

- Well, I understand you were there

on the day that Jack broke the record.

- Yeah, there was a big crowd

either side along the property fence, and he made two runs.

On his second run they had to abort it

because there was a lady driving a Ford Prefect car

coming through the police block and wouldn't stop

because she'd had too much alcohol in her system.

After they got her out of the road, then proceeded again.

- Monday January the 9th, 1953 and it says on the headline,

"Land speed record smashed.

Jack Ehret record of 141.5 miles per hour

on the Tamworth Road."

[engine roaring]

- It's still in one piece.

It hasn't been over-restored.

It hasn't been butchered.

It hasn't been cut up, and it's probably one of

the last original Lightnings in the world.

What a marvelous piece of bloody history,

and an Australian land speed record too.

- [Ewan] But did speed records mean sales?

Vincent was convinced they still did,

but he was becoming increasingly isolated in the firm,

and at times erratic.

[eerie music]

- P.C.V. would hire and fire people awfully easily.

It was not a good atmosphere in there at all.

- There was a feeling that any one of us could be sacked.

Mitchell himself said at times he'd come in,

he'd put his head in his hands after a fight with Vincent,

and he'd say "Oh, that man."

- [Ewan] The man who had once attracted

the most loyal and brightest of minds

now seemed to be set on driving them out.

- [Ewan] Phil Irving was followed by other key figures,

such as racer and sprinter George Brown.

- I heard the stories about George

and how he left, how he slammed the door

and the glass fell out

of Vincent's office door when he left.

- [Ewan] Those close to him now believe

the brain damage he suffered

had a deeper, more insidious legacy,

a change in Philip Vincent's personality.

- My father knew Philip Vincent before the accident.

He said he would come up to you

and talk to you, and [mumbles]

but you've got to remember

after he had his accident brain damage,

he was in hospital for nearly nine months.

- The tragic thing for Vincent's

and for Mr. Vincent was that accident,

because he was a changed man.

[lonesome music]

[lonesome music continues]

- [Ewan] Tensions were beginning

to plague Philip Vincent at home, too.

Ethel Chelsom was now a constant part of his life.

They traveled in style across the UK and into Europe,

but beneath the surface, Vincent's problems were mounting.

The relationship was an open secret

at the firm and amongst friends.

- Here was a bachelor who ran a factory

that had become quite famous.

The secretary had been there with him

almost as long as the company had existed.

What happened? She obviously got fed up with waiting.

This was our conclusion.

- The very aristocratic lady

that he courted for a long time and totally lost out with.

- She just disappeared

We never saw her or anything after that.

- And he went to The Cromwell

as he did every lunchtime with his cronies,

met an Irish barmaid and within not months or years,

but within days or maybe a few weeks, they were married,

and we thought, "What's he doing? Trying to play catch up?"

[tender music]

- [Hans] We didn't eliminate the idea

that it could have been true love.

These are personal things, I know.

- [Ewan] Soon Vincent and Elfrida's daughter

Deirdre was born.

It was a happy, if brief, distraction

from the mounting pressures of work.

Life at Stevenage was becoming

to be one of crisis management,

chasing sales and suppliers, dealing with creditors.

The company was now being led by a receiver;

such was the state of his finances.

- The sales from '53 were going down catastrophically

at a time when the British motor and the cycle industry

really had the world at its feet.

[jaunty music]

- [Ewan] His motorcycles were being caught

by the opposition.

The latest Triumph was as fast as the Rapide,

but less than two-thirds of the price.

It was also lighter, simpler,

and marketed in bold, modern colors.

A generational shift was taking place.

The market was being driven by the young.

- [Commentator] With a fine weekend, a powerful motorbike,

and a girlfriend on the back,

the Ton-Up Boys set off to wind and weave

and often, to be a menace.

- [Ewan] The gentleman rider, a pipe-smoking caricature

still used in the company publicity

was being replaced by the Ton-Up Boys,

dance music by rock-and-roll, tweed by leather.

[gentle music]

As the long-term effects of his crash

were becoming more evident,

Philip Vincent was looking older

and so were his motorcycles.

His solution? Nothing less than a radical redesign.

The future as he saw it

would be one of experimental materials and full enclosure.

- [Ewan] Expensive new machinery

was purchased to build the new bikes.

A gamble the like of which Vincent had never made before.

Many of the revisions were based

on a survey of existing customers.

The result was to offer a design geared towards

the needs of long-term owners, not finding new ones.

- See the idea behind this was,

this was a motorcycle with full weather protection. [laughs]

In England this would be full weather protection.

And in fact, you see ads with a guy with a bowler hat,

there's not a wrinkle in his suit.

He's been driving in the pouring rain

apparently for an hour.

You know, It was sort of silly.

- First of all, it was too damn heavy,

the fairing, I don't know,

and doubt that he ever wind-tested it.

It had got those silly little protrusions on the front,

the large seat area with an inverted bathtub on the back,

I don't think is a motorcycle by my definition.

- [Ewan] The scooter-type enclosure would mean

that the world's most beautiful engine

was hidden from sight.

- It looked like a giant motor scooter, basically.

It was a motorcycle a little bit ahead of its time.

- [Ewan] Vincents were now offering a machine

at the price of a small house.

- I think for Vincent to turn a very fine sport motorcycle

into an old man's wheelchair was a horrible mistake.

- [Ewan] Philip Vincent was ahead of his time, certainly.

Fully-faired motorcycles are now the norm

yet being too far ahead is as bad as being too far behind.

- Before, the company had had people

who were very positive in their own views

and everything else.

It appeared to me what you did afterwards

is you'd got people who

didn't have strong opinions themselves

or strong convictions.

They were a bit yes-men

and this is I think why it all floundered.

- [Ewan] In July 1955,

a streamlined Black Lightning achieved the ultimate.

Two outright world speed records.

On a perilously narrow road in New Zealand,

Bob Burns raised the world sidecar speed record.

- [Commentator] Bob Burns roars past

for three shattering, ear-splitting runs on Black Lightning

and bingo, we've got a new world sidecar record

at 163.06 mph.

[engine roars]

- [Ewan] The same Black Lightning in solo trim

took Russell Wright

to an outright world motorcycle speed record

of 185 miles an hour.

[engine roaring]

Once again, high-speed headlines came the factory's way.

Once again, Vincent's critics asked,

"Does that sell motorbikes?"

And to those left in the factory in Stevenage,

the answer wasn't long in coming.

- The man who was a general manager there,

Mr. Heptonstall, a Yorkshire man,

he called me in to his office and he put me in the picture.

He said, "Look, Ivan," this is virtually his words,

he said, "I'm going to let you know

that maybe in the next few weeks,

this company's not going to exist anymore."

- [Ewan] Vincent, by now a lonely frustrated figure,

had misjudged the market badly.

The final motorcycle left the factory

on the 16th of December 1955.

The Vincent was no more.

- I think my father was so fully invested

in what he was doing that I think the day he had

to announce they were stopping manufacturing

must have been really hard for him.

- Mm-hmm

Hiya, mum.

- [Dee] Hi, Phil.

- [Ewan] 90 years after Vincent started his company,

his daughter and grandson visit the factory

where it all began.

- So I've been told that this was the chroming room.

- Yes, I wasn't actually allowed in here.

So it's quite nice to come inside.

- There's so many mavericks that worked here,

so many people that have achieved so much

that spent so many years here.

You really feel like there are souls in these walls.

[gentle music]

- [Ewan] The years after Stevenage were tough.

Vincent's family fortune was exhausted.

The house in rural Essex had been sold,

as was the land in Argentina.

He'd traveled the world.

His motorcycles had dominated speed records.

- [Robin] And they were, you know, skint, I suppose.

They moved back down to London

into a basically a bed and breakfast in Bayswater.

- We were all living in one room.

It wasn't luxury.

- [Ewan] Vincent worked spasmodically,

writing for the motorcycle press, consultancy work.

- [Dee] Meanwhile, my mother went out

to work in various hotels in the West End.

- [Ewan] Few had risen so high and fallen so far.

The reputation of the motorcycles themselves suffered too.

A loyal cohort kept the faith,

an owners club became established,

but to the young guns at the Busy Bee or Ace Cafe,

the Vincent had become an old man's bike.

Worse, with no spares backup and complex engineering,

the Vincent gained a reputation for dangerous handling.

Secondhand values hit rock bottom;

a Black Shadow could be bought for as little as 45 pounds.

But the designer was looking forwards, not backwards.

- He always used to say to me,

"There's no such word as can't.

If there's something needs doing,

you will find a way to do it."

He always felt that he could keep going.

- [Ewan] Philip Vincent's vision was again,

ahead of its time, a rotary engine.

Discarding conventional pistons,

built using futuristic ceramic materials.

His former colleagues were unconvinced.

- [Phil] This is when you met P.C.V.?

- Yes. - In London?

- In London I met your grandfather.

He gave me oh, sheaves of paper with diagrams

and descriptions of it all

and asked me to bring it home

and get Phil to tell him what he thought of it.

When Phil had read it, thought about it,

he just looked at me quietly and he said it won't work.

And that was that.

- [Ewan] The cost of building a prototype mounted swiftly.

The obsession was costing more than money.

- [Ewan] What had driven Philip Vincent

so hard early on in his career,

a determination in the face of doubters,

was in danger of becoming an obsession.

- He was becoming less coherent.

And he'd start to wander off in flights of fancy, almost,

when he was talking to you.

- When he had his first stroke

and he was getting out of the ambulance

and it was so painful to watch him struggle

with his right hand and right leg

trying to drag his left leg and left arm

and dribbling at the mouth and you know.

And so I said, "Mr. Vincent,

can I pick you up and carry you up?"

He says, "Oh, would you?"

- [Ewan] The family moved to council accommodation

in the West London suburbs.

- He also got to the point where he said,

"This isn't fair on you," to my mother.

One day he said, "You shouldn't be living like this."

She never cared.

She loved him without any, you know, barriers.

- [Robin] It's very difficult for a 48-year-old woman

to look after a 70-year-old man.

You know that's completely and utterly,

highly mobile, but practically.

- [Ewan] In March 1979, Philip Vincent

was admitted to Ashford Hospital.

[somber music]

- It was very brief, he'd developed pneumonia.

I think Brian Phillips from the Vincent Owners Club

had rung my mother and she sounded distressed.

So he then rang me at work and said,

"Your mother sounds very distressed,

I think you might need to get home."

And by the time I got there, he'd died.

- I think all of us in life have our dreams.

And I think that the same thing must have applied

to the small team down there in Stevenage

and Mr. Vincent,

when they created the sort of postwar Rapide.

It was, all right, something which at times

turned into a nightmare, unfortunately,

but just the same,

it had its special day.

And I think what it is,

or what is special about it

is that it stood the test of time.

And despite some of the problems that all happened,

look at how people think about Vincent today.

That says an awful lot

for those dreams that that little team had.

And I think, in a way,

Dad and myself

both feel as we were part of that.

- [Director] Wonderful. Thank you very much, John.

- Yeah. - That's great.

[wind rustling]

- I remember years ago, my husband at the time

saying to him, "Oh, but this is going to die at some point."

And he said, "No, it won't die, it's going to get stronger."

[gentle music]

- [Ewan] While the price of one remained within reach,

a cult grew up around the Vincent motorcycle.

It became the choice of those in the know,

the eccentrics, the oddballs,

even struggling stand-up comedians.

- This one came from Christchurch in New Zealand.

The guy said, "I can't let you take it,

but you can ride with me on the back."

"All right." So I get on the back.

And of course, since he's trying to sell the bike,

he's going as fast as he possibly can.

And he said, "It'll do 100, no problem."

I go, "That's great, that's great.

You know, we're in LA traffic.

And I said, "No, look, I'll buy it.

Just, if you just stop now, I'll buy it."

- [Ewan] The reputation of the Vincent was in transition

from an old, if still fast motorcycle to becoming a classic.

Perhaps the ultimate classic.

Japanese motorcycles, even Italian ones,

brilliant, fast, competent, seem to be missing something.

But what?

- There's an art movement

in the beginning of the 20th century.

And around about this time this fella called Jacob Epstein,

he made the sculpture called "Rock Drill."

There's a sort of continuity of design and thought process

that had gone into creating the sculpture

but also the motorcycles.

It is like a work of art to me.

It's like a moving sculpture.

I just think the sort of the mess

of the structure of the engine.

That looks like that could take you to the moon.

- "Wheelie in the Stars," it's a children's book,

but I read it as an adult, you know.

That was a magical story to read.

One of the people living on the Moon has a Vincent.

- [Ewan] The Vincent gained a second life.

From the U.S. to Australia to Switzerland,

riders took tuning to new levels.

The Egli-Vincent is often cited as the ultimate cafe racer.

It had style, handling, speed.

In the UK, riders such as George Brown and Brian Chapman

began to dominate sprint racing,

reaching breathtaking speeds.

- [Brian] You can't miss a gear

or muck a gear change up.

You'll lose.

[engines roar]

- [Director] The fastest speed on the Twin?

- It was 170.

- [George] I'm not boasting when I say

coming down Elvington runway probably in excess of 200 mile

by the time it gets to last 100 yards.

You could actually have read the Daily Mirror on the tank,

you could have opened it out on the tank and read it.

I've never felt anything so safe.

- [Ewan] It was a similar story in the USA.

The Barn Job remained one of

the fastest motorcycles off the line right into the 1980s.

- You could lift the front wheel

with a blower on it,

it would be just rolling the throttle,

rolling and not snapping it.

It could lift the front wheel at like even 160 mile an hour.

[phone trilling]

- [Alma] HRD Motorcycles? Hello?

- [Director] And what's the best thing about The Vincent?

- I like the engine; I like the character of the engine,

the babum-babum-babum.

- When I hear one. I can pick it out in a gale.

- Everybody knows Vincent.

It's like a Rolls Royce of motorbikes.

- And from a Vincent, you come back, usually,

relaxed with a big smile in your face.

- It definitely had the edge on BSA or Triumphs,

until the modern era.

- It was a dirty, grimy engineering company,

except at one end of it, they built motorbikes.

- It was great. It was great and still is great.

- Yes. I wouldn't mind one myself right now.

[both chuckle]

- I wasted a lot of money on cars.

I should have wasted it on Vincents

- [Auctioneer] 300,000 is the opening offer.

There it is, the Black Lightning for 300,000.

Yes, 500,000.

At 620,000.

700,000.

835,000!

[crowd and bidders cheering]

- So over breakfast that morning,

we ended up spending over 1.2 million Australian Dollars.

- [Auctioneer] United States of America, you're done.

Great Britain, you're out.

[gavel bangs] Well done the Aussies.

[crowd cheering]

- The first bike in the world

to sell for over a million dollars.

- [Ewan] In 2009, Marty Dickerson came out of retirement

to set one last class record

at just over 155 miles an hour, aged 83.

- Yes, Marty. - Yeah, Marty! [whistles]

- [Marty] It's been really a good life.

I can't complain if it ends tomorrow, that's it.

I wouldn't have no complaints.

I told my kids that when I croak,

cremate me and bury my ashes

or spread them out all over the salt. [laughs]

[engine roaring distantly]

- [Ewan] If you can make one heap of all your winnings

and risk it on one turn of pitch and toss,

and lose and start again at your beginning

and never breathe a word about your loss,

yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,

and which is more, you'll be a man, my son.

[engine roaring distantly]

[engine continues roaring distantly]

[rustic folksy music]

[radio chattering indistinctly]

♪ Says Red Molly, to James ♪

♪ Well, that's a fine motorbike ♪

♪ Oh, a girl could special on any such like ♪

♪ Says James, to Red Molly ♪

♪ My hat's off to you ♪

♪ It's a Vincent Black Lighting, 1952 ♪

♪ And I've seen you on the corners and cafes, it seems ♪

♪ Red hair on black leather, my favorite color scheme ♪

♪ And he pulled around behind ♪

- [Racer] So excited.

Finally get to have my go on the Irving Vincent sidecar,

Can you maybe give us a few tips

so I can stay on this thing?

- [Driver] Absolutely. You're gonna love this...

[driver chattering indistinctly]

[rustic folksy music continues]

♪ Says James, to Red Molly, ♪

♪ Here's a ring for your right hand ♪

♪ But I'll tell you in earnest I'm a dangerous man ♪

♪ For I've fought with the law since I was 17 ♪

♪ I've robbed many a man to get my Vincent machine ♪

♪ And now I'm 21 years, I might make 22 ♪

♪ And I don't mind dyin' but for the love of you ♪

♪ But if fate should break my stride ♪

♪ Then I'll give you my Vincent ♪

♪ To Ride ♪

[rustic folksy music continues]

[rustic folksy music continues]

[rustic folksy music continues]

[rustic folksy music continues]

[rustic folksy music continues]

♪ Come down, come down Red Molly called Sargent McCrea ♪

♪ For they've taken young James Aidee for armed robbery ♪

- Basically, really hard work but amazing fun.

Yeah. Thrilling.

- [Driver] Well done.

- Yeah. Cheers mate. - [Driver] No worries.

[rustic folksy music continues]

♪ And he gave her his Vincent ♪

♪ To ride ♪

[audience applauds]