Letter From Europe
LETTER FROM Europe
McIntosh: The Kiwi Bimota
Auckland, New Zealand's Ken McIntosh is his small country's only manufacturer of steetbikes. He builds a wide range of chassis, including one-offs for everything from Honda Fours to Harley V-Twins to Norton Singles, but his main business is the production of road-legal replicas of the Suzuki-powered McIntosh machine made famous at the annual Bathurst race meeting. Australia's premier bike race, Bathurst has been won by McIntosh Suzukis twice in three years.
Most replicas have been twin-shock chassis like that on the actual Bathurst-winning bike, but these McIntosh BRls (standing for Bathurst Replica, naturally) have now been superseded by the BR2, McIntosh’s first monoshock road bike.
Five BR2s have been built so far, all sold to
Australian customers. But McIntosh hopes to bump up export sales to Japan and America with the supply of chassis kits rather than complete motorcycles. The BR2 chassis is
designed for use with any 16-valve, air-cooled Suzuki engine.
A 57.5-inch wheelbase combined with a 26-degree steering-head angle gives the BR2 stable han-
dling with acceptably fast steering. Front suspension is by a Marzocchi M1R fork, while the rear employs a White Power shock with rising-rate linkage. The styling is aggressive but refined, and, as usual with bespoke motorcycles of this type, the bike can be supplied with a wide range of optional race-derived equipment, and painted any color scheme the customer desires.
With its high-quality construction and fine attention to detail, the McIntosh BR2 really is worthy of comparison to the best from Europe’s custom frame builders.
It’s a genuine South Pacific Bimota, but at much less cost than the Italian original: The bike shown here would cost around $10,000, less engine.
For more details, contact: Irvine Industries Ltd.,
P.O. Box 35483, Browns Bay, Auckland, NZ.
Alan Cathcart,
from Auckland, New Zealand
