The Last, Last Hesketh. We Promise.

The last, last Hesketh. We promise.

ROUNDUP

IN WHAT CAN ONLY BE CALLED THE Lazarus Syndrome, a mostly new, mostly better-than-before Hesketh has burst into an unsuspecting world, timed quite nicely to match the reappearance of the revitalized Triumph marque.

In fact, we warned you about it in last month's Roundup (“Move over Rolls. Hesketh’s back"). Since then, development engineer Mick Broom, the man who keeps the candle burning at Hesketh, has completed his preparations and has introduced a redrawn brainchild to a waiting, and apparently well-heeled, public.

The bike's name is Vortan, and its price is 20,000 British pounds, or the equivalent of about $32,500 at current exchange rates. Phew. Broom vows that just 15 Vortans will be built. After the last one rolls out of the Hesketh estate stables, where Broom has his Hesketh assembly-and-service business, production will cease. “This w ill be the end of the road for the Hesketh motorcycle." Broom declares.

The motorcycle pointed down that road is as strange as the original Hesketh was conventional. What remains of the original is the dohc 90degree V-Twin, stroked to displace 1 106cc. Revised cams, porting and exhaust system make for a much more torque-rich machine than the revvy, short-stroke original ever was. This is aimed at eliminating the need to row through the bike's gearbox, and that's a good thing, because as the understated Broom puts it. “There's no doubt the gearchange isn't the best point about the bike."

But forget the engine. Yes, it will produce a raucous, V-Twin boom of an exhaust note, but that won't be the loudest element of the Vortan. Ultimate and final loudness is reserved for its styling and paint. Paint? You can have any color you want. As long as it's Spring Green—a brilliant, almost-neon tone. And the styling? Its aim. Broom says, is to evoke a no-frills hot-rod with no evidence of Japanese influence. He has attempted this, he says, by concentrating on sparse, curvy bodywork enveloping an aluminum frame, which will roll on a 56.5-inch w heelbase. The prototype weighs in at 450 pounds, and Broom promises that the production version w ill be at least 10 pounds lighter. The fork will be of vintage, right-side-up design. but the swingarm is an aluminum affair with a very tricky suspension system involving a torsion bar that acts on a hydraulic piston, which in turn drives a pair of slave pistons that position the swingarm.

A pipe dream? Not a bit of it. Broom says he's received deposits for seven of the I 4 Vortans he intends to sell. He's going to keep one of them for himself, you see. It's exactly the proper conclusion to a real-life motorcycling soap opera. Come to think of it. it seems entirely appropriate that Lord Alexander Hesketh, who started the whole Hesketh affair, now is the government minister responsible for the British film industry in Britain's post-Thatcher government.

—Alan Cathcart