Saving For A Vincent
Saving for a Vincent
Peter Egan
LEANINGS
YESTERDAY EVENING I RODE MY NORton into the big city, stopped at my favorite bookstore/coffee shop and found-lo and behold-a new Vincent book that I don’t already own.
This one is the Illustrated Vincent Motorcycle Buyer’s Guide by Zachary Miller. The cover photo shows a gorgeous 1952 Series C Black Shadow against a background of fiery red autumn trees.
Why not just hold me up at gunpoint?
My overstressed Visa card came out so fast I’m sure it left flashburns on my wallet and a faint smell of burnt cowhide and melted plastic in the store. I bought the book, slipped it into my tankbag (along with the collected poems of Seamus Heaney; try ’em!) and thundered home for a read.
Just what I needed: a sixth book on Vincents. I have five already, occupying a special place on the bookshelf near my favorite reading chair, segregated from all other forms of literature so I can find them easily. My dad’s old Speed Graphic press camera is one of the bookends and the other is a bottle of scotch. When all else in life fails, what you do is pour yourself a glass of dark, smoky Lagavulin single malt, pull out a Vincent book and read. Or just look at the pictures.
I have to look at pictures, of course, because I have no Vincent.
Over the years, there has generally been a direct relationship between the books on my library shelf and the motorcycles that have found their way into my garage. For instance, I have a lot of Ducati books (Alan Cathcart and Mick Walker should soon be able to retire, just on my own prodigality), and, since about 1980, I’ve almost always had a Ducati in the garage.
Same with Norton and Triumph; lots of books, bikes to match. The books seem to be a symptom of imminent purchase, like a touch of fever just before you come down with the flu. Read the book, go weak in the knees, break out in a sweat and buy the bike. That’s how it works. Only Vincents have been the exception to this pattern. Why?
Well, I suppose, because they cost too much. Always have. Ever since the Sixties, when I first discovered and became enamored of these machines,
they have been just out of reach, like a carrot on a stick.
When I was in college, a decent used Vincent (some oil leakage, a touch of clutch trouble, intermittent headlight somewhat dim) cost about $1400. This was only a little more than the price of a brand-new Triumph Bonneville.
Which would you buy? Magnificent old crock or new masterpiece? I couldn’t afford either one, so the question (like everything else then) was academic. My room, board and tuition for all of 1966 totaled $1500, toward which I earned $1300 that year, working a good union job on a railroad section crew, shoveling gravel for $3.28 an hour. My parents did not advise the purchase of a Vincent Black Shadow, nor a Triumph. In fact, they were not pleased when I bought a used Honda CB160 for $200.
Zoom ahead to 1980, the year I got my first journalism job at Cycle World and we moved to California. Used Shadows and Rapides were in the $4500 to $5500 range (with some oil leakage, a touch of clutch trouble, intermittent headlight somewhat dim), while a brand-new black-and-gold Ducati 900SS Desmo-the absolute class of the modern motorcycle world-cost about $5200. Which would you buy? I couldn’t afford either one.
Two years later, I bought a very nice used Ducati 900SS for $3500. A modern Vincent, in a way, more usable and capable, but still not a direct replacement. A different kind of magic.
And here we are in 1994.
As nearly as I can tell, decent Vincent Rapides and Shadows (now .mostly restored, with less oil leakage, hot so much clutch trouble and slightfly brighter headlights) are selling in the $ 14,000-$24,000 range. And a new Ducati 916 is about $15,000. And I can’t afford either one.
Okay, here’s the thing. I could afford one. I could, that is, if a Vincent were all I wanted in life and I had been saving for one these many years, making regular sacrifices. But I have other hobbies. I race a car, I buy CDs, I have a weakness for vintage guitars and amplifiers, I eat pizza, drink Lagavulin and make house payments. I blow money on Vincent books.
So every time a Vincent comes up for sale in Hemmings or Buzz Walneck’s Classic Cycle Trader, I am caught flat-footed. I’ll see what appears to be a nice Rapide for $16,000, look in my checkbook and see that I have just enough to make the upcoming loan payment on some newer, more practical bike I already own.
Just like the old days. The price of the bike is always slightly out of line with the possible joy it might bring, and its high cost threatens to displace too many other pleasures and necessities. My income has gone upward over the years, but the price of Vincents seems to have progressed at the same pace. The stick that holds the carrot, adjusted for inflation, remains exactly the same length. Call it perpetual out-of-reachness.
But, I’ve been thinking.
Maybe the time has come to start saving for a Vincent. When I was in college I had a slotted coffee can marked “Triumph Fund.” Maybe I should set up a metaphorical coffee can account at the bank, marked “Vincent Fund.” Maybe if I saved half the money, it would be worth springing for a loan.
Maybe if I didn’t get distracted for a couple of years buying a lot of other frivolous stuff, I could think about buying a restored Vincent, or getting a basket case and rebuilding it myself.
Think I’ll start now. This week. Today. It may seem a little late in life to start saving, but it seems to be my destiny to own one of these bikes. If it were not preordained, why would I have so many books? □
