Class On the Grass
CLASS ON THE GRASS
LEGEND OF THE MOTORCYCLE CONCOURS
At last, a golf course put to good use
DAVID EDWARDS
USUALLY I DON’T TAKE DIRECTION well, but this time I did not have to be told twice.
Not yet 7 o’clock on a cool and misty Saturday morning, it was set-up time for the
inaugural Legend of the Motorcycle Invitational Concours d’Elegance.
From the seat of my idling 1947 Triumph 500 bob-job I asked an official where he wanted the bike situated.
He consulted his
clipboard, then pointed 40 yards away past the 18th green, past a sand trap to a small rise of grass.
“Okay if I ride over there?” I asked, engaging first gear and moving off without waiting for a response.
Wheeling my bike around a hoity-toity golf course, are you kidding me?! Real dreams-come-true stuff here-except that my wish-list involved a Maico 490, fresh knobs and liberal applications of throttle and clutch. I restrained myself, however, no trench-digging today. I wanted to be invited back next year.
That my Triumph and 250 other motorcycles were even allowed on the manicured grounds of the five-star RitzCarlton Half Moon Bay on a picturepostcard bluff overlooking the California coastline was the work of Jared Zaugg and Brooke Ronér, husband and wife, who run a small San Francisco advertising agency.
Must be pretty good at their jobs, because pulling off this event took massive amounts of promotional and marketing skills, not to mention two years of their spare time.
Genesis for the show took place several years before and a hundred miles down the coast in Monterey at the Pebble Beach Concours, held since 1950 on the links that snuggle up to Carmel Bay. Zaugg, who describes himself as “not a collector, just a lover of motorcycles,” with a 1970 BMW R75/5, a 1964 Triumph Trophy and a basketcase 1933 Matchless Silver Hawk at home, thought that surely something like Pebble Beach must exist for motorcycles.
Sadly, it did not.
There are some worthy classicbike shows, including the Riding into History event that Peter Egan reports on in this issue (also, coincidentally, held at a golf facility), but Zaugg had a grander vision.
“We wanted to come up with something on a very high level, to get the best bikes possible, to create a worldclass event,” he says.
The couple set up a high-line website (www. legendofthemotorcycle. com), then started consulting experts. Using Pebble Beach as a model, they searched the Western states for a worthy venue, going as far afield as Reno, Palm Springs and Las Vegas before picking Half Moon Bay, 45 minutes from downtown ’Frisco, nestled between the Santa Cruz Mountains and the Pacific Ocean. The town was also home to the Ritz-Carlton, a 250-room seaside lodge-style resort with two championship-level golf courses.
“It had a ‘Wow’ factor. It blew us away,” says Zaugg of the hotel.
Not that the Ritz was interested in doing pro bono work, nor were its fees cheap (“discounted” rooms for concours participants, for example, were $450 a night). There would be other
costs. Not wanting to go the “glorified bowling trophy” route for awards, Zaugg and Ronér commissioned noted bronze artist-and Crocker owner-Jeff Decker to come up with something special for class winners, a winged, reclining Mercury brandishing a motorcycle wheel.
To finance the event, sponsors would be needed. Because motorcycle-makers are notoriously shortsighted when it comes to promoting history, outside companies were approached.
“It was two years of making pitches, traveling to New York City or wherever their offices were,” says Zaugg.
Their ad-agency savvy and hard work paid off, as Cartier jewelers, Forbes and Men s Vogue magazines, Cohíba cigars, Hennessy cognac, Riva boats, Godiva chocolates and Bentley cars, among others, all saw the crossover potential the concours offered. To their credit, Triumph, Ducati, Kawasaki, Dudley Perkins Harley-Davidson, Belstaff and AGV Helmets also stepped up and supported the show.
And quite the show it was, easily the biggest, best thing that’s happened to the classic scene in the U.S. since the Guggenheim Museum’s landmark “Art of the Motorcycle” exhibit. The quality of the pre-1976 bikes eligible forjudging was exceptional. Being an “invitational,” the show required a résumé and photos for each submitted motor cycle. One hundred and seventy-two passed muster, which thankfully is not to say that all were pristine 100-pointers. In fact, as stipulated in the show's judging standards, "If a motorcycle is original except for some signs of age and patina, it should be left untouched." Refreshing. Likewise, Zaugg's thoughts on requiring LoM showbikes to be runners. "These are machines, and machines are meant to function," he states quite rightly. Too often, concours d'elegance meets have the feel of a mausoleum, with no combustion and nary a wheel turned. One highlight among many was a gathering of Crockers, one of the event's featured marques. Personally I've never seen more than two or three in one place, and here were 20 of Al Crocker's legendary L.A.-built V-Twins, the scourge of Harley and Indian riders in the l930s. Filling out the field were display-only bikes chosen for their spectator appeal. The absolute "it" machine was Jesse James' aero-motored contraption, still in mockup bare metal, sporting a seven-cylinder Rotec 2800cc radial air craft engine! Inexplicably, Jesse (in attendance with wife Sandra Bullock) had removed the propeller. Despite a stiff admission price-$50 advance, $65 day of the event-some 4300 people showed up to take in the sights, a huge number. Indeed, at one point I looked over the lawn and could hardly see any motorcycles for all the happy oglers. Next year's Legend of the Motorcycle Concours has already been scheduled for May 5, again at the Ritz-Canton. Most of the sponsors have renewed and thanks to Jaugg's one-year-only stipulation for showbikes, there will be a fresh collection of iron on the grass. See you on the links?
For more photos of the "Legend of the Motorcycle" and "Riding into History" bike shows, visit www.cycleworld.com
