The Lost Von Dutch
The Lost Von Dutch
UP FRONT
David Edwards
LOOKS LIKE ANY OTHER RAT TRIUMPH chopper, right? Hacked together by the thousands in the late '60s and early '70s, then relegated to the scrapheap or-at best-the back of the garage as styles changed...or riders wised up and moved on to something more survivable. This one's a little different. Look past the chipped and crazed lacquer paint, and there at the rear of the gas tank you'll find a small inscription, so fine it was written with a feather quill or maybe a cat's whisker.
Von Dutch '68.
Yep, the King of Kustom Kulture, self-billed (with no argument from any quarter) as the "Originator of Modern Pinstriping." How ironic that this icon of hot-rodding really wasn't into automobiles "We absolutely detested cars. We wouldn't even ride in `em," he told the Arizona Republic in 1973, speaking of his teenage years wheeling a bobbed Indian Scout around Southern California. Friend Temma Kramer, writing her introduction to the excellent book The Art of Von Dutch (Tornado Design, www.theartofvondutch.com), remem bers his two-wheel apostletizing. "On a motorcycle, you're penetrating distance right along with the machine," he'd say. "In a car, you're just a spectator; the windshield's like a TV"
Von Dutch not only painted and pinstriped this particular Triumph, he built it. Twice! The story begins in 1957, when the bike left the Triumph factory as a stock T110 Tiger, the single-carb 650. A few years later, it ends up in Bud Ekins’ thriving Triumph dealership in Van Nuys, where Kenny “Von Dutch” Howard is employed in the backroom turning racebikes, salvage jobs and tired old trade-ins into something worth selling. Whatever the TllO’s previous fate, it emerges from Dutch’s clutches as a slick little bob-job (inset photo) and is soon snapped up by Mr. Gil Stratton, L.A. sportscaster, the “Voice of the Los Angeles Rams” and a sometime-actor who, ironically enough, had a bit part as a biker in Brando’s The Wild One.
For whatever reason, Stratton doesn’t own the bike for long. In 1961 it is back in Ekins’ showroom, where it snags the attention of Johnny Suggs, freshly graduated from high school and an L.A. County lifeguard looking for a cool ride. With money borrowed from his father (48 years later he doesn’t remember exactly how much), young Suggs now owns the Von Dutch bobber-as he would until 2008.
Long story short: Suggs is drafted, serves in Vietnam, comes back and in 1968 reacquaints with Von Dutch, who says he’ll treat the Triumph to a special paint job. The result is a stunning orange/red/gold scheme that changes color in the setting sun.
What cost, all this artistry?
“Dutch asked how much money I had in my pockets,” Suggs remembers. “Turned out to be $22, which is what he charged me.”
Typical of the man who until his dying day in 1992 never even had a Social Security number. “I make a point of staying right at the bridge of poverty,” Von Dutch told Modern Cycle in 1965. “I don’t have a pair of pants without a hole in them, and the only pair of boots I own are the ones I have on.”
A few years later, now working out of his house in Calabasas, Dutch chops the Triumph, adding extended fork tubes, TT pipes and an upside-down Ace handlebar. “An experiment,” says Suggs today of the re-do, hinting that it was not altogether successful.
For that reason-or maybe in deference to Suggs’ career in federal law enforcement-the chopper is parked not long after, taking up residence in Pa Suggs’ backyard with just a tarp as protection from the elements. It is still there in 2005 when one of SoCal’s worst rainy seasons causes the hills to shift and the mud to slide, half-burying the poor Tl 10.
During clean-up, Suggs’ wife, never a fan of the old bike, has a prime spot in a garbage skip reserved for the Triumph. It gets a last-minute reprieve, but three years later it’s finally put up for sale. Two owners later, it’s on eBay, which is where I and my long-suffering savings account come into the picture.
Surviving Von Dutch paint jobs are scarce, as he explained to the Los Angeles Times in 1970: “I striped 15,000 motorcycles and 4000 cars. None of those are around today. They wrecked them as fast as I could paint them.”
Or they simply faded from view, awaiting the cold steel embrace of some dumpster. Well, count at least one more among your survivors, Dutch. □
For more on the Von Dutch Triumph as restoration begins, go to www.cycleworld.com.
