Julian Farnam's Dirtbag Rat - Yamaha Banshee-Powered Funny Front End Mutant

Image courtesy Alan Lapp

"Hey Jason, I hope all is well. I thought I'd reach out and mention that I've just completed a new project that may (or may not) be of interest..."

Image courtesy Alan Lapp

The photos that followed in Julian's email made me lean back in my chair and giggle with glee. You are goddamned right this is "OF INTEREST". You should know my taste by now Julian, because every time you send me something you nail it.

Image courtesy Alan Lapp

If you've followed OddBike for any period of time you should be familiar with Julian Farnam and his designs. He has become a staple subject of the site for years, and for damned good reason: there are few backyard tinkerers as talented or as innovative as Julian is, and every time he puts Tig to metal he concocts something inspiring that speaks to the very heart of OddBike. Or at least something so thoroughly weird and wonderful that it will cleanse your palette of the dull Hondas and derivative Triumphs that populate your feeds for the remainder of the week.

Image courtesy Alan Lapp

Help fund "The Story of the Britten V1000" on Indiegogo

Contribute to the Indiegogo Campaign "OddBike - The Story of the Britten V1000" here

The Goal

In October, 2015 a historic event will be held at the Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum in Birmingham, Alabama. As part of the 11th annual Barber Vintage Festival, a once-in-a-lifetime reunion of the iconic motorcycles produced by the late John Britten will be held, the first such reunion on North American soil. 

A similar reunion was held in Britten's home town of Christchurch, New Zealand in February of this year and it proved to be a moving tribute to the legacy of a man and a team of enthusiastic supporters who left an astonishing mark on the motorcycle industry. The ten V1000s produced by Britten's team represented the pinnacle of road racing technology at the time, mixed with some of the most innovative experimentation in chassis design seen in the 1990s. These machines are icons and continue to stun onlookers some 20 years after John's untimely passing, 19 years after they were retired from racing.

They are my icon, the machine that has inspired me to pursue all that is weird and wonderful in motorcycles and to celebrate alternative ideas - and the people who pursue them. For the past year I have been quietly working on an in-depth profile of Britten's motorcycles, and this reunion represents the best chance I have to document the individual machines and interview the owners, riders, and participants in John Britten's attempt at conquering road racing.

So OddBike needs your help to attend the Barber Vintage Festival to further the research needed to complete this article. John Britten's story has been told many times, but never in a way that has fully explored the truth behind the creation of one of motorcycling's single greatest machines, or how a relatively tiny operation succeeded in doggedly pursuing a series of unusual ideas and advanced technology in a bespoke machine that has yet to be equalled in terms of public impact and racing success.  

The Britten story is one that inspires breathless hyperbole, and for good reason, but the true story of how the V1000 came to be has not been properly addressed outside of a singular biography written by Tim Hanna (which, incidentally, I highly recommend reading). My aim is to apply my inimitable style of honest, accurate, and technically detailed writing to the Britten story and offer it for free consumption online. This work will be the crowning jewel of OddBike's archive of unusual motorcycles. I also intend to document my personal journey in researching this subject and examining the machines with a separate editorial piece.

Your support will directly contribute to the writing of this story, a long-form article that will be published on Odd-Bike.com as a free and honest tribute to one of the greatest motorcycles of all time and the people who made it happen. 

The Expenses

The expenses that I am aiming to cover with this campaign are as follows:

Return airfare from Calgary to Birmingham - 600$

Ticket for "An Evening with Britten" charity dinner at the Barber Museum - Prices TBA, traditionally 150$

Three day admission to the Barber Vintage Festival - 80$

T-shirt and sticker printing, shipping fees, and Indiegogo fees - 170$

Further expenses will be out of my own pocket.

Other ways you can help

To keep expenses to a minimum I humbly ask if anyone in the Birmingham area has a spare couch or bed they can offer please contact me at jasonevariste (AT) gmail.com. I expect to arrive Wednesday October 7th and leave Monday October 12th.

If you are in town for the festival please get in touch with me, I'd be happy to meet with some of my followers for some BBQ and beer while I'm in Alabama!

As with the previous OddBike campaign, a few OddBike logo perks will be on offer to campaign supporters! I thank everyone in advance for helping fund this project, and I hope I can meet some of you at Barber - this reunion will be a once in a lifetime event and I would not recommend missing it!

Confederate Wraith Part II - American Iconoclast

Part II of the Confederate Wraith story. Click here for Part I.

It is late 2005 and Confederate Motors is in shambles. Fresh from the epic high of securing a high-profile investor in the Middle East, the company’s president Matt Chambers and lead designer JT Nesbitt returned to their New Orleans base of operations to discover that their factory has been destroyed by the winds and flooding brought on by Hurricane Katrina. With their facilities in ruins and their insurance company bankrupted by the claims in the aftermath of the storm, it looks like the infamous purveyor of brutal, radical and rebellious motorcycles is no more. Katrina has seemingly crushed the hopes of bringing Nesbitt’s iconoclastic Wraith design to production.

The situation appeared dire and the circumstances were debilitating, particularly for a tiny boutique manufacturer that had constantly fought with debt, flirted with bankruptcy, and struggled to meet the demand for their two-wheeled anti-establishment icons. A few frames and components were salvaged from the ruined factory, as were most of the computer files and company books, but the operation was a long way away from building bikes - particularly when New Orleans was still wracked with instability, crime and resource shortages in the wake of flooding. In spite of the literal collapse of their New Orleans factory, Confederate’s anonymous investor/saviour had maintained his end of the agreement and would provide the capital needed to renew the company. The question remained: with the factory gone and New Orleans in shambles, where would Confederate build its bikes?

Confederate Wraith Part I - American Iconoclast

Photo Courtesy Brian Case

Part I of the Confederate Wraith story. Click here for Part II

There are rare instances in the realm of motorcycle design when there emerges an icon. These are machines so radical that they serve as a clean break from the standards of the past, thereby setting a new template and pushing the high-water mark up the wall a few extra feet. To truly be an icon, they must influence subsequent processes and inspire a new thread in motorcycle design; one-off machines that immediately fade into obscurity won’t do. They can be new standards of beauty, or of performance, or of chassis design, or templates for hitherto untried categories (or some combination of all four). These motorcycles are often the product of years of research and countless design hours, produced by multi-billion dollar corporations that can afford to take a risk once and a rare while. They are not often produced by a tiny boutique manufacturer that has built less than a thousand machines, conceptualized by men who were not classically trained “designers” with decades of experience under their belts.

Image courtesy Brian Case

The Confederate Wraith was one such icon of that emerged from Southern Louisiana like a thundering slap in the face to all that the motorcycle industry held dear. It was an absolute break with tradition, a bold insult to the long-held standards of a conservative industry, and a new way of conceiving of the motorcycle that was unlike anything that had preceded it. It was a product of looking forward while respecting history, a curious mixture of old and new ideas blended into a stunning machine that was as brutal as it was intelligent.