On face value, the Bienville Legacy is a weird, vastly overpowered and visually shocking motorbike having a totally unique suspension system. But towards the group that produced it and the eccentric entrepreneur that bankrolled it, it's not only a motorcycle. It's a two-wheeled expression of blue-sky style, the realization of an concept unhindered by industrial realities - and the begin of a movement that aims to celebrate and re-invigorate the concept of master craftsmanship in America.
The Confederate Wraith: certainly one of J. T. Nesbitt's styles Diagram displaying how the leaf spring suspension connects the front towards the rear suspension The Bienville Legacy: 300-plus horsepower of WTF-level design Bienville Legacy: the leaf spring suspension connects to the swingarm blades with a damping rod
What would you style, if money and time had been no object? It is the sort of question that sorts out the males from the boys, the ambitious from the adequate. It represents the ultimate opportunity for some, and shines a harsh light around the mediocrity of other people. If anybody ever asked me that query, I'd straight up soil my pants.
J.T. Nesbitt isn't the pants-soiling kind. A master designer already accountable for some of the most outrageous motorcycle shapes ever produced, Nesbitt was asked the question by a man with the wherewithal to create things occur, and he had a killer answer prepared.
Entrepreneur Jim Jacoby had just sold his business and was sitting on a pile of cash along with a dream: to revitalize the concept of master craftsmanship in American style. Fed up with cheap consumerism, commercially driven style and planned obsolescence, he yearned to build things of true quality in the "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" sense. Things that weren't disposable. Issues that could turn the globe upside down. Things that were driven purely by design, with no regard for cost or industrial viability. He founded an organization he known as the American Style and Master Craft Initiative (ADMCi) and went searching for a flagship project to kick off with.
The Confederate Wraith: one of J. T. Nesbitt's styles
J.T. Nesbitt caught Jacoby's eye with his jaw-dropping function at Confederate Motorcycles, where he developed the gleaming metallic Wraith. The Wraith simply didn't look like other motorcycles. It looked industrial and brutal, with a curved tube spine, a tiny saddle, a chunky fuselage-style underbelly along with a wicked carbon girder front suspension system. Every individual component from the bike looked like it was built to final a thousand years. In Jacoby's eye, it was the right motorcycle, and Nesbitt was the perfect master craftsman to start his mission with.
As opportunity had it, Hurricane Katrina had wiped out Confederate's factory in New Orleans. The Confederate group had moved to Alabama, Nesbitt hadn't gone with them, and now instead of designing game-changing motorcycles to get a living, he was operating as a barman and continuing to style in his own time.
The pair met, Jacoby asked the question, and Nesbitt had a fast response prepared, total with sketches and notes. He wanted to enhance upon the Wraith - blow it out from the water, no much less - and within the process develop the quickest American motorcycle ever made.
An arrangement was produced whereby Jacoby gave Nesbitt the freedom and sources to style and build three commissioned pieces for the ADMCi, which would also take on ownership of patents produced during the production to sustain the following project and beyond. And with that, the Bienville Legacy was born.
The Legacy starts out with a 1650cc Motus MV4 engine. The sideways V4 tends to make around 185 horsepower in stock form, but Nesbitt has added a Rotrex centrifugal supercharger to take the total energy nicely more than 300 horses.
Building out from there, things begin to obtain a little freaky; the frame is developed around a giant composite polymer leaf spring - consider an archer's bow, pointed toward the sky. That spring joins both the swingarm and the girder forks towards the frame. This single giant spring suspends each ends from the bike. Every finish has its own damping unit, a mountain bike element designed to deal with huge downhill jump landings. It offers progressively tougher damping as it compresses, making it practically not possible to bottom out.
The girder front-end and rear swingarm function nearly-identical carbon composite blades with eccentric adjusters built in. The adjusters permit for a change of trail at the front, and serve as chain adjusters at the rear, and are adjustable by way of a little worm gear. Comparable adjusters allow you to change the seat height, the rear ride height and the headlight angle.
A chromoly trellis frame anchors the engine towards the middle from the leaf spring, and supports a minimalistic seat unit. It should be noted that the Legacy's leather saddle hides a massively over-engineered assistance structure consisting of six titanium blades, which echo the curve from the leaf spring, the suspension blades and the upswept exhaust cans.
The whole factor has been developed by hand, with sketches becoming translated to CAD designs for machining. Just about the whole bike, down to its titanium bolts, comes from these sketches. As you can envision, that's not a cheap method to build.
To get a step forward in motorcycle design, it certain features a type of backward appear to it, nearly as when the Wraith was constructed in some alternate steampunk-era universe.
As an ADMCi commission, it is not destined for scale production. Rather, just 3 happen to be constructed, and once the team has effectively set three land speed records they've got their eye on at Bonneville, the Bienville project will end.
The bikes will probably be available to severe collectors for around a quarter of a million US dollars apiece, however it will not be a straight sale, more like a stewardship. The buyers will be anticipated to exhibit the bikes all around America, as ambassadors of fine mechanical craftsmanship and elite design, and Jacoby will find another master designer and craftsperson in a totally various field to begin another project with.
Whether or not or not the Bienville Legacy resonates with you as a completed motorcycle - and just like the Wraith, there will probably be as numerous detractors as you will find fans - the idea of master craftsmanship, unfettered by the industrial reality most designers reside under, is definitely an fascinating 1.
Another school of believed would say that restrictions inspire inventive solutions, and that projects just like the Legacy are purely masturbatory if they don't result in sensible, inexpensive products that alter people's lives.
Learn more about Indian Springfield – a fast, rumbling, quick-change artist Review on Motorcycles News
