Motorcycle Sport & Leisure

Every so often, we are given stories that we're simply not able to squeeze into the magazine. Following the article on the Confederate Wraith in the April 2007 issue, Alan Cathcart gives us some of the background of this uncompromising company...

Part 1:
Confederate motorcycles: From Ruin to Renovatio

Part 2:
Confederate's collapse: How the roof fell in on the company

Part 3:
Confederate Renovatio: the Kandinsky of the cruiser

Confederate motorcycles: from Ruin to Renovatio

One year on from the holocaust which Hurricane Katrina inflicted on the city of New Orleans on August 29th, 2005, Confederate Motorcycles is back in business and building bikes. In a life-affirming move worthy of the regeneration mystique of the Voodoo religion practised in its Big Easy former home, America’s only motorcycle manufacturer south of the Mason-Dixon line, whose exquisitely crafted, muscular and mighty Bimotas of the Bayous are found in the garages of Hollywood’s rich and famous, from Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt and Nicholas Cage, through to rock idol Bruce Springsteen, has been reborn - not in Louisiana, though, but in neighbouring Alabama, courtesy of U.S. motorcycling’s Southern patriarch, George Barber.

After the disaster which saw its historic Warehouse District factory crushed by Katrina’s sustained 120 mph winds, which sent the former livery stable building crashing to the ground, destroying the company’s production line and decimating its inventory, Confederate president Matt Chambers has re-established the company in a city itself recognised as truly resurgent. Not however from natural disaster, but from decades of neglect through the slow decline of its traditional cotton and coalmining industries, thanks to its reinvention as the Detroit of the South. “Eleven years ago, Birmingham, Alabama didn’t produce a single automobile,'' noted the state’s bike-riding Republican Governor, Bob Riley, after taking the first F131 Hellcat motorcycle to be completely crafted in Confederate’s new 8,500 sq.ft. South Side factory out for a spin, “but this year, we’ll produce nearly 800,000 of them. Alabama is the place to be if you want to be efficient and cost-effective in the automotive sector. Confederate couldn't have made a better choice.''

Since Mercedes-Benz chose Alabama over all other states for its first American manufacturing facility in 1989, Honda and Hyundai have followed suit with factories of their own, along with Toyota's construction-n of a prolific engine plant. But Confederate is the first vehicle manufacturer of any dimension to relocate its design as well as production facilities to this capital of the New South, and did so as part of a desire to turn Katrina’s dire legacy to positive advantage, by taking the 15-year old company in a new direction. That sense of beginning over again was stimulated on the one hand by the reason that Matt Chambers had to sit helplessly by, thousands of miles from his New Orleans home, watching CNN showing Katrina bearing down like a steamroller on his family home and business (see Chambers story), and on the other by an alliance with the man who has put Birmingham very firmly on today’s global two-wheeled atlas. George Barber, creator of the stellar new Barber Motorsports Park race circuit just outside the city, and owner of the fine collection of more than 1200 historic bikes comprising the Barber Vintage Motorcycle Museum located beside the track, has ridden to the rescue of a fellow Southerner by offering Chambers the use of one of his buildings in downtown Birmingham, while the company re-establishes itself. In the longer term, Barber has secured permission from the city council for construction of a new purpose-built state of the art Confederate factory within the confines of the Barber circuit, as the first step in what’s planned to be a world-class automotive centre of excellence at the Alabama racetrack.

In the meantime, however, Confederate motorcycles are now exiting the company’s temporary home in downtown Birmingham, at the rate of four examples per month of the Hellcat F131 power cruiser. Selling for $67,500, this has been re-engined compared to the previous F124 version manufactured in the company’s New Orleans home, and is now powered by a smoother-running R&R 131-cube motor that brings added torque and power to this high end cruiser bedecked with carbon fibre and bursting with original thought - witness the exhaust pipes contained in the swingarm, the asymmetrical trio of elipsoidal headlamps, or the vertically stacked gearbox shafts adopted four years before Yamaha supposedly invented these on the R1. “It’s a very limited production, but we’ve been chasing R&R for ages to supply us with motors, and we finally got them committed to four engines a month,” says Matt Chambers. “If you look at the motor you can see that it takes a long time to make, but the Hellcat is a kind of 9/11 project for us, and though demand is still holding up really well, I think we maxxed it out.” This in spite of the fact that, after Governor Riley returned from his spin on the first F131 Hellcat, the bike was then shipped off to Canada for use in the forthcoming new Jet Li movie, ‘The Rogue’, then back to Birmingham for, ahem, yours truly to test ride for these photos. It was fortunate I managed to keep it upright and in one piece, since its next date was the following week in New York City with none other than established Hellcat owner Tom Cruise, who rather than truck any of his own Confederates over from the West Coast (and he has, er, more than one) to ride to the NYC premiere of ‘Mission Impossible III’, asked Chambers to lend him one of the new ones. Since John Bloor must have paid Universal Pictures quite a few $$$ to feature Triumphs in the movie as part of the product placement the British manufacturer is evidently so keen on, presumably he wasn’t best pleased the star chose a Hellcat over a Bonneville to make his entrance on - but, hey, when you’re Tom Cruise, you ride what you like, if it demonstrates support for a company whose products you admire, that finds itself in a tight corner.....

This ultimate iteration of Confederate’s benchmark model will shortly be joined in production by the Wraith B120, the customer version of the fabulous futurebike designed three years ago for Confederate by J.T.Nesbitt, which epitomises the stated culture of Confederate Motorcycles embodied in its logo - the ‘Art of Rebellion’. Even by the standards of the Hellcat, itself hardly a commonplace piece of cruiser kit, the girder-forked Wraith replete with carbon-fibre and bursting with new technology, is an astonishing axiom of alternative design which has earnt its creator attention and acclaim the world over for the special brand of minimalist magic it brings to the American V-twin powercruiser cult. “We have new motors coming for the Wraith,” says Matt Chambers. “We have a firm commitment from JIMS to run what essentially is an H-D validated motor, its 120 cu. in. twincam engine producing 121 ft/lbs. of torque and 125 horsepower, which is also counterbalanced. I’m excited about this because it’s an engine that you or I could get on and ride to Sturgis and back, and it would never break while giving a dam’ comfortable ride with tons of performance, all of which suits a solidly grounded sporting motorcycle like the Wraith. We’ve looking at commencing production by the end of this year, and we have a back order of about 50 bikes, so it’s a really healthy position with that motorcycle at the moment, even though we stopped taking orders after Katrina. But now we have the pre-production prototype just coming through, and the engine supply is confirmed, we’ll start doing so again.”

Katrina canned Confederate’s plans to start production of the exotic wonderbike in a larger New Orleans factory close to its former Carondelet Street home, on which Matt Chambers had already signed a lease. With the company now homeless post-Katrina, Confederate decided instead to move to Birmingham last December, after considering cities as close to New Orleans as Shreveport, La., and as far away as Santa Fe, New Mexico, or Pittsburgh, Pa. Affronting as it might be to the truth of time to see a motorcycle bearing the Confederate badge exiting a Yankee factory north of the Mason-Dixon line, Pennsylvania was a serious option thanks to the location there of Brian Case, the engineering consultant closely involved in bringing Nesbitt’s flights of two-wheeled fancy to the street. But, recognizing the implicit advantages of moving to the sunbelt’s Detroit, Matt Chambers inked the deal to restart the company in Alabama, while persuading Case to head south full-time to take charge of development, as well as overseeing manufacture for Confederate and begin assembly of the Wraith B120, with a likely retail price of $55,000. Production goals include at least 150 hand-crafted, high-end bikes for the 2007 model year, with that number expected to double in 2008, and grow to 900 motorcycles a year later once the company’s new factory at Barber Motorsports Park is up and running. The company's current backorder includes over a dozen Hellcats and almost 50 Wraiths, representing a revenue stream of more than $3.5 million.

''The major catalyst for our decision to move Confederate to Birmingham was George Barber and the remarkable museum he’s created,” says Chambers. “Among the major factors that clearly set Birmingham apart were Alabama's automotive manufacturing infrastructure and a highly trained automotive workforce from which a motorcycle manufacturer could draw employees. Since moving to Birmingham, we’ve found plenty more reasons that have reinforced our decision as a wise one. Not only is there an excellent tooling and manufacturing capability, so we can get new parts produced almost as quickly as we can design them, but we’ve also discovered tremendous business development and marketing support services in Alabama. Our former home, New Orleans, is a very romantic and historic place, but Birmingham is clearly on its way to being way cool.”

However, that’s not to say Confederate disdains any connection with the US automotive industry’s traditional Michigan home base, as its choice of partner to develop an entirely new mould-breaking American V-twin motorcycle engine for the next generation of Confederate motorcycles, shows. In an industry which defines success one lap at a time, Detroit-based Kaytech has earnt the trust and respect of automotive racing’s toughest competitors, by serving several U.S. manufacturers’ factory race teams, especially General Motors for whom they have engineered and continue to develop the highly successful Corvette and Pontiac GTO race motors. Kaytech founder and president Fritz Kayl is a widely respected industry veteran frequently called upon to engineer the exotic and unusual for America’s finest, most recently the Cadillac Sixteen concept car’s 13.2-litre 32-valve pushrod V-16 engine featuring so-called ‘displacement on demand’ via de-activation of half the number of cylinders under reduced load. With that kind of technology at their disposal, developing a 101 cu.in. 1655cc motorcycle engine to power the Confederate Renovatio, the reborn company’s forthcoming re-invention of the traditional American cruiser (see Edward Jacobs sidebar) is an interesting alternative challenge, says Kayl. “Developing a motorcycle engine is the same but different to an automobile motor,” he says. “You’re looking for performance, reliability, compact build and reduced weight on both - just that these have a greater relative importance to one another in a two-wheeled vehicle, which is smaller and lighter than a four-wheeled one. We’re going to enjoy working with Confederate on what we’re calling the Foxtrot Project.”

To deliver the 90-degree V-twin liquid-cooled Foxtrot motor which Chambers has engaged them to develop, with the first five running examples contracted to be available for dynamic testing by April 2007, Kaytech are essentially slicing two cylinders off the end of the iconic high-performance LS7 aluminum-block pushrod V8 motor they designed and developed, which powers the Corvette Z06 sports car, and especially its race and title winning Callaway competition version. The dry-sump LS7 engine contains many race-derived components, including titanium valves and conrods, a forged-steel crankshaft, high-profile cams, and CNC-machined two-valve cylinder heads for better flow, all of which features will be shared by Confederate’s liquid-cooled Foxtrot motor. According to Kayl, this will measure 107 x 92 mm for 1655 cc, with a 56 mm inlet valve and 41 mm exhaust, will run an 11:1 compression ratio with the forged pistons running in open deck Nikasil chrome-bore cylinders, and will feature a gear-driven primary and right-side belt final drive, via a multiplate oil-bath clutch and either five- or six-speed gearbox. But if that already sounds like a motor that’ll win any stoplight shootout, Matt Chambers has a final trick up his sleeve: supercharging. “I haven’t made up my mind yet whether all the applications for this new engine will be supercharged, but for sure the Renovatio will be,” he says. “We’re going to be looking at high horsepower which maximises torque to weight, and we already have a supercharger supplier which can deliver us what we need. In accordance with our strategy to use as many US suppliers for our products as possible, this is an American company - but I was fortified in my intention to employ supercharging on the Renovatio by meeting up with the Australian guys from Sprintex at the Goodwood Festival of Speed this year. They make a kit to supercharge the V-Rod, and had one of their customer’s bikes there. The improvement in performance and especially torque it gives a smaller-capacity motor like the Harley is really significant, and on our new 101 cu.in. Kaytech engine, the benefits will be very exciting. I think in the Renovatio we’re going to have the ruler of the highways!” With a projected 190 bhp available from the supercharged version of the Kaytech motor, that seems probable....

A bike which will however be created without the creator of the acclaimed Wraith and Hellcat models at the helm, after the former Confederate designer JT Nesbitt felt unable for personal reasons to leave New Orleans, and follow the company he’d worked for since 2000 in giving a dramatically different product identity to any of its North American cruiser competitors, to Alabama. Will JT’s absence be felt? “Of course,” says Matt Chambers. “JT will always be a part of what Confederate has become, having designed the Wraith and Hellcat with the collaboration of the Confederate team - and I pay tribute to him for his innovation and dedication. But Ed Jacobs, his conceptual design assistant, has taken over the reins of Confederate design, and I believe our customers will be very excited by what Ed’s doing. It’s his turn to stand in the spotlight - and I know from the response we’ve had from those who’ve seen the Renovatio renderings reproduced here, that he won’t be found wanting.” Jacobs has already conceived a unique minimalist package by cruiser class standards for the Renovatio, entirely dispensing with a conventional frame and instead using the inherent strength of the Foxtrot motor, matched to bracing struts mounted to either side of the engine, to create a motorcycle whose single-sided swingrm pivots in the engine crankcases, Ducati style. The seat and fuel cell will be a single integrated carbon fibre unit, and the cantilever monoshock rear suspension is matched to a Wraith-type girder fork front end, with the water radiator for the liquid-cooled motor mounted between the spars, and flanked on either side by an array of LED lights which together comprise the headlamps. Pretty trick!

18 months ago, when I was honoured to be the first to ride the prototype Confederate Wraith streetbike which I’d watched being created before my eyes, Matt Chambers invited me to a Halloween party in New Orleans last November, a Confederate cruise to celebrate what was expected to be the rollout of the first production versions of the Wraith. Halloween in New Orleans is the evil twin of Mardi Gras, with fright substituted for frivolity - a good occasion to introduce a bike whose name is taken from the Scottish word for a willowy image of your future dead self, coming back from the hoary netherworld to portend your imminent doom! The plan was to gather 60 bikes from around the USA for a midnight cruise from the company's shop on Carondolet Street, through the misty Warehouse District to the bright lights of the French Quarter, where we’d celebrate Confederate’s success in productionising such an extreme example of mechanical art. But there never was such a rollout party. Real horror, in the form of Hurricane Katrina, intervened, and Confederate’s very survival was jeopardised.

But now, with the support of men like George Barber, as well as his anonymous but honourable luminary investor, Matt Chambers and his team of fellow-visionaries have not only re-established the Confederate Motor Company in Birmingham, Alabama, on a far sounder platform than pre-Katrina, but in Edward Jacobs’ remarkable Renovatio they have answered the question I’m sure I wasn’t the only one to ask after the Wraith broke cover: what next? Well, now we know.....

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Confederate's collapse: How the roof fell in on the company

North America’s most significant natural disaster thus far in the 21st century had a devastating impact on the residents of New Orleans, as well as on the Crescent City businesses which employed them, of which Confederate Motorcycles was one. Matt Chambers was forced to watch the terrible force of nature represented by Hurricane Katrina unfolding at long distance, then cope with its aftermath. Here’s how, in his own words.

“When Katrina hit, thank heavens the prototype Wraith was away from New Orleans, safe and sound on display in New York. But JT Nesbitt and I were in the Middle East, talking to one of our customers who was interested in investing in the company. I’m not at liberty to tell you his name, but he was - is - a very significant personage in a country that’s a good friend of America’s, and a satisfied Confederate customer who’d invited me over to discuss this business opportunity. JT was going to do some work on his Hellcat, while the investor and myself talked business, and around 11 am on August 27th, a Saturday, we shook hands on a deal that gave me what I was looking for, with the assurance there was up to four times more money available as and when we presented a case for needing it. You find your angel based on the calibre of your product, and this particular person unquestionably has every single spectacular motorcycle available today, as well as many cars - yet he told me that when he wants to unwind, his favourite machine that he takes out to ride is the Hellcat!”

“We wanted to hit the town that night, and celebrate coming to an agreement which would significantly strengthen Confederate’s position, without however any change in ownership – it’s still an American company. This gentleman can’t really go out and do stuff like that, because of the kind of celebrity he is, but he insisted we go out to rip it up with his friends, instead. So we went out that night to this outstanding Lebanese restaurant, then some other places, and I’m learning so much about this part of the world, and having a great time doing so - other than fantastic moments with my family, I had more fun that night than I’ve ever had. It’s such a relief after so long fighting against the odds to get Confederate established, to have someone come aboard whom I believe to be the perfect partner for this venture, who understands where we’re coming from, is a satisfied customer, and wants to help us expand the company. I can’t tell you what a release from anxiety it was, because what this relationship did was to give us seven times more liquid working capital than I have ever had before, at the moment we most needed it, to take Confederate to the next level.”

“So after this great night out I get back to our luxurious bungalow in the palace grounds around 2.30 am, grab a beer and light up a cigarette, and switch on the TV. It goes straight to CNN, and I remember being rooted to the spot, unable to move. The Gulf of Texas is this enormous great swirl of red, and what started out as a li’l old tropical storm is now a Category Four hurricane headed straight at my home town, at my family, my friends and my factory. I get this flood of emotion like I’ve never felt before – panic, fear, concern, frustration that I’m here and it’s happening there, all of that. I understand at once the way things are in my home town, and I know there are a lot of people that aren’t going to make it out. Of course, half a day ahead because of the different time zones, I made contact with my family right away, and I knew they were going to be OK, living up on the North Shore of Lake Pontchartrain, and I was in touch with everyone in the company through my manager Karen. But we did not have time to evacuate any of the contents of the Confederate factory. I don’t know what I could have done more had I been there, but on Saturday New Orleans time they built like a pyramid structure inside the factory to try to stop things from getting wet. We were more worried about flooding than anything else, in case the levees broke, which seemed probable. It wasn’t projected in anybody’s mind that the building would come down.”

“Katrina hit on the morning of Monday 29th, while I was still in the Middle East. It was such a rollercoaster of emotion, going from such a zealous high to such an anxious low in the space of just a few hours. I saw my investor that next day, and told him I didn’t think we should proceed any further, because it didn’t look like I had a business any more for him to invest in. We hadn’t signed a written contract, so he was within his rights to terminate. He looked me straight in the eyes and told me that when he shook hands on a deal, his word was his bond, and that as far as he was concerned, the arrangement still stood. He said he knew we would survive and grow strong again, and he wanted to be a part of a renovated Confederate. That’s the word he used, and that’s the name we’ve given to our new generation motorcycle, the Renovatio.”

“It took about a week to consummate the deal with lawyers and paperwork, and another four days to get home. But on the seventh day I was with my family again on the North Shore, and on the tenth day we had a meeting there with all the employees of Confederate, save a couple who were still stranded in the city. At that stage we still did not know what had happened at the factory, because there was no way of getting into New Orleans - we tried to get a picture from some of the aerial shots on the TV, but it wasn’t close enough to see anything. We decided to send JT and his colleague Ed Jacobs to our development associate Brian Case’s shop in Pittsburgh to finalise the production Wraith, and since it was evident we’d have to relocate away from New Orleans, and four out of our nine employees who owned a house were on the North Shore which wasn’t wiped out, it was a no-brainer to relocate there. Even so, when I’d got back home North Shore was so much worse than I thought, if only in the short term. It was set up to have 100,000 residents and now it had more than 300,000. Everywhere’s a bottleneck, there’s no food, you can’t get a cup of coffee or groceries, you have to wait in line for hours for gas, debris is everywhere, you get a nail in your tyre every day - it was just a mess, but infinitely better off than New Orleans, where people were living in penury, waiting to be rescued.”

“But JT Nesbitt would not go to Pittsburgh, even in the short term, and that was a major factor for us, since he would not move to the North Shore, either. He’d already told several people that New Orleans was never going to be the same, he couldn’t believe the looting, and he never wanted to go back there again. He thought that we should move to Shreveport, which is where he’s from, but that was not an appropriate area for Confederate to move to - there’s no buoyancy like there is here in Birmingham, which JT also declined to move to. In the end, he decided to remain in New Orleans and in the French Quarter where he lives, once it became apparent that this had survived more or less unscathed. But it meant we had a parting of the ways, and his assistant Ed Jacobs took over responsibility for sending Confederate in a new direction in terms of product, being already familiar with our design-driven ethos.” 

“We had to get on track with the inventory and see what it would take to start production again - though it was already evident the North Shore was not an option. The place would take months to come back to normal, buildings had been marked up 50% to rent or buy, and availability was very restricted, anyway - it’s mainly a residential area. It was around six weeks before we could get into the city, so not until October 16th when we found out what had happened to the factory. We drove in to New Orleans, parked outside, opened the door, and the lights were on and the air-conditioning was blowing - it was surreal! But the shop was totalled, even though the flooding was relatively light. What had happened was due to Katrina’s windforce - the whole of one wall had collapsed when the wind blew it in, and that of course brought the roof down on the contents. When I looked at it, my first thought was that we’re not going to get anything out of here - it looked like a coal mine in there. But some of the guys convinced me it was possible to get some of the frames and other inventory out, and they did by lifting up part of the roof and extracting what lay beneath - this means a Confederate frame is strong enough to have a roof fall on it, and still survive! We lost some paper on the business side, computers and files and stuff, but our hard drives were intact. We qualified for disaster relief, but the application for the loan is still out, more than a year later. We had some insurance, but it was only $150,000, and anyway the real loss to the company was the business interruption - that’s what was killing us. I knew we would have an absent cash flow until January at the earliest, which was doubly frustrating because we has so many orders to fulfil for the Wraith and Hellcat - more than a year’s production at the old factory was already under deposit. That’s why I’d signed a lease on a much bigger place, which we were planning to start moving to as soon as I’d returned from the Middle East.”

“Confederate’s purpose for being is to create, perpetuate and lead a new American vehicle design initiative, and to design and craft the best motorcycles possible. In terms of where we were going to relocate to, these were the things that were driving me to make my decision, and to derive a positive benefit from this act of God. Birmingham, Alabama, was very high on my list, which is why George Barber was my last call - I’d decided I would make no firm deal anywhere else until I’d talked to him, but I wanted to be armed and dangerous if he started quizzing me, to be in the position that if he was interested in Confederate relocating to Birmingham, I could demonstrate there were other places which also had an interest in bringing us there, too. But it didn’t come to that.”

“I feel that George Barber will be historically viewed as one of the the greatest motorcycle identities of the present day in North America. I’ve known him since 1994, and what he has done with his magnificent display of bikes is not only to provide a unique window on the evolution of the motorcycle, but also to create an environment where a non-bike person would come out of there and say, “I’m going to be careful when I see motorcycles on the street, now.”  I had been there several times, and each time admired even more what’d he had created and was expanding on.”

“So I called Mr.Barber early in November, and immediately I started getting calls and e-mails from what is essentially his lieutenancy. On November 15th we met in the Museum auditorium, and they made an extremely professional presentation to me that was very aggressive in seeking to attract Confederate to Birmingham. Classy and courteous, but hard-headed and businesslike, it was George Barber all the way. And thus began what I would call a perfect courtship, culminating in a press conference we held on December 15th where we made our commitment, which made the front page of the Birmingham newspaper under the headline “Motorcycle Company to the Stars Chooses Birmingham”! Mr.Barber has given us the use of one of his buildings in downtown Birmingham to restart manufacture, where we will likely be for two years, while we build a new factory out at the track, adjacent to the Museum. George already has the legislative stuff done on that - there are no governmental problems and the green light is on. We’re going to start with a 25,000 square feet facility in a state of the art building in its own right, with the possibility of future expansion, as necessary.” 

“But the crucial reason that we want to be here in Birmingham, with Barber, is a part of reasserting American design excellence. We’re exposed to every important motorcycle design that I’m aware of, to study and learn from its design and craftsmanship. And, secondly, we have access to a fantastic array of suppliers and component furnishers in this region, thanks to Alabama’s position as the 21st century Detroit. And because of this location, because of Mr.Barber’s support in providing us with facilities to get restarted in Birmingham, in allowing Confederate to be a component in the new high tech automotive centre of excellence he’s establishing at the track, and to have access to his collection, because of the financial resources my honourable investor has insisted in maintaining on the basis of a handshake, and because of the great vision and hard work our team is devoting to re-establishing Confederate as the finest American company building small-batch motorcycle products, I feel we’re stronger now than we were before Katrina, with a bright future based on a firm platform. But we’ve been to hell and high water and back again getting here - please God the City of New Orleans comes out of it as well as I believe Confederate Motorcycles has done.”

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Confederate Renovatio: the Kandinsky of the cruiser

32-year old Edward Jacobs, South American-born in Britain’s former colony of Guyana, and thus endowed with Her Majesty’s English rather than the Southern drawl of most of his workplace colleagues, had already worked for Confederate for a couple of years pre-Katrina, mostly out of his Connecticut home assisting the company’s then designer JT Nesbitt to flesh out his own innovative two-wheeled concepts, while developing some very different but equally stimulating ones himself. These are represented by the first new model he’s entirely responsible for since moving to Birmingham to take over the design helm of the company post-Katrina, the aptly-named Renovatio.

This hyper-minimalist New Direction for the traditional American cruiser, powered by a liquid-cooled Detroit-built 90-degree V-twin engine that blends old and new with its pushrod valvegear mated to two-valve cylinders devoid of finning, is set to debut for the 2008 model year, and in doing so will surely shake up what’s perceived as the established norm in the US cruiser market. Let Jacobs himself explain how and why the Renovatio was created.

“The Renovatio concept was conceived from the idea of having a structural load-bearing powerplant, juxtaposed with the idea of how to communicate its function and true design intention visually. To embrace the motor as a foundation to build the entire remainder of the motorcycle on, is the main driving idea behind the Renovatio design.”

“The concept of the design entails a hierarchy of mounting points cast directly into the engine cases. First, the larger matrix of hard points allows continual major reconfiguration of motorcycle architecture, which in turn creates a flexible foundation to allow a place for growth and further iteration. These points in conjunction with a matrix of a smaller-diameter subset of hard points, cast into the engine case on all sides, set in inherently strong geometric configurations, allow for limitless structural peripheral connections. The combination of these concepts creates a truly utilitarian modular flexible foundation.”

“Another idea contained in the Renovatio is the concept of reducing the parts count by having the components be smarter, so that they provide multiple functional uses. For instance, the front blades of the girder forks not only support the front wheel and comprise part of the steering, but also serve as a housing for the the LED lighting, as well as fluid passages for the needs of the radiator mounted between them. Everything is designed directly into the mould. The radiator placement along with the powerplant platform built in Detroit and derived from a race-winning auto engine, both allude to the U.S. automotive industry, while the fuel cell now is a combination of structural neck, air box, fuel cell and interface for rider.”

“Creating these structural arrangements with multiple cavities is possible because of the capabilities inherent in structural carbon fibre technology, and allows us to push the envelope of convention. These structural possibilities allow the multi-use fuel cell to cantilever and float over the engine, creating a new motorcycle vocabulary that communicates intention. The inspiration for this came from a 6th century B.C. Chinese philosopher, Lao Tzu, who’s the father of Taoism and who wrote as follows: "Thirty spokes converge upon a single hub. It is on the hole in the centre that the use of the cart hinges. We make a vessel from a lump of clay, but it is the empty space within the vessel that makes it useful. We make doors and windows for a room, but it is the empty space within it that makes the room livable. Thus while the tangible has its advantages, it is the intangible which makes it useful." The Renovatio silhouette is one of a new architectural arrangement for motorcycle construction - one in that the absence of conventional structure communicates a deeper purpose intuitively, which is understood by the seeker.”

Is the Kandinsky of the cruiser, motorcycling Michelangelo Massimo Tamburini’s 21st century successor, now working for the Confederate Motor Company in Birmingham, Alabama? Look at these images of Ed Jacobs’ concepts for the Renovatio, which with comparatively reduced inevitable compromise required by the practicalities of EPA homologation, can be envisaged reaching the road - and then decide....

http://www.confederate.com/

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