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1947 Vincent HRD Series B Rapide |
The Vincent HRD firm was set up in the Hertfordshire town of Stevenage in 1927 when Philip Conrad Vincent, an Anglo-Argentine Cambridge University student, acquired the financially stricken HRD motorcycle company. HRD stood for Howard Raymond Davies, a motorcycle racer and former Royal Flying Corps pilot, who had founded his company in 1924. Phil Vincent, or PCV as he was popularly known, had conceived and built a new kind of cantilever spring frame for motorcycles while still a pupil at Harrow in 1925.
The firm's early motorcycles incorporated PCV's chassis powered by various engines supplied by firms like MAG, Villiers and JAP. Powered by a 350cc Swiss MAG engine, the firm's first motorcycle may not have been the prettiest machine in the world but it was fast for the period, PCV claiming to have achieved 82 mph. The machines introduced to the public at the Olympia Motorcycle Show were fitted with JAP motors but the firm received no orders. PCV's design was too radical for traditional motorcyclists, who considered them ugly.
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1934 Vincent HRD Model W |
Things began to improve in 1929, despite the economic situation, thanks to the publicity garnered by Eric Gill's round-the-world tour on a Vincent HRD sidecar outfit. In 1931, an Australian engineer named Phil Irving came to Vincent HRD from Velocette. Irving had come to England on the back of Eric Gill's outfit, leaving his life and his motorcycle dealership in the Australian outback on a whim. The firm experimented with various configurations, including a couple of interesting water-cooled models powered by 250cc and 600cc Villiers engines.
In 1934, PCV was persuaded to enter the firm for the Isle of Man Senior TT race, using racers fitted with redesigned JAP motors. The motors arrived late and tests at the Brooklands motordrome showed them to be far from fit for purpose. In the event, all three Vincent HRDs retired from the TT with broken engines. As a result, Irving sat down and designed a new engine for Vincent HRD, marking the rebirth of the firm as a motorcycle manufacturer in its own right.
When the new machines with in-house engines were shown at Olympia, they had not even been started. Yet Lady Luck smiled on the firm as a motorcycle journalist accelerated to more than 90 mph during the show, which was very fast for a 500cc roadster of the time. Vincent HRD produced three models: the 80 mph Meteor, 90 mph Comet and the 100 mph TT Model. While the firm did not win at the 1935 IoM Senior TT, all three machines entered finished in respectable places, which was good enough for the buying public. When a factory tester on a tuned Vincent HRD Comet was booked by local police at over 110 mph, the magistrate dismissed the charge, unable to give it any credence.
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Phil Vincent on a Series A Rapide |
However, Vincent and Irving began considering the possibility of producing a 1000cc twin to rival the Brough-Superior SS100. Irving had the smart idea of using two Comet top-ends on a new crankcase and the new Series A Rapide model was duly presented at Olympia in 1936. Development costs were vastly reduced because the Rapide shared so many parts with its 500cc progenitor. Considered by many to be superior to the Brough-Superior SS100, the Series A Rapide was a success, although the chassis was a bit too long for the IoM TT course. However, it broke a number of speed records and was extremely fast on the road. One example tuned by the factory for a racing customer was capable of 90 mph in first gear. Just seventy-eight Series A Rapides were built before the outbreak of World War Two, during which the firm suspended motorcycle production and focused on military contracts.
Before the end of the war, the firm already had plans for a redesigned 1000cc Rapide and the prototype was wheeled out in 1946. As fast as its prewar sibling, the Series B Rapide had a unit construction engine, dispensing with the Series A Rapide's Burman gearbox, and a servo clutch that did away with the problems of slippage and burn-out experienced before the war because of the high power output. However, when the Series B Meteor and Comet were introduced, they retained Burman gearboxes and clutches as they were just about equal to handling the singles' horsepower.
When the firm produced its prototype Black Shadow model in 1948, based on the Rapide but with a tuned, black-enamelled motor, the new sportster achieved 122 mph in standard trim on the Isle of Man. Later that year, a tuned version of the Black Shadow broke the World Land Speed Record at 148 mph on the Bonneville Salt Flats. A Rapide prepared by the firm also competed in the 1948 International Six Days Trial in Italy. The firm's machines smashed numerous speed records and a Series C Black Shadow was put through a 100,000 mile or 160 kilometre road test in solo and sidecar mode, the motor being relatively unworn when stripped for inspection afterwards. Yet the firm was never far from bankruptcy, the price of its products being a significant factor. Phil Vincent explained insouciantly that “speed is expensive” and, to one American agent, that he did not want his motorcycles sold to “any Tom, Dick or Harry”.
Sadly, Vincent had been unable to ride motorcycles since a motorcycle accident in 1946 had damaged his sense of balance, which goes a long way towards explaining the 1954 Series D models that hammered the final nails into the firm’s coffin. Offered the choice between a slower and uglier Vincent, the “HRD” suffix having been dropped in 1949, with heavy glass-fibre fairings reminiscent of some of the chunkier scooters of the era and a scandalous price tag or a cheaper, more fragile but faster and prettier Triumph or Norton, there was no contest. The firm’s tiny slice of the market shrank even more and Vincent ended motorcycle production in 1955, less than a year after the introduction of Phil Vincent’s “two-wheeled Bentley” Series D models. The Vincent firm ceased motorcycle production in 1955 because their 1000cc veetwins were extremely expensive and were capable of clocking up astonishingly high mileages between rebuilds in the hands of competent owners, attributes of decreasing commercial advantage in a postwar world discovering the quick fix of mass-consumerism and short term profit margins. By 1955, Triumph Motorcycles were offering the 650cc Tiger T110, which was capable of a genuine 117 mph at less than half the price of a Vincent 1000, albeit at the expense of rider comfort and mechanical longevity.
However, the Vincent HRD legend remained intact and even today, a well-sorted postwar veetwin can handle long, fast motorway journeys where other British motorcycles of the period would simply disintegrate. The same can also be said for the postwar Comet, the 500cc single cylinder motorcycle sometimes described as “half a Vincent”, usually by people who have never ridden one.
However, the Vincent HRD legend remained intact and even today, a well-sorted postwar veetwin can handle long, fast motorway journeys where other British motorcycles of the period would simply disintegrate. The same can also be said for the postwar Comet, the 500cc single cylinder motorcycle sometimes described as “half a Vincent”, usually by people who have never ridden one.
Copyright © 2010 Vinny Rapido
