The Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum is one of a kind in part because of the more than 1,600 machines in the collection and 1,000 on rotating display, but what is arguably most impressive is that the museum doesn’t focus only on the rare and exquisite. The mission of the collection is to preserve and display motorcycling as a whole, from famous or infamous bikes that we all know and love, to showroom failures and generic, affordable icons.
In search of nine pivotal motorcycles that defined an era or new technology, the team at Barber suggested the collection below. Like the museum, it isn’t meant to be a definitive or complete list of firsts, but rather a showcase of nine avantgarde machines — some quietly important or forgotten too quickly, others legends of their time — that capture the constant perseverance and innovation in the motorcycle world.
1867 Roper Steam Velocipede (replica)
Some historians say this was the first motorcycle, a steam-powered contraption built by Sylvester H. Roper in Massachusetts. The twist grip on the handlebar to open the steam valves certainly hinted at motorcycle throttles to come. This replica goes so far as to have wheels hand made by Amish woodworkers, aiming to faithfully recreate a machine designed just after the Civil War. Roper evolved and promoted his machine until his death in 1896 — a heart attack while riding, believe it or not. Photo by Yve Assad.
1914 Indian Hendee Special
Cadillac introduced the first electric starter on a car in 1912, and right on its tail was this 1,000 cc Hendee Special with the same technology. “All electric” models even had electric lights and a horn. However, charging the battery wasn’t something Hendee had sorted out. The starter caused so many headaches that it would be more than 40 years before motorcycles adopted them for good. Photo by Yve Assad.
1923 Scott Squirrel Sprint Special
Scott wasn’t the first company to use a two-stroke engine, but the Squirrel and subsequent Flying Squirrel are often referenced as benchmarks in motorcycling. This 1923 Scott used rotary valves, oil injection and water cooling (via a thermosyphon and no water pump) decades before the Japanese Big Four would take over motorcycling with even simpler technology in their arsenal. Scott’s racing success at the Isle of Man offers more proof that it was a machine ahead of its time. Photo by Yve Assad.
1929 Majestic
The Majestic’s creator, Georges Roy, was one of the first to experiment with pressed-steel manufacturing for motorcycles, which could be done cheaply and in high volume. It also worked well with the hub-center steering (not new at the time), allowing the front of the frame to hold the front wheel with no fork or conventional steering head. Stamped-steel frames would be adopted later by machines such as Honda’s famous Super Cub, but mostly the Majestic stands as a striking snapshot of Art Deco culture and flamboyant French design. Photo by Yve Assad.
1946 Harley-Davidson Knucklehead
Until the late 1930s, Harley-Davidsons were most likely powered by crude, side-valve engines with total-loss lubrication. When the Knucklehead came around it represented a massive step forward for The Motor Company — overhead valves, instruments mounted to the fuel tank, a standard four-speed transmission, and a modern system that contained circulated oil inside the engine. The result was a bike that powered pride in domestic engineering at a time when the economy was booming, and Harley was catapulted into mainstream Americana. Photo by Yve Assad.
1954 Harley-Davidson FL Hydra Glide
With Indian going bust in 1953 and President Eisenhower’s Interstate Highway System gaining momentum, the road was figuratively and literally being paved in front of Harley-Davidson — and the 74-cubic-inch Hydra Glide was the machine that would go the distance. It settled on a hand clutch with a foot shifter, and with hydraulic suspension and enough power to haul people across states and continents, the Panhead became the bedrock of Milwaukee’s long-standing reputation for building motorcycles to explore from sea to shining sea. Harley’s most popular models to this day owe their existence to the first FL. Photo by Yve Assad.
1969 Kawasaki H1
By the late 1960s, Japanese brands were on a roll, successfully honing their recipes for powerful and affordable street bikes. A classic example is this H1, a 500 cc two-stroke triple that cost less than $1,000 and cranked out about 60 horsepower. For the time, it was wickedly fast and incredibly cheap. Even with chassis and brakes that were decidedly not as good, Kawasaki rode a wave of more than 100,000 H1s to become one of the world’s most prominent brands. Its follow-on, the 750cc H2, would become legendarily fast and unruly, earning the nickname, “widowmaker.” But the H1 set the stage. Photo by Yve Assad.
1993 Yamaha GTS1000
Every so often the motorcycling world experiments with a new way to avoid a typical front fork (like the Majestic, above). In the early 1990s, Yamaha mated James Parker’s RADD front suspension to a familiar, 1,002 cc inline-four and created this GTS1000. Despite offering a modern anti-dive front-end solution slightly ahead of BMW’s Telelever, plus nifty features like a front trunk, the GTS soon disappeared. And the telescopic fork is still king. Photo by Yve Assad.
1996 Britten V1000
With the help of a small team of engineers, John Britten built 10 of his namesake machines in his garage in Christchurch, New Zealand, before he succumbed to cancer at age 45. It is as high performance as it is innovative, using carbon-fiber wheels and a girder front end, with the radiator positioned under the seat and the rear shock mounted at the front of the engine. The machine’s journey off its home island to face off against, and defeat, motorcycles from around the world cemented it as one of the most impressive engineering feats in the world of motorcycling. Photo by Yve Assad.
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