Riders Preferred Membership
Shop by Vehicle
Track Order
Contact Us
It's no secret that some people crave the attention they get riding their motorcycle, whether because it's big, loud, pretty, or unique. If that's you, here's your ultimate chance to stand out.
As we reported earlier this year, the National Motorcycle Museum in Anamosa, Iowa, is closing permanently on September 5 and Mecum Auctions will sell off much of the collection in the four days thereafter. And the biggest, strangest, most unique item to be auctioned off has to be RoaDog, the 17-foot-long, car-engine-powered, homebuilt monstrosity created by a character named William "Wild Bill" Gelbke.
Gelbke was an engineer who worked for McDonnell Douglas in California for a time and then returned to the Midwest where he built multiple strange machines in the 1960s. He eventually died in a shootout with police under mysterious circumstances at his home in Green Bay, Wisconsin. After he built RoaDog, Gelbke tried to build a more marketable motorcycle powered by a car engine that he called the Auto Four. To learn more about Gelbke and his strange creations, see the story Mark Gardiner wrote for Common Tread a few years ago.
Actually, Gelbke built more than one RoaDog. He reputedly rode his around the Midwest and even on long road trips, despite the challenges of parking and doing U-turns on a 17-foot motorcycle. He built one for a friend, who upon delivery apparently decided it was unrideable. That would explain why the example in the Mecum auction shows 1.5 miles on the odometer.
You'd have to be almost as wild as Wild Bill to want to ride the RoaDog. (You can see some rare footage of him riding the motorcycle in the video below.) Mecum says it weighs about 3,300 pounds, which is easily more than the Chevy II car from which the engine came.
But RoaDog is undeniably a uniquely odd chapter in U.S. motorcycle lore, and maybe some other museum or a collector will give it a warm and dry home. Mecum estimates bidding to go to $50,000 to $60,000 and there's no reserve.
If RoaDog is too "out there" for you, the auction that Mecum has labeled The John Parham Estate Collection contains a lot of other desirable machines and collectible items that were on display in the National Motorcycle Museum. Mecum has begun posting some of the desirable lots, but there's more to come.
Image Gallery
