Sid Biberman, Jacqueline Bickerstaff, Kevin Cameron,
Marty Dickerson, Roy Harper, Herb Harris,
Jerry Hatfield, Bill Hoddinott, Somer Hooker,
Stuart Jenkinson, Bruce Main-Smith, Glenn Shriver, and David Wright

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Working with PCV
By Roy Harper

When Rollie Free sped across the Bonneville Salt Flats aboard the first Vincent Black Lightning in 1948, he established the Vincent legend and an immortal place for himself in Vincent lore.

The preceptor of this world-famous motorcycle, Philip Conrad Vincent, had been an imaginative schoolboy whose hero was Howard Raymond Davies, founder of H.R.D. Motors Ltd. and brilliant rider, particularly on the tough T.T. course of the Isle of Man. After Vincent bought those famous initials in 1928, they gained added lustre as record after record fell to the thundering twins from Stevenage.

What sort of a man was their creator? I learned much about him during the four years in the seventies that we worked together producing our four books under the Vincent Publishing Company imprint. At times, he could be enthusiastic, positive, witty, creative, fanciful, self-mocking, or impractical.

I first met PCV in the sixties and corresponded with him in the early seventies during my editorship of MPH. Little was known of the history of his company, particularly the pre-war models, and he would fill the gaps in my knowledge. Eventually, we collaborated on the history of the Vincent H.R.D. Company, but the offers from publishers were so dire that I suggested the formation of a publishing company to produce books about Vincents.

Vincent agreed that the company should use his name and I agreed to finance it with a loan from my bookshop. I took his initials, PCV, and rearranged them to VPC for inclusion in the centre of a drawing of a Black Shadow wheel to form the company logo.

The Vincent Publishing Company was registered in 1974 and our first book, "Vincent HRD Gallery," was published later that year. "The Vincent HRD Story" followed in 1975 and is the only Vincent book to include original, verbatim quotes from H. R. Davies, PCV, Phil Irving, George Brown, Rollie Free, Bob Burns, Ted Davis, Paul Richardson et al.

Phil’s autobiography, "PCV," was published in 1976 during a difficult time for him. He suffered strokes and heart problems, and his wife, Freda, rang me to report on his condition. She asked me to finish his book, so I based my contribution on our interviews and his articles. The doctors had given him up, but he had a will of iron and pulled through. “I knew his brain was all right,” said Freda, “when he came to spouting engine formulae.”

I produced leather-bound, autographed, numbered editions of the trilogy in the Vincent colours of gold and black, and all the effort was made worthwhile when Philip said, “No man could ask for a better record of his life’s work.”

In 1976, I suggested that we publish a book to celebrate 50 years of the Vincent marque in 1977. I chose the photos from his collection and Phil wrote the captions.

Phil was a pleasure to work with, always positive and enthusiastic. He was very busy designing and developing his rotary engine and left the editing and production of the books to me, which meant that there was no overlap in responsibility and decision-making, as so often happens in collaborations.

Philip had his generation’s unquestioning patriotism, and his ambition was to produce a world-beating engine to challenge the Japanese manufacturers, holding the view that the four-stroke was obsolete.

He was scathing about other motorcycle designers. I took him to a motor museum and we stopped by a Scott motorcycle. I mentioned that Scott had taken out many patents. Pointing his walking stick at the despised object, Philip said, “It was a waste of time patenting that. Nobody wanted to copy it.”

Politicians also attracted Philip’s ire, not surprising in view of one experience Philip had with a government minister. Once he showed the Minister of Technology a drawing of his rotary engine in the hope of funding. The Minister looked at it in total

incomprehension and Vincent was obliged to say, “With respect, Minister. You are holding the drawing upside down.”

The engine took all his time and money, and Freda kept the show on the road by working in a hotel. She was very hospitable and often invited me to stay for a meal. On one occasion, as Philip made his way to the dining room, his trousers suddenly fell down to his ankles and Freda, Philip and I fell about laughing.

There were many light-hearted moments with Philip and Freda, despite the financial and health problems. They had a remarkable determination to succeed, but suffered from the difficulty that creative people experience; while they are working on a new book, engine, painting or whatever, they are not earning a living.

Fortunately for us, Vincent was always more interested in producing the perfect bike than in making money. Certainly, a more money-oriented person would have closed the business within the first three years when sales were so dire that the directors forsook their salaries.

The last motorcycles, the Series D range, were very much Vincent’s brainchild, co-designer Phil Irving having left the firm in 1949. They were criticised by journalists and the public, and Philip was very hurt by the adverse comments about the bike’s handling. Yet the enclosed bikes achieved his requirements of a high-speed touring motorcycle that would protect the rider from the elements.

I bought a Black Knight and installed it in the hall of my Chelsea flat. What better first sight for the visitor than a Vincent Black Knight. And on the sideboard in the drawing-room was a restored twin engine.

I would ride over to see Philip and tell him of my rides and how well the bike handled in crosswinds, especially on a ride from Toronto to Niagara Falls when the wind was so strong that the bike leaned against it all the way.

He enjoyed the tale of the youth who had heard how badly they cornered. I gave said youth a ride and when we returned to base, the outside of each of his shoes was worn away.

Philip died in 1979, leaving as his legacy a unique motorcycle that has given pleasure to thousands of enthusiasts around the world. Long may the Snarling Beast continue to do so.

About the author:
Roy Harper is best known for writing the official history of the H.R.D. & Vincent era with H.R.D., PCV, Phil Irving, et.al. in the seventies. He was editor of MPH from 1969 to 73 and has been a Vincent owner for 52 years. He has just published "The Snarling Beast," an edited collection of PCV’s articles. His autobiography, "Beasts and Beauties," will be published later this year and will include recollections of PCV, H.R.D., PEI, GB, PR, and Rollie Free. Roy is an antiques expert and sold them to Jackie Onassis, Peter Ustinov, and Alec Guinness, all from a Bond Street shop in London. He lives in a cottage near the seaside and has two sons, Bickham and Trevelyan. The photograph above of Harper and Philip Vincent was taken by Freda Vincent in Vincent’s study.

Editor's note: Roy Harper provided the profile image of Philip Vincent used in the lead graphic for this feature. The photo was taken by Harper during Christmas, 1977.

Philip C. Vincent: Visionary
By Herb Harris

True visionaries are rare. Individuals who see things as they should be and then bring that dream to reality. Not idle dreamers, they change the way we live in a particular area. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs easily come to mind in today’s world. In motorcycles, the names might include Honda, Britten and few others. Few, but certainly to include Philip Vincent whose motorcycles are even today, greater than half a century later, celebrated on the covers of magazines, raced successfully around the world and treasured by more riders and collectors than ever. There seems to be no end.

Visionaries are different from geniuses and certainly not greatly concerned with fortune building, though it does happen. No, more often than not, the accomplishment of the vision is fought and many times undone by those money realists concerned with wealth over perfection and cost over legend. Such was the case with Vincent, whose life’s shortcomings were generally caused by a continual lack of capital, the changing minds of fickle governmental agencies and second-guessing by his board of directors while he was abroad.

Consider that even given those adversities, the man dreamed up and produced the first fully-enclosed high speed touring motorcycle, the Series “D”, pioneered the use of fiberglass bodywork, and conceived and made the first true Jet Ski. Oh, and along the way always gave the world motorcycles so powerful that they held many of the world’s motorcycle speed records for years after they were no longer produced. Motorcycles so fast that for decades, men told and believed legends that they were banned from use in some places for their unspeakable power and speed.

Visions of a different kind accompanied the actual motorcycles. Presumably, it was the Great Man himself who coined those perfect and enduring names that sound so good even today. Black Shadow, Black Lightning, Grey Flash, Rapide, Meteor and so forth. Then, he detailed the motorcycle to give form to the name. A black engine – who would have thought? And how about that huge 150 mph speedometer to proclaim the outrageous speeds possible? But, it worked and still works today. Others nicknamed his creations “The Beast.”. This is a Britain which produced other and less inspiring motorcycles such as “The Dragonfly” and “The Flying Squirrel.” I am aware of only two occasions where others truly angered him with mention of the names of the products. Firstly, he was deeply offended by a press slur of his Series “A” Rapide as having so many external oil lines as to be a “plumber’s nightmare.” What genuinely offended him was to find that in America, some confused riders thought “H.R.D.” somehow signified “Harley R. Davidson.” Some many hours were spent grinding the initials off of cases, covers and more to remove the offensive suggestion from his motorcycles.

As a young man, he left college before graduation, unable to wait any longer to build the perfect

motorcycle, based on his patented rear suspension. Variations of it continue to be built today on modern motorcycles. The world has come to his vision of just how a bike should be suspended.

My particular favorite may be one of his rare failures. I speak of the idea of using aluminum crankpins in his racers. In theory, quite a good idea, but when foreign bits got into the business, it failed. Not unlike life as a whole for Mr. Vincent.

In conversation with L.J.K. Setright some years ago, he recalled to me his conversation with PCV. I never met him, so LJKS described the Great Man to me as having both a brilliant mind for engineering and getting right to the point.

Consider if you will, photographs of Mr. Vincent. How not unlike Bill Gates’ expression does PCV’s own look. More of a half-dreamy smile than anything, as if either had half his mind on some engineering solution rather than concern over the saying of “cheese.”

No, for me, the Vincent motorcycle simply reflects the man. Built entirely differently from anything else, but bold, big and inspiring. Nothing else was ever so ahead of its time and dominant in motorcycling as the Vincent. He dreamed it and in spite of all that the real world could do to stop him, he built it. Philip C. Vincent, a visionary beyond any question or else we would not be celebrating the century past since his birth and you would not be reading this.

About the author:
Herb Harris, 61, an attorney living in Austin, Texas, is a collector of motorcycles, artifacts, and cutaway engines who describes his wife, Karen, as “the most patient and loving wife a man could ask for.” He explains, “She lets me spend scads of money on my motorcycles and keep them in the family room.” “Vincents,” he says, “have been a passion since I sat and stared at my first one.” He is co-publisher of Jerry Hatfield’s biography of Rollie Free and runs an internet store that sells remanufactured Vincent racing parts. Harris is pictured above with the famous Rollie Free record bike – one of his collection – at the Legend of the Motorcycle Concours d’Elegance at Half Moon Bay, California, in May, 2007.

Phil Vincent, His Motorcycles, and What Might Have Been
By Jerry Hatfield

At the dawn of memorable life, around 1943 and age five, over and over I pedaled my tricycle ten yards down the sidewalk and back. These were epic journeys in my little mind. Sometimes I was a Flying Tiger pilot of a Curtiss P-40. Sometimes I was a cowboy on a horse. But most of the time I was on a big motorcycle with the car-sized tires and the two big round things under the gas tank that made the power and the noise. I favored motorcycles because they were the grownups’ extension of my tricycle and the big kids’ bicycles. Motorcycles made the greatest sounds of any motor vehicle, a low-pitched lumpety-lumpety-lumpety when stopped, and a sort of horse gallop when motoring away. I loved imitating the galloping noise by blowing air through my closed but relaxed lips. The mist of my spit added a touch of drama. In the back seat of the family car, on summer days, with a window down, I couldn’t resist poking my head out into the air stream to feel the current the way the motorcycle people must feel it.

A few years later, but long before girls looked good, I had advanced to a bicycle. Mine was fitted with the inevitable clothes pin that pinched the fork and held the cardboard strip against the rotating spokes. The year was around 1948. As a 10-year-old, my vocabulary now included the word “cylinder” as the name of the two big things that made the power on big motorcycles. One day, and then another and another, some skinnier motorcycles began to roll by our home. I read the names on the parked motorcycles and asked a rider about them. These were English motorcycles! Instinctively, I thought they were better looking than Harleys and Indians. The English motorcycles had skinny tires that looked right, instead of fat car tires. The foreign jobs didn’t have those cluttered-looking forks with lever action and exposed coil springs, but instead had telescopic forks that looked terrific and obviously worked as great as the landing gear of any airplane.

These new and different motorcycles, seemingly, had only one cylinder. But as they were obviously so much lighter than Harleys and Indians, a one-cylinder engine made good sense. I liked the low-down thump-thump-thump of the singles. One day, one of the “singles” made a purring noise instead of a thumping noise. Apparently something genetic kicks in the first time you hear a vertical, or parallel, twin. You love it or you don’t. I didn’t like the “sissy” sound. Harleys, Indians, and big singles were masculine; vertical twins were feminine. Why, I wondered, didn’t the English companies build a double-up of their singles, to produce a light, racy-looking V-twin that sounded good?

In 1951, at age 13, I was riding my own Cushman Eagle. This was a motor scooter that pretended to be a motorcycle by virtue of the tank between the knees. For a few glorious weeks, until the cops ticketed me, I had a megaphone exhaust on the Cushman. In the “sound” department, my lowly Cushman sounded better than any Triumph, as good as any English single, and almost as good as any Harley-Davidson or Indian.

Wow! One day in 1952, at the newsstand the latest Cycle magazine had a full page cover photo of a Vincent Black Shadow. Finally, somebody in England had figured it out! I bought the magazine and about wore it out. Right out of the box, the 1,000cc Cycle-tested Black Shadow did 128 mph! The same issue featured a hop-up article on how to make a 1,200cc Harley go 115 mph. I thought, how pathetic!

A year or so later, in the pages of Cycle, this 15-year-old was introduced to Rollie Free. Somewhere, I’d seen the picture, the shot of Free in bathing trunks, streaking over the Bonneville salt at the then mystical 150 mph!

The Phil Vincent Centenary
By Bill Hoddinott

March 14, 2008 marks 100 years since the birth of Philip Conrad Vincent in England. It is a good time to consider what his life has meant to the world.

The motorcycles that bear his name have unquestionably earned him a place among the immortals of the world motorcycle movement. The evidence for it is that over 60 years since his post-WWII products appeared, and over 50 years since manufacture ceased, his innovative designs are still frequently mentioned and praised as milestones in the enthusiast press. 

Grand Prix racing motorcycle practice has progressed very, very far in the years since Vincent production. And yet, examination of the very latest MotoGP World Champion Ducati reveals the Vincent principles: the steering head on a bracket attached to the power unit's cylinder heads, frameless design, and the rear fork attached to the back of the crankcase. The finest technical writers of the current day continue to refer to Vincent design and acknowledge its amazing vision.

The tremendous esteem in which the marque is held by enthusiasts is proven by the huge sums now changing hands for all the Vincent factory products, and especially the rare Black Lightning racers, which have attained “art object” status.

A great deal has been written about P.C. Vincent over many, many years, and all of us who love the marque feel we know the man quite well.  He was a young man who loved motorcycles and this drove him at the tender age of but 20 to scrape together the money to buy the established H.R.D. name. He proceeded to set up a very small company, with just a few hands, to manufacture his own machines because he had some ideas and believed he could show the world something new.

From that time forward his life was a constant, dogged, determined struggle to stay in business during the world economic depression of the '30s, and compete with the many famous larger English motorcycle companies. From 1939 to 1945 his firm produced war materiel, then for the next 10 years he put his efforts into building the best and most advanced motorcycles on the planet. From the late '40s these efforts were crowned with worldwide fame for the quality, durability, safety, and performance of his fabulous new 1,000cc road bikes, and the national and world speed records broken by his racing models in many countries.

In 1953 he married a lovely young woman, Freda.  They produced a daughter and Phil settled down 

into the family life he enjoyed the rest of his days. His daughter, Deirdre Vincent-Day serves as Patron of the Vincent H.R.D. Owners Club today.

In 1959 the company he had fought for so long and hard passed into other hands. He remained productive with journalism and books up to his passing in 1979, putting into print for his admirers all the inside stories of the trials and successes of his firm.

We venerate Phil Vincent today not only because he built wonderful motorcycles that we and the world have enjoyed for so many years, but also because as a man, Phil set an excellent personal example. He was the embodiment of all the traditional values: honesty, courage, intelligence, determination, hard work, and love of family. Besides a man of action, he was a man of letters - his writings are fascinating and none in the world has ever come up with better names for high-performance motorcycles than "Black Shadow,” "Grey Flash," and "Black Lightning!"

Philip Conrad Vincent was a special man. You'll never see his like again!

About the Author:
Bill Hoddinott, born in 1939, joined the Vincent H.R.D. Owners Club in 1961. The last few years he has served as organizer of the Black Lightning/Grey Flash Section. He enjoys digging up forgotten lore about the Black Lightning and Grey Flash racers for his monthly review in the club journal MPH. After a career in Public Health, Hoddinott retired in 1991. He built and races a 144-mph, supercharged 1932 Ardun-Ford roadster in speed trials, and has done extensive interviews for Bonneville Racing News as well as MPH. Bill, his wife Jerry, and their dachshund Britta live in Chesapeake, Virginia. Pictured above is the whole family: Bill, Jerry, Britta, and the Ardun-Ford.