It is deliciously ironic that the design impulse for all these freeway choppers adheres closely to one of the rubrics of the machine age: Form should follow function. Nothing unnecessary. Everything stripped bare. Yet, while that might reflect a European trend, these bikes, with their ubiquitous V-twin engines (invented in France, interestingly), their raked forks, their chrome, and their flaming paint schemes, have come to define the all-American motorcycle. Such is the magpie essence of pop culture: Borrow, co-opt, steal, and rework until you have a style to claim as your own.
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Carbon composite seat. (Click image to enlarge) |
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As long as it looks and sounds great, who cares if you cannot actually ride one of these bikes for long stretches of time, or if it handles like a hormonal camel? Matt Chambers, the presiding spirit behind Confederate Motorcycles, cares. He cares deeply.
When he founded the Confederate Motor Company in the early 1990s, Chambers wanted to retain the styling keystones, the sound and the fury, of the chopper era. But at the same time, he wanted to create a high-tech motorcycle with handling and engineering equal to the best European and Japanese sport bikes.
So began a decade-long pursuit of purist engineering, performance, and styling excellence. The culmination of this lineage is the Wraith, a motorcycle that bends, stretches, warps, and strains the edges of the all-American design envelope within which Chambers sees his brand.
The Wraith’s designer and builder is J.T. Nesbitt, a talented and cerebral gentleman who includes among his inspirations the work of Alexander Calder, the celebrated American metalsmith who created beautifully balanced wire and metal sculptures that hang, turn, and float in space. Calder’s influence is apparent in Nesbitt’s design of the Wraith. The dramatically curved tube that forms the backbone of the bike and holds the hidden rear suspension is a sculptural statement, and a bold one at that.
Nesbitt borrows from the same bob jobs and choppers that inspire James, although this is where any comparison between the two men ends. Nesbitt looks beyond the bobbers, back to the board-track racers of an earlier era, the roaring, carefree ’20s, when young bucks rode their stripped-bare Indians and Harleys around the steeply banked wooden tracks that were the forerunners of today’s banked oval race circuits. These bikes were, essentially, two wheels with a V-twin engine in the middle—no frills, not even brakes. Their only function was to go fast. The Wraith’s profile is reminiscent of a board-tracker, with two wheels sandwiching a big V-twin engine.
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