Is this the silliest motorcycle ad ever?

Why is a man in a tux disassembling a motorcycle?

 Of all the silly advertisements ever created to sell motorcycles, the most ridiculous, in my opinion, was a 1953 magazine ad for Vincent motorcycles. 

This is fair enough, because I also am of the opinion that one of the most brilliant motorcycle illustrations ever was a painting of a Vincent HRD motorcycle in action. More on that later. 

Let's do the silly part first. 

So here we have a drawing of a man in what appears to be fancy dinner dress disconnecting the rear half of a Vincent motorcycle. 

I'd only ever seen one reproduction of this advertisement on the Internet, in low resolution, so I purchased a copy of the Sept. 3, 1953 Motor Cycling magazine to see the original.

I've scanned the full-page Vincent ad in high resolution, and included it on this blog post so you can see it and even read the small print.

(Click on the image, then right click on it to open in a new tab; and you can expand it even farther.)

In the illustration, the gentleman appears to be lifting, or about to lift, the detached back end of the bike, complete with wheel, tire, subframe, fender, brake, seat, kick stand, chain guard, shock absorbers and suspension. A pretty heavy job. 

The headline reads "No.2, Features that put VINCENT in a class by itself." 

The number 2 indicates that there were a series of ads touting Vincent features. No. 1 was for "the unique Vincent Girdaulic front fork."

Vincent was proud of its fancy front fork.

The Girdaulic was indeed unique (no one else bothered with such a thing). It combined the "best features" of telescopic forks (dampening) with those of girder forks (rigidity). No tuxedoed gentleman was depicted messing with it.

I don't know if there was a "No. 3" in the series of advertisements. Vincents did have other features to tout, including enormous powerplants.

You know the famous photo of Rollie Free stretched out in only a bathing suit, riding a motorcycle to a 150 mph speed record? Yup. He was on a Vincent.

Possibly the most famous motorcycle photo ever taken.

The bathing suit was impractical and dangerous for a speed run, but Free wanted to go for the best streamlining possible. He even wore a woman's bathing cap. No dinner suit for him.

The well-dressed man in advertisement No. 2 is brave to a lesser extent, being shown having undone the oily chain, which is seen dangling on the ground at his feet. No way he didn't ruin his clothing doing that.

So, what IS he doing?

According to the ad copy, the drawing illustrates the great "accessibility" of the Vincent motorcycle. The rear suspension, it boasts, can be "removed in a matter of minutes by the simple operation of undoing three nuts, driving out three bolts, uncoupling the rear chain and detaching the rear brake cable and rear light wire."

You would never do this. Not in a tux. So it's silly.

But maybe the advertisement worked. Because it made you stop and look.

Whether in a 1953 magazine or a 2024 TikTok, the first thing any advertisement has to accomplish is to make you look at it.

In this case, the ad's real message may have been not in the illustration or the copy, but the simple motto, at the bottom:

"Motorcycles of the future will be judged by the standards set by Vincent today."

If you have heard at all about Vincent motorcycles, you probably believe that statement to be true. They were advanced motorcycles.

Just ask Hunter S. Thompson.

"A fantastic bike," he wrote of the Vincent Black Shadow, going on to exaggerate slightly.

"The new model is something like two thousand cubic inches, developing two hundred brake-horsepower at four thousand revolutions per minute on a magnesium frame with two Styrofoam seats and a total curb weight of exactly two hundred pounds."

Now, quickly, what about my favorite motorcycle illustration ever?

It is R.C. Reyrolles' 1945 painting of a prototype HRD-Vincent Series B. Rapide.

After this, no one ever again had to explain the thrill of motorcycling.