Sammy Pierce's P-61 American Rocket
(Page 3 of 3)
September/October 2007
By Margie Siegal
The trail of the rocket
Louis Fisher remembers going into Sammy’s shop in Monrovia in Southern California in the 1960s and seeing the American Rocket show bike next to Sammy’s Indian special, the “Harley Eater,” and Burt Munro’s streamliner, with the streamlining off. “One day in the early Seventies, they were all gone — Sam sold all three of the bikes about the same time,” Louis says. No one knows what happened to the American Rocket test bike.
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The Rocket show bike eventually surfaced, repainted, at a central California antique meet. It disappeared again, but 15 years ago Louis started thinking about finding it. He had no luck until one day his friend Dean Hensley showed him photos of someone’s midget car collection. “I saw it — the Rocket — in the background of one of the photos,” Louis remembers. He drove to the address given to him, an old peach orchard, and there was the Rocket, under a tarp in front of a barn — and it was for sale.
Louis bought the bike and took it to Dan Reese, a former employee of Sammy’s who now runs Indian Motorcycles of West Point, Calif., to get it running. Louis doesn’t ride it much, saying he just wants to keep the Rocket as a piece of American history. “It was a legitimate motorcycle,” Louis explains. “The size was right, it handled well; it was a fast sports bike. It would have given Harley a good run until Indian could develop an overhead [valve engine].”
Though the Rocket never made it into production, at least this bike remains today as a testimony to one man’s passion for the Indian brand and his desire to build the ultimate motorcycle, the American Rocket.
Resources
Post-1953 Indian History
www.indianchiefmotorcycles.com
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