Motorcycle Festival at America’s Car Museum

Dean Nissen’s 1962 Norton ES2 took top honors in Vintage Norton.

After last year’s The Meet Vintage Motorcycle Festival at America’s Car Museum (ACM), event chairman Burt Richmond queried the eight judges who examined the 314 vintage motorcycles spread across 17 classes whether the next show would benefit from fewer classes and judges. The response was unanimous: fewer. The result? At the 3rd Annual Vintage Motorcycle Festival, held August 23-24, 2014, there were 14 judges viewing some 350 bikes in 20 classes! Kudos to Richmond for not listening, because the latest show was the best yet, as the broadened class structure made judging better, narrowing the field within classes.

Vintage bikes mix perfectly with the ACM’s incredible collection of vintage and special interest cars, and the museum’s Haub Family Field was literally made just for such occasions, providing the perfect setting for the 350-odd vintage motorcycles on hand for this year’s show.

There was no featured marque for 2014 (2013 celebrated BMW’s 90th anniversary manufacturing motorcycles), but the variety of vintage bikes on hand was predictably breathtaking. Japanese and offroad bikes were particularly well represented this year, as were British bikes, with strong presence in the Triumph and Norton camps. The latter was bolstered by the Southern California Norton Owners Club, which gathered for a “keep the water on the right” ride along the Pacific Coast to California.

Sunday’s 80-mile ride was punctuated by the departure of the Norton club members, who turned south while the rest of us ran east. Lovely bikes, great people, an amazing museum and beautiful riding make this one of the great events of the year — don’t miss it in 2015. MC