As I look at some of my bikes, I wonder just where they’ve been and what they’ve experienced. Especially the old race bikes — what’s their true provenance? Though I know a few motorcycle racing historians who have personal archives, for most motorcycles, this information is lost forever. But it doesn’t have to go that way.
You may think, given what’s in your collection, that this documentation side of stewardship is not so important. But when you create a file for a bike and start tossing in receipts, magazine articles, the story the seller gave you with the bike, maybe his old photos, and the original dealer’s bill of sale from day one, and certainly a photocopy of the seller’s title, you begin to have something useful in the future.
Why? One reason is that with values increasing over the decades, when we look at a shiny restored bike, well, how much is “real,” and how much is “assembled” from parts bins and salvage bikes, or even fabricated by skillful restoration experts, as I mentioned in my last column, Fabrication. If the previous owner gives you pre-restoration photos, especially with frame and engine numbers to include in that file you created, you can show the next steward the recent history and keep the information timeline complete. You ensure the bike’s “facts” and preserve its value going forward. A scan of high-dollar Bring a Trailer auctions shows what is expected of the seller these days, and the nagging “comments” may bring out more… or expose that documentation is minimal.
Oh, and never get into a “title skipping” situation, which occurs when a vehicle is resold without the seller registering it in their own name at purchase, essentially skipping a step in the transfer of ownership. If there is any required bit of information missing on that title when you delay getting it transferred to your ownership, good luck finding that previous owner and squaring it away. Ways of completing this broken paper trail, even creating new titles for barn finds, are evaporating state by state, and you could have a bike with “bad paper” and a lowered value.
Documentation put in play, I hope you enjoy reading Lindsay Brooke’s story on the resurrection of the 1966 Buddy Elmore Triumph road racer. “A universe of Triumph knowledge” brought together race entry lists, pit photos, documents, AMA memos, and Triumph factory parts lists, combined with the keen memories of many men who were there in 1966. Would the Elmore bike be so correct today without the skills of many, the mandate of the bike’s new owner to perform a “dead-nuts-correct restoration,” and the 60-year-old documentation?
