While it may have started as a modest gathering of gearheads, the Handbuilt Motorcycle Show has exploded since its humble beginnings. Motorcycles packed both sides of the street before the doors to the Fair Market even opened. The line to get in stretched down the block nightly as people packed in shoulder-to-shoulder inside the building. Roland Sands stirred the pot with his SuperHooligan races right outside the front door, good old fashioned bar-bangin’ fun a natural fit for the grass roots event. Throw barker Wahl E working the crowd and Charlie Ransom of the American Motor Drome Co. wowing them inside the Wall of Death into the mix and the 2016 Handbuilt Motorcycle Show was a true moto-circus.
We could see ourselves cruising up the PCH on the Forty-Six.
It was a showcase of the rare and exotic, handfabricated trumpet pipes on an old Panhead to a knobby-shod 1934 Harley CAC factory racer in its original state. Girard Fox brought his 1922 Henderson Deluxe to the show, a 10-and-a-half year labor of love that started as two broken motors found in a barn in Virginia. While many entries paid tribute to patinas in original states and some stayed period-correct, others blazed new paths, turning the familiar into the innovative, the Indian Scout hillclimber with its monster backside wrapped in chain built by Doug Siddens and Nick Jaquez of IndianMotorcycles.net a prime example.
Gotta love an old Harley in its original state.
Here’s a few snapshots of the show to tide you over, but keep an eye out for a full story on the 2016 Handbuilt Motorcycle Show in an upcoming issue of American Iron Magazine.
There were cool old scoots and choppers inside and out at the 2016 Handbuilt Motorcycle Show.
Jeff Decker’s 1941 Crocker Custom was one of the first motorcycles you saw walking into the 2016 Handbuilt Motorcycle Show.
