The Vincent Black Lightning was a
Vincent-HRD motorcycle
A motorcycle (motorbike, bike, or trike (if three-wheeled)) is a two or three-wheeled motor vehicle steered by a handlebar. Motorcycle design varies greatly to suit a range of different purposes: long-distance travel, commuting, cruising ...
first built in September 1948 at the Vincent works in
Great North Road,
Stevenage
Stevenage ( ) is a large town and borough in Hertfordshire, England, about north of London. Stevenage is east of junctions 7 and 8 of the A1(M), between Letchworth Garden City to the north and Welwyn Garden City to the south. In 1946, Stevena ...
,
Hertfordshire
Hertfordshire ( or ; often abbreviated Herts) is one of the home counties in southern England. It borders Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire to the north, Essex to the east, Greater London to the south, and Buckinghamshire to the west. For govern ...
, UK, and produced from 1948 to 1952. The bike was a purpose-built factory modified
Black Shadow that was then named and produced as the Black Lightning. At the time the Black Lightning was the fastest production motorcycle in the world.
Development
![Vincent Series C Black Lightning](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9e/Vincent_Series_C_Black_Lightning.jpg)
Vincent-HRD began motorcycle production in 1928 and were well established after
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
when they launched the Black Lightning. This was a production version of the Black Lightning which held the
motorcycle land-speed record
The motorcycle land-speed record is the fastest speed achieved by a motorcycle on land. It is standardized as the speed over a course of fixed length, averaged over two runs in opposite directions. AMA National Land Speed Records requires 2 passes ...
, with a similar engine specification.
Available to order, a standard Black Lightning was supplied in racing trim with
magnesium alloy
Magnesium alloys are mixtures of magnesium (the lightest structural metal) with other metals (called an alloy), often aluminium, zinc, manganese, silicon, copper, rare earths and zirconium. Magnesium alloys have a hexagonal lattice structure, w ...
components, special racing tyres on alloy rims, rear-set foot controls, a solo seat and aluminium mudguards. This reduced the Lightning's weight to .
[ The ]air-cooled
Air-cooled engines rely on the circulation of air directly over heat dissipation fins or hot areas of the engine to cool them in order to keep the engine within operating temperatures. In all combustion engines, a great percentage of the heat ge ...
OHV
An overhead valve (OHV) engine, sometimes called a ''pushrod engine'', is a piston engine whose valves are located in the cylinder head above the combustion chamber. This contrasts with earlier flathead engines, where the valves were located bel ...
pushrod
A valvetrain or valve train is a mechanical system that controls the operation of the intake and exhaust valves in an internal combustion engine. The intake valves control the flow of air/fuel mixture (or air alone for direct-injected engines) ...
V-twin
A V-twin engine, also called a V2 engine, is a two-cylinder piston engine where the cylinders share a common crankshaft and are arranged in a V configuration.
Although widely associated with motorcycles (installed either transversely or longit ...
specifications were always based on standard parts but upgraded with higher-performance racing equipment. The Black Lightning had higher-strength connecting rod
A connecting rod, also called a 'con rod', is the part of a piston engine which connects the piston to the crankshaft. Together with the crank, the connecting rod converts the reciprocating motion of the piston into the rotation of the cranksh ...
s, larger inlet ports, polished rocker gear, steel idler gears, racing carburettor
A carburetor (also spelled carburettor) is a device used by an internal combustion engine to control and mix air and fuel entering the engine. The primary method of adding fuel to the intake air is through the venturi tube in the main meterin ...
s, and a manual-advance magneto
A magneto is an electrical generator that uses permanent magnets to produce periodic pulses of alternating current. Unlike a dynamo, a magneto does not contain a commutator to produce direct current. It is categorized as a form of alternator, ...
, and was available with compression ratios between 6.8:1 and 12.5:1. This resulted in and a top speed of . Only 31 Black Lightnings were ever built before production ended in 1952 because of Vincent's financial problems.
US record and picture
On 13 September 1948, Rollie Free
Roland "Rollie" Free (November 18, 1900 – October 11, 1984) was a motorcycle racer best known for breaking the American motorcycle land speed record in 1948 on the Bonneville Salt Flats, Utah. The picture of Free, prone and wearing a bathing s ...
achieved the US national motorcycle speed record at Bonneville Salt Flats
The Bonneville Salt Flats are a densely packed salt pan in Tooele County in northwestern Utah. A remnant of the Pleistocene Lake Bonneville, it is the largest of many salt flats west of the Great Salt Lake. It is public land managed by the Bur ...
in Utah
Utah ( , ) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. Utah is a landlocked U.S. state bordered to its east by Colorado, to its northeast by Wyoming, to its north by Idaho, to its south by Arizona, and to it ...
riding the first Vincent Black Lightning. During test runs Free reached average speeds of . To reduce drag, Free stripped to his swimming shorts for the final run, which he made lying flat with his legs stretched out and his head low, guiding the Vincent by following a black stripe painted on the salt bed. The stunt worked as Free covered the mile in 23.9 seconds, passing the barrier and on the return run he reached a record average speed of . This led to one of the most famous photographs in motorcycle history, known as the "bathing suit bike". The American Motorcyclist Association
The American Motorcyclist Association (AMA) is an American nonprofit organization of more than 200,000 motorcyclists that organizes numerous motorcycling activities and campaigns for motorcyclists' legal rights. Its mission statement is "to promo ...
certified Free's record. Innovative features of the bike included the first-ever Vincent rear shock absorber, the first Mk II racing cam
Calmodulin (CaM) (an abbreviation for calcium-modulated protein) is a multifunctional intermediate calcium-binding messenger protein expressed in all eukaryotic cells. It is an intracellular target of the secondary messenger Ca2+, and the bin ...
s and horizontally mounted racing carburettors. In 1950, Rollie Free returned to the Bonneville Salt Flats and broke his own record, averaging speeds of on the Vincent despite a high-speed crash during those speed trials.
Auction record
In February 2018, during an auction held by Bonhams
Bonhams is a privately owned international auction house and one of the world's oldest and largest auctioneers of fine art and antiques. It was formed by the merger in November 2001 of Bonhams & Brooks and Phillips Son & Neale. This brought to ...
at Las Vegas
Las Vegas (; Spanish for "The Meadows"), often known simply as Vegas, is the 25th-most populous city in the United States, the most populous city in the state of Nevada, and the county seat of Clark County. The city anchors the Las Vegas ...
, a Black Lightning, stated to be one of only 19 surviving, set an absolute world record for the highest-price paid at auction for a motorcycle of $US929,000 ($1.16 million Australian). The machine was used to set a national speed record in Australia during 1953, and was purchased by an undisclosed Australian.
Richard Thompson song
Richard Thompson wrote the song "1952 Vincent Black Lightning
"1952 Vincent Black Lightning" is a song by guitarist Richard Thompson from his 1991 album '' Rumour and Sigh''. It tells the story of a thief named James and the girl Red Molly whom he charms with a ride on his 1952 Vincent Black Lightning motor ...
" and recorded it for his 1991 album ''Rumor and Sigh
''Rumor and Sigh'' is the seventh solo album by British singer/songwriter Richard Thompson, released in 1991 on the Capitol label. The album was a commercial success for Thompson, and featured his biggest American hit single "I Feel So Good", as ...
''. Thompson later said, "When I was a kid, that was always the exotic bike ... the one that made you go 'ooh, wow'". The song's outlaw hero James, who has "robbed many a man to get my Vincent machine," comments on the bike's mystique in his dying speech:
Says James: "In my opinion,
there's nothing in this world,
beats a '52 Vincent,
and a red-headed girl.
Now Nortons, and Indians, and Greeveses won't do;
they don't have a soul
like a Vincent '52."
See also
* Vincent Black Shadow
Motorcycles produced by Vincent H·R·D at their factory in Stevenage, Hertfordshire, England were renowned for their design innovation, engineering excellence and high performance. Already advertising their existing 110 mph Rapide machine as ...
* Vincent Rapide
* List of motorcycles of the 1940s
This a listing of motorcycles of the 1940s, including those on sale, introduced, or otherwise relevant in this period.
Motorcycle
*Acme motorcycle (1939–49)
* AJS 18
* AJS 7R
*AJS Model 16
* AJS Model 20
*AJS Porcupine
* Ariel Red Hunter
* ...
* List of motorcycles of the 1950s
This a listing of motorcycles of the 1950s, including those on sale, introduced, or otherwise relevant in this period.
* AJS 18 (1949-1963)
Notes
{{Vincent motorcycles (1946–1955)
Black Lightning
Black Lightning (Jefferson Pierce) is a superhero appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics. The character, created by writer Tony Isabella and artist Trevor Von Eeden, first appeared in ''Black Lightning'' #1 (April 1977), during ...
Land speed record motorcycles
Motorcycles introduced in 1948