I bet you’re thinking "here’s
another site of the nostalgic types…lost in youthful memories
and eager to show what they know how to do in their workshops and
home garages…"?! Well, it’s not exactly like that,
but there’s also a grain of truth and it’s like the key
to everything is the play between signs and values that pass through
time and without time frames, from one generation of bikers to another:
And here in the middle are all of us… and the best thing is that
we’re in good company!
First there were the brand name motorbikes, assembled all in the same
manner in ugly factories, and then promoted with beautiful girls in
the "Bike Show" with budgets of millions for advertising.
After ten-fifteen years those kinds of motorbikes were not seen any
more around on the streets and most of the spare parts, by then, couldn’t
be found and at this point some of them, not for all!, became forgotten
objects and were left in some corner of the garage without role or
value; then in the midst of all the day-to-day problems, someone started
thinking in a different way and started talking to friends, started
looking for the old photos of a trip to the beach...: that’s
how the idea of the new ‘classicbike’ finally took shape. |
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Then you start looking for articles and photographs in the magazines
and before you’re able to understand the difference between classic
motorbikes and motorbikes of epoch, even hoping that one day it becomes
a historic motorbike with certificate from the Historical Register,
if you want to go for a ride on the street, you need someone with
a real passion, someone who will listen to you and advise you about
what to do.
And you discover that there are already groups of "enthusiasts”,
there are the "restorers", the "experts" and the
"collectors", that they’ve already done everything
you want to do and then all you can do is either join in with them,
do something better, or invent something more and imagine a "café
racer," some other special one or a dream bike….well, I
think we understand each other!
We of Motoclassiche are a small group (small only for now!) composed
of mechanic-restorers, designers, creators and bike enthusiasts, and
we’re trying to do something very beautiful in the bond between
manual work with the best tools and working with the signs, the documentation
and social research through time.
Basically we are very individualistic, inspired, egocentric, intractable,
not very communicative, usually romantic and naive, and we focus on
certain aspects of quality in motorbikes, which becomes an exercise
in rhetoric on different themes of lightness, proportion, clarity,
fluency, unity, emphasis, authoritativeness, sensitivity, surprise,
precision, sound, depth, and so on...
Whatever it is that makes a person who’s generally shy, solitary,
and sometimes cantankerous into a good creator, the creator of unique
motorbikes that enter into the history of motorcycling, a great restorer
and investigator, will always remain a mystery; though with this Web
site we want to create a place of meeting and exchange for our work
and experience.
Like in the other technical disciplines and artistic restoration,
the Net can help to contact friends and create a dialogue between
the workshops and garages of mechanics, restorers, and designers;
Motoclassiche intends to offer a space for coordinating these valuable
individualities for inventing forms of collaboration, new services
on-line for fanciers and collectors, search for new partners and commercial
opportunities for work projects, also interdisciplinary, and so on.
"An idea that is not dangerous - doesn't deserve to be called
an idea" (O.Wilde) |
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