Ooh-La-La!
OOH-LA-LA!
GOING VETTER ONE BETTER
FRANCK DEPOISIER HAS NEVER met motorcycle design legend Craig Vetter, but that doesn't mean the Frenchman hasn't been touched by Vetter's magic.
Vetter, of course, designed the Triumph X-75 Hurricane of the early 1970s, the bike that launched, some say, the cruiser revolution that even today continues to flex its muscles.
And now, almost 25 years down the road, Depoisier has Fired the First shot aimed at launching his own French version of that revolution. He calls that shot the X-90. Just as Vetter’s original X-75 Hurricane was based upon the thennew three-cylinder Triumph Trident, Depoisier’s X-90 also is based on a Triumph Trident-the contemporary, JohnBloor-built, liquid-cooled version.
What the X-90 really is, is the basic Triple wearing a specially built, one-piece tank/seat/rear-fender. Depoisier also added a pair of upswept and very Norton-looking silencers. The result is more than a little reminiscent of the old Vetter Hurricane.
That’s what Depoisier, working out of a shop in Ivry-surSeine he calls Mecatwin, more or less had in mind.
He explained to Bertrand Thiebault, of the French magazine Moto Journal, “When the new Triumphs came to the market, their extreme standardization meant that except for that three-cylinder engine, the models just didn’t correspond to the image I had in mind. So I pushed ahead with what 1 call my roadster concept. 1 built a machine of purity, where line and disposition unite, where everything that can disrupt the design’s unity is eliminated.”
Rule Number One was that the bike had to remain perfectly usable and functional. Rule Number Two was to remember Rule Number One, and maybe dial in a few extra horsepower as part of the deal-this was accomplished with pipes and a carb jet kit. A White Power shock here, stiffer fork springs there, and the bike was done.
The result is, well, very European, a point underlined by none other than Craig Vetter himself. “It looks like it was designed for a European version of an American, as seen by a European, Vetter mused.
He added, “It’s kind of curiously retro/future, and very French.
It’s very curvaceous, though I don’t much care for the pipes and I think the tank is humped too high.”
Fine and good. This is, after all, a bike designed by a Frenchman for French consumption. As such, it constitutes a tip of its designer’s hat to the X-75 Hurricane and to Vetter. And it constitutes an interesting example of just how much interest there is in modifying the neo-Triumphs.
-Jon F. Thompson
