V-Rex has landed
Christian Travert found the perfect motor for the design concept he had in mind, Harley-Davidson's Revolution motor that power's it's V-Rod line of bikes. Everything else, though, he decided to build himself.
And build he did. The naturalized American by way of Paris, France, spent a year of 18-hour days engineering the details of a broad, overall plan put to paper by Australian design guru Tim Cameron.
"I had 2,600 different versions," Travert says. "But finally I got it right."
Travert calls the final version the V-Rex.
"The idea is to get away from the old style of design, to do something completely different and completely new," Travert says. "Traditional motorcycles have had their era over the last 100 years. The next 100 years belong to new motorcycle designs like the V-Rex."
The V-Rex uses the motor and instrumentation from Harley's V-Rod. The chassis is almost all aluminum. Travert says it weighs about 530 lbs. It has 2 inches of travel in the rear and 3.2 inches in the front. The linkaged front end turns in the headstay as a complete unit.
One thing the V-Rex is not, however, is a one-off concept bike. Travert is putting the bike into full production at a price of $39,999.
"We think we can build about one a day," Travert says.
© 2007, American Motorcyclist Association