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This spot celebrates small business owners and introduces the idea of Booming. Booming is a mindset. It's about being optimistic and finding new and innovative ways to be successful. Featuring Falcon Motorcycles. Start Booming.
It's been two years since Falcon Motorcycles in Los Angeles sped onto the custom scene with a high-end concept bike fashioned from old British iron.
Commissioned by actor Jason Lee and unveiled at the much-loved but now-defunct Legend of the Motorcycle vintage bike show in 2008, the Bullet scavenged the engine and frame of a 1950 Triumph Thunderbird and fused it with the profile of a '20s board tracker and obscure bits and bobs to create a could-have-been bike that never actually existed.
Two years and 2,000 man-hours later, Falcon is back with a follow-up to its award-winning Bullet. It's called the Kestrel. Fashioned around the engine of a 1970 Triumph Bonneville and outfitted with hundreds of handcrafted pieces dreamed up by builder Ian Barry, the Kestrel, to be unveiled at this weekend's Quail Motorcycle Gathering in Carmel, is an evolution of the Falcon concept: one-of-a-kind motorcycles built around the engines of pre- and post-World War II British bikes.
Founders Barry and Amaryllis Knight won't disclose the price tag on the Kestrel, the second official Falcon bike. They prefer to use the term "priceless." And for good reason. Two thousand hours is more than double the amount of time it took to build the $45,000 Falcon Bullet.
And that doesn't even begin to get at the sleepless nights Barry said he spent conceptualizing his latest creation, or the cost of the vintage "donor bike" or the extensive machinery and raw materials employed to turn the Kestrel into elegant, two-wheeled art.
The cylinders of this 750 cc twin were machined in-house from a solid block of aluminum. The frame was designed and built from scratch, using silver solder for welds and an era-appropriate sweated fitting technique Barry learned from apprenticing with the man who recently restored the derelict Porsche 550 chassis Serial No. 001.
The oil tank, seat, fender, mounts, brakes and suspension were all made by hand -- formed around wooden molds or hand-carved and shaped. The metal details -- crafted in aluminum, stainless steel, copper, brass and nickel, but no chrome -- were all fabricated individually.
In fact, the only pieces sourced from existing bikes were the bottom front half of the Triumph engine and heads, a BSA transmission, the 21-inch wheel rims, the Dunlop tires and a portion of the gas tank.
"There are a lot of purists who want to see everything restored and who see custom building as a form of sacrilege, and I think it depends on how things are being done and who they're being done by," Knight said, citing George Brough of Brough Superior and Bill Lacey of Peerless, legendary builders who crafted bikes around pre-existing engines.
"It's really important to us because of the rarity and history of the engines that we're using incredible care so that in another 50 years people will look back and say, 'That's a Falcon,' " he said.
The Kestrel is the second of "the concept 10" -- 10 bikes of British provenance that will be re-engineered as bike prototypes -- had Barry lived in a previous era. Next up: A custom 1951 Vincent Black Shadow.
Barry, who is American, said his fascination with English bikes began when he was 12 and walking home from school in Northern California.
"I was literally run off the road by a pack of motorcycles," said Barry, now 37. "I heard a loud roar behind me and one after another motorcycle whipped by me.... I remember seeing Triumph, Norton, cuffed jeans, leopard print.... I had no idea who these people were, but it looked like the coolest thing I'd ever seen."
Little did Barry know that 25 years later, his own bikes would be admired as the coolest things many motorcyclists have ever seen. Bikers can see the Kestrel up close at the Quail Motorcycle Gathering this weekend.
-- Susan Carpenter
Video credit: Don Kelsen / Los Angeles Times
"The Art of the Motorcycle: The custom vehicle as art piece can be traced to the hot rods of the 1930s, with its renaissance being "Big Daddy" Roth's Rat Fink riders of the 1960s. The idea is, a work of artisan isn't any less a work of art just because it has an engine in it. The latest: Ian Barry's Falcon Motorcycles. Barry re-creates vintage British motorcycles (eg. Triumph and Nortons) by salvaging and recrafting frames and engines, adding pieces forged from scratch and embellishing with unique details like hand stitched leather saddles. And yes, they're street legal. Big Daddy would be proud"
Los Angeles Magazine Cover: Made in LA "Designed Downtown: Ian Barry on his Bullet Falcon Motorcycle".
"Ian barry, cofounder of Falcon Motorcycles, has an artistic vision that goes far deeper than the motorbikes his company creates."
"For award-winning Californian motorcycle builder Ian Barry, old bikes don't die... they just provide him with the raw materials to customize vintage two-wheeled icons."
Decemeber 2009 Issue: "The Falconer"
"A Motorcycle Designer Harks Back To A Golden Era of Steel Steeds
The quintessential epic Lawrence of Arabia begins with
legendary upper-crust insurgent T.E. Lawrence (portrayed by the shockingly pretty Peter O’Toole in eyeliner) racing down an English country lane, perilously fast, on his beloved Brough Superior motorcycle. Even as he rockets toward his demise, spins out of control, and flips into a ditch, it’s impossible not to notice how incredibly cool Lawrence looks—a boarding school rebel with a cause.
Falcon motorcycle co-founder Ian Barry has been enamored
of classic English motorbikes since he was a schoolboy
in Santa Cruz. Falcon is 36-year-old Barry’s rebellious proclamation against the prevailing motorcycle culture, dominated by bloated, flame-colored Harleys and plastic-looking Japanese racing bikes.
Barry took inspiration for his Los Angeles workshop directly from George Brough, manufacturer of Lawrence’s fateful mount. Each of Brough’s bikes was custom-built for its rider, and Barry has applied the same approach to his Only 10 Series of Falcons, dedicated to replicating one signature bike from ten departed British motorcycle manufacturers.
Barry started his series with an interpretive recreation of the 1950 Triumph Thunderbird that Marlon Brando rode in The Wild One. Lovingly handcrafted, down to the wiring and bolts, the bike has been transformed into the Bullet Falcon, and was promptly snapped up by actor Jason Lee, who avows, “the Bullet is a perfect
motorcycle.” Not surprisingly, there is a wait of more than a year for one of Barry’s new creations, but he’s not
interested in expediting his process. “These bikes are more individual and more personal than a bike made on an assembly
line,” he says.
Barry concedes that Falcons aren’t “for the faint of heart.” Meaning that they’re incredibly finicky machines both to drive and to maintain. “You don’t see too many Triumphs riding around,” he says. “When I see one, it just makes me envious. It takes a lot of love and care to keep one on the road.” Barry puts thousands of hours into each of his constructions,
and it’s not just about polishing up a glamorous final product. He has a deeply felt attachment to the entire process. “There’s something romantic about these bikes—
the form isn’t just about function.”
Much like recent trends in men’s fashion, such as the rediscovery of bespoke items, Barry is looking to the past to chart a new course forward. If he has his way, bikers will be ditching their spike-studded leather for goggles and a kerchief." ken miller
September 2009: "At Falcon Motorcycles you won’t find the over-the-top “muscle” bikes. Instead, Ian Barry, the man behind the machines, takes the artisan approach and focuses on form, function, and aesthetic in creating a bike that embraces history, and originality.
Barry has been building British-style motorcycles for over a decade, but not until this past April did he and partner Amaryllis Knight establish Falcon Motorcycles in Los Angeles. Each bike is one-of-a-kind and built from scratch — taking at least 1,000 hours to fully resurrect. But it didn’t take that long for the refined look of Falcon to gain exposure — this past year it was featured in the window of the Ralph Lauren store on Rodeo Drive, and actor Jason Lee ordered a custom-made bike called The Bullet, the first bike in a series of ten based on the historic British marquees, using frames and engines from the pre-war era. But Barry is thinking beyond just bikes now as well, and “The Falconry,” as the shop has been nicknamed, is gearing up to host gallery events, and begin a series of collaborative projects with local artists to design limited-edition prints, t-shirts, and apparel. And eventually some high-end custom motorcycle accessories will be released to give new bikes that classic vintage look."
Men's Journal: The 2009 Style & Design Issue - 'Perfect Things, The World's Best Gear, Tech, Tools & Toys'.
September 2009: "Ian Barry is tired of people calling his motorcycles “art” or “rolling museum pieces.” If you meet Barry at a party, and you want to make him grimace like someone slipped lye in his vodka, just call his bikes “eye candy.” “That’s not what this is about. It might as well have the oil drained and be stuck in someone’s living room,” he says, leaning against a greasy welding table in the workshop of his company, Falcon Motorcycles, which is located in the industrial wasteland of downtown Los Angeles. “I feel like before the bikes become ‘rolling pieces of art,’ as they’ve been dubbed, they are, at heart, built with one intention: to go fast. That was the pride of Triumphs: to be the fastest. So the whole reason for all the aesthetic effort is to reflect the beauty and performance of the engine. All the molding, all the sculpting, all the steelwork and welding—that’s the only reason any of that is there.”
Born with an insatiable desire to take apart everything from rotary phones to early computers, Barry started tooling around with his own 1967 Triumph Bonneville after high school. At the turn of the millennium, he began focusing on rebuilding Triumphs and on a whim, posted one of his creations on eBay. It was quickly snapped
up. “I thought to myself, If I can build a bike and sell it and make a living off it, that would be unbelievable,” remembers Barry. “I couldn’t even comprehend that, and then it happened.” While he was barely making enough to eat noodles and repay friends, 10 of his eBay bikes were made and sold. Then, in 2004, a friend requested he make him a custom bike, and Barry refused. His friend insisted. Eventually, the first true Ian Barry motorcycle was created.
But Falcon Motorcycles didn’t really start until 2007, when actor Jason Lee commissioned Barry to build him a board-track racer—a style of slender bike from the 1910s constructed to race on dangerous wooden planks. That same year, Barry found a cavernous tin-roofed workshop in Silverlake to call home (he’d previously been laboring in a tent in a friend’s backyard) and also met his partner in Falcon, Amaryllis Knight. After a full year spent building the bike in his new shop, the Bullet—and hence Falcon Motorcycles—was born.
Few motorcycles in recent history have had the singular impact of the Bullet. When it was first unveiled, at the 2008 Legend of the Motorcycle International Concours d’Elegance in Pebble Beach, the bike was awarded “Best Custom Motorcycle” by judge Jesse James. Considering the Bullet is the antithesis of James’s notorious chopper aesthetic—over-size, over-bulged, over-decorated testaments to machismo—the victory was notable. Although wildly unique, Falcon bikes are clean, understated, and most importantly, elegant in every respect. Vintage British bikes are salvaged from junk bins and backyards, and rebuilt from the ground up—nearly every part, every portion of frame and engine component is remade, refurbished, customized, and/or altered to create a wholly new motorcycle. Raw blocks of reclaimed metal are sculpted and machined to form original parts. Museum-quality antiques—like the headlamp from a 1920s Rolls Royce Phantom or the revelator from a 1950 Triumph Speedway—find new life on these resurrected vehicles.
“The intent,” states Barry flatly, “is to make the coolest fucking thing I can think of.”
Barry has committed to making only 10 such Bullets in total, each originating from a different vintage British brand: Vincent, BSASA, Velocette, Ariel.... And after that? Who knows.
“Design-wise, the motorcycle is one of the most honest forms of transportation there is. It’s not like a car; you can’t hide a flaw under a hood or behind a door. It’s just an engine and two wheels,” says Barry. “If you put something on the bike and it doesn’t look right, you can try to convince yourself, but it’s still gonna look wrong. The bracket, the angle of the tank, the length of the fork, the tires—those lies you told yourself are gonna haunt you forever. But if you’re honest and get it just right—you go through five tanks, you search to find the correct balance—then your honesty, that’s what you get to live with for the rest of your life.”"
Garage Magazine: April 2009: Issue 18
"With so many perfect bikes on the green cliffs, it was a little overwhelming to pick out which ones were customs and do it before the award ceremony started. But in Jesse's mind, the choice was easy - he spotted the Bullet Falcon quickly and said, "Don't worry 'bout it. I already found the best custom and it's sitting over there on the hill." As soon as we laid eyes on the bike and it's builder, we knew we had something special on our hands. Ian brings a thoughtful approach to his bikes that will guarantee each one a place in history."
"With so many perfect bikes on the green cliffs, it was a little overwhelming to pick out which ones were customs and do it before the award ceremony started. But in Jesse's mind, the choice was easy - he spotted the Bullet Falcon quickly and said, "Don't worry 'bout it. I already found the best custom and it's sitting over there on the hill." As soon as we laid eyes on the bike and it's builder, we knew we had something special on our hands. Ian brings a thoughtful approach to his bikes that will guarantee each one a place in history."
Spring 2009 Issue:
"Zen and the art of Motorcycle Making."
"When it comes to crafting custom motorcycles, there are only a handful of builders in the world who’ve got their monocle trained on the fine details; Falcon’s Ian Barry is one of those artisans."
"Barry and Knight have transformed backyard beginnings into what could properly be called a motorcycle art studio. Stretching, sawing, milling and fashioning almost every individual part of his machines, Barry has the love and dedication it takes to manufacture something that is truly handmade. “If you’re going to take an idea and expand on it, it’s your obligation to personalize it,” Barry says—and there are very few things as personal as a Falcon motorcycle."
"Zen and the art of Motorcycle Making."
"When it comes to crafting custom motorcycles, there are only a handful of builders in the world who’ve got their monocle trained on the fine details; Falcon’s Ian Barry is one of those artisans."
"Barry and Knight have transformed backyard beginnings into what could properly be called a motorcycle art studio. Stretching, sawing, milling and fashioning almost every individual part of his machines, Barry has the love and dedication it takes to manufacture something that is truly handmade. “If you’re going to take an idea and expand on it, it’s your obligation to personalize it,” Barry says—and there are very few things as personal as a Falcon motorcycle."
June 2008: Jason Lee Finally Gets his Custom Built Falcon
"I remember the day I swung open the heavy doors to the Falcon Motorcycle shop and first laid eyes on the Bullett. It was unlike any bike I’d ever seen — a truly stunning species. It sat there on the lift, a black stallion in mid-gallop, frozen in form. Clean, sharp, elegant."
"It’s just about noon on a glorious spring Saturday in Silverlake, California. The sun is out and the birds are chirping merrily outside the corrugated metal and cement walls of this workshop, but Ian wouldn’t know if it were dead winter on the fourth moon of Jupiter, because he’s basically been up for three days straight. Without a nap since midweek, trying to finish a mechanical work of art for his client and friend Jason Lee. And Ian has that spun-out but manic glow of an artist in the squeezing grasp of inspiration."
"If the devil is in the details, as they say, then these motorcycles are straight up diabolical. Someone grab the holy water…"
"I remember the day I swung open the heavy doors to the Falcon Motorcycle shop and first laid eyes on the Bullett. It was unlike any bike I’d ever seen — a truly stunning species. It sat there on the lift, a black stallion in mid-gallop, frozen in form. Clean, sharp, elegant."
"It’s just about noon on a glorious spring Saturday in Silverlake, California. The sun is out and the birds are chirping merrily outside the corrugated metal and cement walls of this workshop, but Ian wouldn’t know if it were dead winter on the fourth moon of Jupiter, because he’s basically been up for three days straight. Without a nap since midweek, trying to finish a mechanical work of art for his client and friend Jason Lee. And Ian has that spun-out but manic glow of an artist in the squeezing grasp of inspiration."
"If the devil is in the details, as they say, then these motorcycles are straight up diabolical. Someone grab the holy water…"
Dice Magazine
Falcon Motorcycles
July 2008: The Annual Style 100: The bespoke motorbike.
"From an unassuming studio in Los Angels, Ian Barry - under his fledgling Falcon marque - is breathing new life into the business of custom motorcycle construction. In the heartland of pimped rides and cosmetic chop shops, Barry, 35, has raised the bar for bike aesthetics and further blurred the lines dividing mechanics and art."
"From an unassuming studio in Los Angels, Ian Barry - under his fledgling Falcon marque - is breathing new life into the business of custom motorcycle construction. In the heartland of pimped rides and cosmetic chop shops, Barry, 35, has raised the bar for bike aesthetics and further blurred the lines dividing mechanics and art."
LA Times : August 2008
Josh Homme, Queens of the Stone age, with his custom Ian Barry Motorcycle.
May 2008: Highway One: Bullet Falcon targets motorcycles' colorful past
"Custom ace Ian Barry and actor Jason Lee are behind the Bullet Falcon, crossing a 1950 Triumph Thunderbird with a 1920s board track racer aesthetic. The Bullet Falcon Lee commissioned goes back in motorcycling history, though not entirely to the beginning. It rewinds the clock to the cafe racers of the '60s, then goes back even further to the board trackers of the '20s -- fusing the two eras into a single bike."
"Custom ace Ian Barry and actor Jason Lee are behind the Bullet Falcon, crossing a 1950 Triumph Thunderbird with a 1920s board track racer aesthetic. The Bullet Falcon Lee commissioned goes back in motorcycling history, though not entirely to the beginning. It rewinds the clock to the cafe racers of the '60s, then goes back even further to the board trackers of the '20s -- fusing the two eras into a single bike."
Vapors Magazine
Bullet Falcon
Falcon Motorcycles on NBC News.
Hosted by Tyler Mathisen, CNBC’s "High Net Worth".