Metisse & McQueen

[Ryan]

You know Steve McQueen's famous jump scene in the "Great Escape"? It was done on desert racer built by Von Dutch. Through the years, lots of folks have cloned the bike, but I just got word t...

To read the rest of this blog entry from The Jockey Journal, click here.

[scraper]

wow! that thing is beautiful! pretty fair price for a fully built, vintage powered, limited production bike too. i cant believe they rounded up 300 vintage TR6 motors & rebuilt all of them to brand new specs. insane.

[El Kabong!!]

It's a continuation build of a 60/70's Rickman Metisse. The Rickman brothers, Don and Derek, built that chassis to accept a number of engines. Metisse is a Latin based word meaning mixed breed or mongrel.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rickman_Motorcycles

I've never heard that Von Dutch had anything to do with the bike used in The Great Escape jump. I know Bud Ekins did the jump and I was under the impression the bike was a fairly standard Bonneville made to look like a German military bike.

An actual replica of the jump bike is here:

http://tiger100.co.uk/mcqueen.html

[Dragon]

Sorry Ryan, the McQueen / Bud Ekins movie jump bike and the Metisse 'clone' are like apples and oranges....well, maybe grapefruit and oranges.

As discussed not long ago in this thread and this thread.

See, the Rickman Metisse used the later unit 650 Triumph engine.

Here's Steve with his original Metisse desert racer -





But the bike jumped by Bud Ekins in "The Great Escape" was an earlier pre-unit, in a duplex (double-downtube) frame. Steve was known to race that model as well......











.

[horror]

Heres one of the pics of it i took at the ace caff

I know its not the replica of the great escape jump bike

[6T Sinner]

Good catch, Dragon.

Still interesting, though the VonDutch/McQueen connection shouldn't be ignored because of this unfounded reference. There are plenty other car references that link the two. Seems to me the Metisse framed bike has its own appeal regardless of any VD affiliation. They just ruled scrambles by their own merit, and looked good doing it.

[Blue Collar Moto]

I just was looking at all those pix last night. Some cool stuff.
Here's a few of McQueen & Bud Ekins Riding a desert 500ml race from LIFE.





Just cant have to many pix of The Man and his machines.....

[Dog]

Not only can you not jump a Triumph (Ekins, McQueen, Knievel, E.Mulder, etc, etc, etc ) but those 500 ml desert races also 'prove' how 'unreliable' they are too... !!

Originally Posted by Blue Collar Moto

Here's a few of McQueen & Bud Ekins Riding a desert 500ml race from LIFE.

[thegreasepit]

I'm a chronic lurker, but I felt obligated to share this...

I work for Mitch Bergeron in Palm Desert and got quite a surprise the other day by finding Chad's bike at our shop. Can't even describe how rad the bike sounds and the feel of it, just riding it around the block.













Mitch hard at work


oh, the excitement...

[king123]

Lovely bike man...
You make it pretty mush better...
It looks like a heavy bike....

[jaysherman]

Here's a link to the new replica bike. http://metisse-motorcycles.com/ In the Jan 2010 Motorcycle Classics they are planning on a street version with a new fuel injected DOHC 8V. Info on the jump recreation http://www.motorcycleclassics.com/bl...e-triumph.aspx

[pelican]

Man, those are beautiful bikes! Someone lend me $25k lol