While perusing my morning email feed, I came across a Petrolicious (.com) video featuring a guy named Ewen Getley who runs Kingsbury Racing Shop out of a former RAF facility in England. Kingsbury's focus is on ancient Bentley cars but his philosophy runs parallel to those of us who see the beauty and value in preserving old machines as best we can without diminishing their provenance and history. Which is, I suppose, a fancy way of saying that they're only original once.
This excerpt from the Petrolicious summary could just as well describe old motorbikes:
Well-engineered from the outset, but often modified during the course of their lives at points when their values were relatively minuscule, these old Bentleys often come to Kingsbury not to have their past erased in a full restoration, but revived. Getley describes the thinking behind the work as, “Restore where you can, replace where you must. Ultimately you want to end up with a car that looks like you haven’t touched it — much more difficult than making a shiny car, believe me."
This excerpt from the Petrolicious summary could just as well describe old motorbikes:
Well-engineered from the outset, but often modified during the course of their lives at points when their values were relatively minuscule, these old Bentleys often come to Kingsbury not to have their past erased in a full restoration, but revived. Getley describes the thinking behind the work as, “Restore where you can, replace where you must. Ultimately you want to end up with a car that looks like you haven’t touched it — much more difficult than making a shiny car, believe me."
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