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Happyman

Confederate bikes: Confederate lunacy


Last Updated: 12:01am BST 06/06/2008

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Confederate Wraith
Confederate Hellcat Combat

Kevin Ash and Andrew English ride two ridiculously expensive motorbikes frmo the Confederate range, on display at the Canary Wharf MotorExpo from Monday
Images of the Confederate Wraith and the Confederate Hellfire Combat




Confederate Wraith
One feature dominates, even overwhelms, everything else on the far-from-bashful Confederate Wraith. This is a bike with a front end like the blinkers on a horse of the apocalypse, a soundtrack to match from its two-litre engine - which has enough torque to pull a buffalo from an Alabama swamp - and such an extreme take on the word minimalist it makes a Honda Fireblade look like a Harley Electra Glide. Yet all of that is shaded by one simple fact: this bike costs £52,560.
You think about it constantly when you're riding, partly because you really, really don't want to hit a patch of diesel and ditch it, and partly because you're forever searching for a £52,560 motorcycle experience.
You don't get one, not in the dynamic sense at least. The bike is described by Confederate as a sports bike, which it patently isn't in the conventional, Suzuki GSX-R sense. It is very fast, with its 120bhp backed up by a shuddering 130lb ft of torque, and a mere 390lb - little more than a typical one-litre superbike -to haul along. It doesn't feel quite as quick as the same company's Hellcat (ridden by Andrew English), not just because it has 10bhp fewer but because the Wraith's riding position tips you forward with your feet back and up, the better to deal with acceleration and corners and other sporty stuff.
Ah yes, the riding position... it really is quite a stretch to those bars, more extreme than most road bikes (barring perhaps the Ducati Paul Smart), while the tiny, barely padded seat floating precariously above the unprotected rear wheel sits you hard and high over the rear-set footrests. You can wave your knees at the hordes of staring onlookers, but you can't grip anything because there's nothing to grip.
The fuel is stored in half an aluminium tube slung beneath the motor like an aircraft's drop tank, while the backbone of the frame is a curved carbon-fibre tube of dubious engineering merit and with no more meat on it than a bone at a hyenas' banquet. In short, there's nothing between your knees, losing you a crucial contact point with the machine, which takes a good few miles to get used to, and nothing to grab with your legs when braking (and that makes faster cornering difficult), stressing those overworked arms even more.
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The ergonomic shortfalls don't stop there: heat from the engine and that frame spine (which is also the oil tank) is excessive and can burn, the mirrors are second rate, the speedo is tiny, the vibration destructive at high revs, and soon. Apparently this doesn't matter, because the bike costs £52,560 so no one will actually ride it.
Ironically, then, the handling is pretty good. Rather than using telescopic forks, the front end is a take on the double wishbone set-up pioneered by Norman Hossack in the UK, raced by John Britten and currently productionised by BMW on its K1200 series. For some reason, on the Wraith little of the design's potential anti-dive property has been taken advantage of, otherwise it works well enough. It's disconcerting at first seeing the top of the structure bobbing up and down on bumpy roads, but you get used to that. It just makes the steering a little vague: in a straight line the bike feels like it has a steering damper fitted, wandering gently side to side rather than tracking true, and it climbs out of lorry ruts on busy A-roads rather too readily. When it's pitched into a corner it's hard to place the bike just so, onto a line. It gets better as you push harder, until at the point where you're thinking, "£52,560, £52,560", it feels settled and secure, even if you don't. Good forks would be better at turning the bike, less so at turning heads.
The steering is unusual, too, as the bike is very sensitive to the bars initially, but follows up with a lethargic rate of turn, which might be something to do with the additional steered mass of the front suspension.
I worry about what the law will think of the bike. As tested it was about as legal as Kate Moss's handbag at an all-night party, wearing no mudguards, silencers, indicators, proper mirrors or such trivia as a horn. It's not that I'm being a fuddy duddy, just that for the UK importer to get the bike through the Single Vehicle Approval test it must pass to be registered, all of this will have to be addressed, and that's going to change the bike substantially as well as restrict the horsepower. So what you buy won't be what you see here, and although you could easily change it back, some of the attention you then get might be uniformed.
Maybe I'm just being miserable, but for me the only 50-grand experience would come in the showroom - as a bike to ride there's nothing to suggest it's anything more than ordinary. There are quirks, of course, and it makes a hell of a racket, but strip down most cruisers and they'll oblige in the same way, while proper sports bikes will leave it for dust. Some of the workmanship is great, although there's a lot of crudity, too, and I doubt it'll be as reliable as most production bikes - both the Confederates we rode had some problems.
Compare it with another stratospherically priced motorcycle, the Ducati Desmosedici RR, and the Wraith's true worth becomes clear. The Ducati is, incredibly, much more than a £40,000 riding experience - I signed off my report on it last year with, "£40,000, is that all?" and I meant it. If you had the money you would justify the Italian bike as the supreme sports motorcycle. But the Wraith only exists to make everyone look at you so you can show off just how much money you've got. I find that rather vulgar and, worse, it says you don't really know much about bikes anyway, or you'd have bought a better one, for much less. Or lots of better ones, still for less. KA
Confederate Hellcat Combat
Confederate Motor Co conjures a picture of a small, corrugated-iron-roofed engineering shop well south of the Mason Dixon Line, staffed with Kings of Leon look-alikes, heavy on moustaches. The unmetalled yard outside would have a shady tree, a dead Harley-Davidson and a surly dog on a rusty chain.
The HellCat Combat cruiser comes from Alabama and looks like the sort of machine from which Robert E Lee could lead his forces at the Battle of Gettysburg. Eye catching it certainly is, with a precise eyebrow of a fuel tank in carbon-fibre that Marlene Dietrich would be proud of and a single multi-dial instrument binnacle machined from gleaming aluminium.
The engine dominates the front end with its bandage-wrapped exhausts emerging like blackened bananas on the offside and pouring their gases, via a flimsy concertina joint, into the rear swinging arm. Unlike the Wraith, the front end is (relatively) conventional, with upside-down forks and a single disc brake with six-piston calliper. The fork's rake is surprisingly upright for such a machine, which gives it a short and compact mein.
The wheels are carbon-fibre rimmed and the 8 x 18 inch rear is ludicrously tyred with a 240/40 VR 18 inch Metzeler; wider than that on many performance cars. There's a mix of studious attention to weight-saving such as the drilled chain guard and the frankly shoddy work such as the torque reaction bar, which is a cheap piece of hexagonal bar stock with a couple of rose joints threaded into each end.
The effect is of a machine designed to carry the engine rather than a rider and what an engine it is. This hand-built, Confederate 45-degree V-twin displaces 2,147cc and has an equal bore and stroke giving its perfectly square dimensions. It also delivers a pleasingly symmetrical claim of 145bhp at 5,700rpm to the rear wheel and 145lb ft of torque.
Start her up and the air is rent with a fierce pounding that vibrates not just the machine, but the air and ground around it. If you are initially intimidated by the Hellcat, it is for its £49,565 price, rather than any imbalance in the machine itself. OK, the exhaust is plenty hot and you will burn your leg, but the seat is surprisingly comfortable, the bars are no stretch away and the feet forward riding stance is not particularly radical. There are Harleys harder to ride than this. Controls are also relatively light to use, including the five-speed transmission, but there is a deadness about their action, which leaves you heaving rather harder than you need to and in the case of the brakes, pulling and pressing slightly harder.
The frame shudders as you pull away and your feet on the billet aluminium-alloy pegs vibrate in sympathy. As you speed up, you toes rattle in their sockets. At low speeds the handling is entirely dominated by that huge rear tyre. The bike lifts up on the tread as it turns, which is the strangest sensation. You have to force it to lean in, after which it's fine. At higher speeds the effect is less marked and although it always feels slightly reluctant to change direction and it's never going to hold its line like a conventional machine, the Hellcat feels remarkably stable.
Fast? Hot damn it is. Crack the throttle at any revs and the engine note deepens and that huge mill fires you and the 490lb Hellcat up the road. The mid-range torque is astounding, although it falls off and the vibrations increase horribly as you approach the 6,000rpm red line. James Toseland, who rode on a Hellcat recently, is reported to have declared it as fast as his racing machine up to 60mph. Nor is it hard to ride at speed like some cruisers. The Hellcat seems to intimidate the air in front of it before it tries to peel you off the back and 80mph cruising is more than possible.
In fact, it's your rapidly numbing feet that give up before the 3.96-gallon fuel tank contents. With a claimed range of just over 100 miles, this means the Hellcat is doing an average of about 25mph - phew. The price? It's impossible to judge. Someone recently paid more than £144,000 for a Brough Superior at auction and it's doubtful they thought themselves ripped off.
The Hellcat's a statement machine for rich folk; they like it for its looks and because it costs this much, rather than for any performance and dynamic benefits that price conveys. As long as everyone else knows the purchase price of their Hellcat, then it has fulfilled its role of advertising their huge wealth. In that sense, for them it's probably a bargain. AE






Errr! I will stick with my Air Blade thanks !

phunphin

http://splashmedia.co.nz/users/britt...tten_rideon.auAll britten wanna be's .
He invented the frame less bike ..