Arlen And Us

What hasn’t already been said about Arlen Ness? A great guy, a genius of custom bike building, a legend in the industry and the patriarch of a wonderful family. But given his recent passing, I thought it worthwhile to share a few of our stories …

- Doc

Chris Beattie, HEAVY DUTY founder, and I first called in to visit Arlen back in 2000 when he was still at the old San Leandro premises. A narrow shop-front, entirely unprepossessing and with every inch crammed with stuff, piled upon stuff – it was not what we expected of a legend.

However, both Arlen and Cory made us very welcome and in a crammed office found us seats and proffered coffee, which was very kindly accepted. At that time they were in negotiations with Victory Motorcycles, discussing concepts that would turn one of the world’s ugliest motorcycles into something stylish and space age. Because that first Victory, the V92C, sure as hell needed re-drawing. And they sure did re-imagine many models between then and the company’s demise in 2017.

Now many of Arlen’s creations exhibited a stunning degree of imagination and an extremely high level of engineering skill.

Way back in 1977 he built Two Bad, a Digger with two Shovelhead engines and an incredible front wheel steering and suspension set up.

Other visual stand-outs to me include his ’57 Chevystyled Nesstalgia, his twin-engine and twin-supercharged Ferrari-bike, the space-age Mach-Ness and the Bugattiinspired Smooth-Ness which we ran on the cover of issue #36 after bringing it over from the US for a two-month tour.