Getting naked gets you noticed

Marty Dickerson Interview
That other guy on a Vincent

Getting naked gets you noticed. We’ve all seen the iconic image snapped at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah on a Monday Morning, Sept. 13, 1948 where a guy wearing nothing but a Speedo bathing suit and tennis shoes is lying flat out on a Vincent itself going flat out. Rolland “Rollie” Free rode into legend that day on a specially prepared British built 1948 Vincent HRD. His achievement, and perhaps moreover that famous photograph, has left an indelible impression. But looking a bit closer you’ll find a photo also taken at Bonneville of another rider stretched out flat on a Vincent, though not in a bathing suit, himself a motorcycling legend who’s blasted his way to even more records...and is still making them.

We’re speaking of Martin “Marty” Dickerson. Though not prone to wearing Speedos at speed, he’s been inclined to establish and break records for more than half a century. You could say Marty always traveled with a fast crowd, his speed-challenger buddies including both Rollie Free and Burt Munro, the latter now a household name thanks to the 2005 film “World’s Fastest Indian” starring Anthony Hopkins. While Burt passed into the history books in 1978 and Rollie in 1984, Marty, born in Inglewood, CA, on Nov. 3, 1926 and now in his 80s, is still twisting the throttle WFO. While men his age are worried about breaking bones climbing off a Barcalounger, Marty’s still climbing aboard a Vincent and blasting across the Salt Flats at over 150 mph.

It all starts back in Los Angeles circa 1948 when Marty traded in his post-War Triumph Tiger 100 for a Series B Vincent Rapide, the new bike having recently made its debut in the U.S. at Mickey Martin’s bike shop in Burbank.

His beefed-up, twin-carbed Triumph had been no slouch, with Marty clocking 98 mph out at the Rosamond Dry Lake near Willow Springs and home to the famous racetrack. We’re talking the late 1940s when the fastest Trumpets were hitting 104. Marty earned himself a name street racing with his race-prepped Triumph, so obviously he could handle a set of handlebars. But getting on his new Vincent in October 1948 was no easy transition. Marty readily admits there was a learning curve and then some. Apparently the bike had a hair-trigger like clutch and “scary” power. But after negotiating the streets of L.A., Marty got the hang of it and tamed the beast. But he didn’t quite get the hang of paying for what was then a very expensive motorcycle at nearly $1200 back in 1948.

In order to earn the scratch he entered into a deal with Mickey Martin to motor around the country showing off the new Vincent in the hopes of acquiring more customers. While the plan didn’t generate too much business, it did provide Marty with some real-world experience as he found himself racing against numerous local hot-rodders and facing off against both bikes and cars as he traveled/drag raced his blue Vincent all over the West.

In March of 1950 Marty opened his own bike shop in Hawthorne, CA. He would remain open until the last day of 1957. From this HQ he would mount his own speed record campaign that in 1951 brought him the Class C record at 129 mph aboard his Rapide, now taken off the street and purpose built for top-speed assaults. His record stood for less than two weeks when taken by his rival Sam Parriott riding an Ariel Square Four. But after pumping up his Vincent V-Twin with special factory cams and exhaust pipes sent from England by Phil Vincent himself, he returned to the Salts in 1952 and ran 141mph to take the Class C Record. Then in 1953 and broke his own Class C record with an average two-way run of 147 mph. Marty also broke the 150-mph barrier during one of his runs.

His speed record held for an astounding two decades until 1973 when a four-cylinder Yoshimura Z-1 Kawasaki clocked 155. (In 1953 Marty was also roadracing and in that year won the 250cc division racing a Jawa 2-stroke at the famous Catalina Grand Prix. Commenting on that win, Marty laughs and says, “My competition wasn’t very stiff. I had to stop three times to screw the top back on the carburetor and still won the race.”

Translating his experience to the classroom, Marty took on a new role in 1969 when he became a vocational school instructor and for 17 years inspired racing mechanics-to-be, many of whom would become top guns in their profession.

Stepping back into his leathers in 1996 at age 70, Marty set a vintage speed record at 130 mph. In 2002 in recognition of his many achievements and contributions, Dickerson was inducted into the Motorcycle Hall of Fame.

In 2007 Marty returned to Bonneville at nearly 81 years of age, climbed on a 1950 Vincent Rapide and clocked runs of 151.685 mph and 154.567 scorching yet another record into the history books. By the way, Marty’s blue Vincent (along with Rollie Free’s bathing suit) is now in a collection in Austin, Texas owned by Herb Harris.

Speaking with The Man: Marty Dickerson Sets the Records Straight

Motorycle.com: Going back to your speed roots, we hear you worked for the Northrop Aircraft company and took part in building the famous Northrop B-35 Flying Wing. This was 60 years ago and the ancestor of today’s stealth B-2 Bomber. How’d you get that job?

Marty Dickerson: As a teenager during the war I was taking mechanical drafting at Hawthorne High School, and Northrop needed people to lay out templates for the Flying Wing. I graduated a few months early and started working full-time for them in 1944. When I was a kid I saw the prototype in the air, a smaller version of the Flying Wing. I also saw the piston version of the full-size Flying Wing take off and later I saw a fly-over of the jet version. I remember looking and I’m looking and I don’t see a damn thing. All of a sudden there it is, like a ruler in the air. It flew low over the factory in Hawthorne and then dipped one wing and did an absolutely 180-degree turn so quick I couldn’t believe it. Then it took off and headed toward Edwards Air Force Base. Politics killed that airplane. Sixty years later they figured out it was a great design.

MO: What came first, airplanes or motorcycles?

MD: Pretty much both at the same time. I started riding in high school when a friend got a ’25 JD Harley. I started riding behind him and decided I had to get one of my own and so I did, another JD Harley. One day the both of us were riding toward a railroad crossing with this big ramp-like bump and, being teen-agers, we had no fear. We hit it hard and I came off my bike. I remember looking up and seeing the underside of my buddy’s bike going over my head. I guess that was my first and last Evel Knievel jump. (That same friend who got Marty interested in bikes also got him into gymnastics which helped him develop a strong and enduring physique that served him well in the years to follow, especially since Marty’s spine was affected by scoliosis which at times caused him problems. In the 1980s while racing at Daytona he arrived from California after pacing up and down on the floor of an RV for the 2000-plus-mile trip since he was unable to sit or stand or even lie down, so great was his pain. Marty had walked across the United States without sleep. Yet once in Florida he climbed aboard his Vincent and entered the fray and saw it through. He says he felt no pain while he raced, but had to be lifted off his bike at the end of the event.)

MO: What was like when you first saw that Vincent at Mickey Martin’s shop?

MD: As I remember there were three Vincent Rapides in the shop along with the Triumphs he sold. It was a very small shop and I never figured out how Mickey got the Vincent distributorship for the whole of the U.S. west of the Mississippi. That’s why he sent me on that trip to set up dealers. No one signed up. It was just after the war and nobody had any money, especially for such expensive bikes.

But I remember my first reaction when I saw the Vincents. What an ugly piece of crap! It sure as hell wasn’t love at first sight. I hunkered down and looked the bike over. I checked out the engine and all the big cobbly lumps of metal from the sand casting. But all I could think was, “Boy, this thing looks like it’s powerful.” Only problem was I didn’t know how to ride it. Getting it started was a chore. Fortunately a dirt-track rider of the time, Tex Luce, was on hand to give me some pointers. I finally got it started but killed it about six times before I got away from curb at the shop. By the time I got home to Hawthorne from Burbank I knew how to start the goddamn thing and I knew how to start off without killing the engine or leaving a black strip of rubber taking off from stop lights. I couldn’t get over the torque. I’d screw it on and it damn well almost threw me off the seat. By the time I got home I had fallen in love with it. That was a good thing since it was my only transportation at the time. In later years when working on the rear frame member I noticed how the rear section was a work of art with its blending of square and round tubing, an example of Phil Vincent’s design genius.

“I remember my first reaction when I saw the Vincents. What an ugly piece of crap!”

MO: We know you street-raced your Triumph. Did you do the same with your brand-new Vincent?

MD: Yep. I was dragracing all these stroker Harleys built by this guy Willy Sumpter, a well-known builder at the time. I beat every one of his bikes. We didn’t race for money, only for the fun of it (Marty starts laughing). The only money I ever made racing was $50 in an AMA National Championships at Torrey Pines when I won a Third Place running a Vincent Gray Flash that I bought second-hand in 1952.

MO: Rollie Free, like yourself, had a connection to Mickey Martin’s shop in Burbank, right?

MD: Yeah. After Rollie got out of the service he went to work for Mickey as a mechanic, something a lot of people don’t know. But Rollie was such a perfectionist it took him three days to do a valve job on a Triumph from which he generated $12 in labor. Mickey told him, “Hey, Rollie, we need to make some money to stay in business.” (Rollie moved on and that’s when Tex Luce took over the job at Mickey’s, the fellow who went on to help Marty fire up his first Vincent.)



MO: When did you first go to Bonneville and see Rollie ride his Vincent?

MD: I met Rollie two years after he did the bathing suit run in 1948. That bathing suit bike was a borrowed ride which was a prototype, a hopped-up 1948 Black Shadow with special cams and TT carburetors owned by John Edgar who ordered the bike from Mickey’s. It was in 1950 that I went up to Bonneville to watch Rollie run, but this time on a different Vincent, a Lightning he had ordered for himself. It had special heads and carbs too. I rode my Vincent from Los Angeles to Bonneville. That was a 28-hour ride. There were three of us: another guy on a Vincent and one guy on a Triumph with a little Mustang gas tank. About every 50 miles we had to stop and take gas from our tanks to keep the Triumph running. We didn’t ever have to walk more than 10 feet to find a beer can to use to drain the gas. (Eventually arriving at Bonneville and after seeing Rollie ride, Marty took his Vincent off the street and modified it for Bonneville speed trials, and the rest is history.)



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Marty Dickerson Interview