The Quail Motorcycle Gathering, 2023

Story and photos by Brandes Elitch

If you were seriously interested, really interested, in motorcycle history and design, where would you like to go if time and money were not an issue? There were over 2500 bike manufacturers since 1900 and of course you would like to see many of them.

Most collectors, restorers and historians would mention the famous Isle of Man TT, held in late May/early June. I suspect this would be first on most peoples’ lists.

You would also want to visit the Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum and Vintage Festival, held in October, in Birmingham, Alabama. This is the largest motorcycle museum in the US, with over 900 bikes on display at any one time, out of the 1600 in the collection. The Barber Vintage Festival in October goes for 3 days and has hundreds of vendors selling vintage motorcycles and parts. I must go to that.

You would want to visit the National Motorcycle Museum in Birmingham, England, right across the road from the annual NEC classic motorcycle show in November. This a big show, with 90,000 attendees. The museum has 850 bikes on display in 5 halls, focused on the “Sixty Glorious Years” of UK motorcycle manufacturing. The museum gets 250,000 visitors a year.

You might even want to attend the Wheels and Waves event in Biarritz France in late June. This almost seems more like a Woodstock event, but it is quite famous. Looks like fun.

This begs the question: is there a kind of motorcycle Concours d ‘Elegance, similar to famous and significant car events, such as Villa d’Este in Italy, and in the US, Pebble Beach, Amelia Island, Greenwich, Eyes on Design in Detroit, and of course The Quail Motorworks Revival in Monterey, California?

It turns out that there is, and to my knowledge only one.

It is The Quail Motorcycle Gathering, held this year on May 6, 2023. This is the 14th year of this event. It is firmly on the calendar for motorcycle historians and enthusiasts now. There is nothing else like it in the US, or to my knowledge, worldwide.

Like all events of this kind, it takes one person with vision and persistence to make it happen and in this case, it is Gordon McCall. It takes at least a year of planning to choose the featured classes and reach out to collectors nationwide. There is also some luck involved.

Putting on a show like this is akin to staging a play on Broadway. Gordon is the Director and Producer. You have to reach out and connect with the 200 actors (the exhibitors), the audience, and the supporting staff, including advertisers. It is a big job. This year there were over 200 entrants, over 3000 attendees, and 26 awards were given out. The Judging Committee is comprised of forty knowledgeable judges. In addition to the traditional eleven classes, there were three special classes this year: Italian and Single, 1970’s Vintage Muscle, and “Baggers” (large displacement “adventure bikes” designed for long distance touring).

Gordon gets full marks for creating this event and for making it happen. We must also give credit to Chief Judge Somer Hooker. He helped develop the International Chief Judge Advisory Group Standards for Motorcycles. He is also Chief Motorcycle Judge for many other shows, including the Salon Prive at Blenheim Palace in England. He must be one of a kind with this resume.

To me, the highlight of a day filled with highlights was when Gordon took the stage to interview three of the most famous motorcycle racers today: Bubba Shobert, Wayne Rainey, and Eddie Lawson. This is truly “Motorcycle Royalty.” Just to illustrate this point, consider this:

-Bubba Shobert was three-time AMA Grand National Champion, from 1985-7, and he was AMA. Superbike Champion in 1988. He was inducted into the Motorcycle Hall of Fame in 1998 and into the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America in 2007.

-Wayne Rainey won the 500 c.c. World Championship three times and the Daytona 200 once. He was inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame in 2007.

-Eddie Lawson is a four-time Grand Prix motorcycle racing World Champion. He won the A.M.A. Superbike Series in 1981 and 1982 and the AMA 250 cc National Championship in 1980 and 1981. He is one of a small number of riders who have won races in the top class with three different manufacturers. He also won the ABC Superbikers event at in 1983 and 1985. When he retired from Grand Prix racing, he ranked third in the all-time MotoGP class Grand Prix wins list with 31 wins. He was inducted into the Motorcycle Hall of Fame in 1999 and the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America in 2002 and into the FIM MotoGP Hall of Fame in 2005.

To top it off, Rainey’s 1990 Yamaha YZR500 and his 1971 Yamaha Mini Enduro 60 were on display. Shobert’s 1985 Honda RS750D was on display, one of only nine built. And Lawson showed a selection of flat track bikes from Yamaha and Bultaco. This is extraordinary.

To see these men in person and hear their stories, prompted by Gordon, was magical. Of course, at the conclusion I had to rush the stage to get their autographs! This is something I will treasure, once it is framed and on the wall.

Part of the charm of this event is the location: Carmel Valley, located between the tourist meccas of Monterey and Carmel and the town of Salinas, and just over the hill from the Laguna Seca racetrack. Quail Lodge is a top-rated golf course, surrounded by fields and lakes, with an adjacent hotel. Of course, the weather plays a big part in a show like this, and I was apprehensive driving down as it rained in the San Jose area, but this year the weather was perfect. Because of our exceptionally rainy season this year, all the hills in the area were very bright green, shocking really, which is a remarkable change from what they look like in August during Car Week and the Historics.

Unlike the events of Car Week, this is a relaxed atmosphere, “The right crowd and no crowding” is an accurate description. Parking is very convenient, not even a 5-minute walk to the entrance to the show, and you don’t have to stand in line or huddle in a crowd to get in the door. But it will take longer than five minutes, because you will have to stop and look at the bikes parked along the road, or as I heard someone say, “You have to love a show where the parking area is almost as good as the show itself.”

On the show field, the bikes on display are arranged by category, some of which are the collection of one owner or a museum. In this show, the owners are relaxed, and even grateful that you want to learn more about their bikes. This is in stark contrast to the 3 major shows in August, where the owners, who have invested multiple cubic dollars in their display, are sweating bullets awaiting the judges, and are in no mood to talk to anyone. The other contrast is that in August there are another 80,000+ people in attendance, hanging around, so any hope you might have of finding a parking place, a restaurant reservation, a hotel room, that is just notgonnahappen.com. May is much better.

Another highlight of the day was getting an autographed copy of the book “Ton Up!, A Century of Cafe Racer Speed and Style, by Paul d’Orleans. This is my favorite style of bike, and I have a cafe racer Honda CB 550 (and a Yamaha RD 250 one which is too dangerous for me to ride but should be a static display in the living room someday). Check out Paul’s website The Vintagent. He is co-founder of the Motorcycle Arts Foundation. I am not exaggerating when I say that Paul is the expert on motorcycle design and history in the US. Nobody else is even close.

At this point, I think that I will let the pictures do the talking.

They were taken roughly from the parking lot to the entrance and then down the field to the stage. Yes, I might have skipped a category, but there was a lot to see.

I will make one final point. I have spent my life studying automobile design, to the neglect of my family, my children, my job, and other responsibilities. I am not that knowledgeable about motorcycle design. But like Judge Potter Stewart, I know something when I see it. Some of these bikes are shockingly beautiful. They take your breath away. I could never ride them, but I can appreciate them. They are truly works of art. It is almost too much to take in.

A list of the winners can be found here:

https://marketing.revinate.com/public/promotion/view-in-browser/message-log/2626b63b-bca5-4d39-86e2-dd5e270c06b7

Thanks to Gordon McCall and the many people who helped make this event happen. Below are a few of my favorite motorcycles at the Quail this year: