The official Newsletter of the International Star Riders Association
©ISRA, 1999. Redistribution prohibited.
Volume 1. Number 2.
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Have you ever seen a ‘Sparto’ taillight? You know the ones – they are affectionately known as a ‘limp sausage’. You may have seen one on the recent Cobra show bike ‘Hot Saki’, a Kawasaki Vulcan 800 stripped of all but the barest essentials to convincingly emulate early Indian bobtailed choppers from the 40s.
 It came from a very special machine. The 1936-1942 Crocker. Unless you were fortunate enough to have attended the Guggenheim’s ‘Art of the Motorcycle’ exhibit though, you will probably never see an actual Crocker motorcycle in person. This is a brief of history of a legend that could have been. |
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Just after the turn of the century, a young man called Albert G. Crocker left engineering school in Illinois to design motorcycles for a company called Thor. He achieved some level of success with Thor, securing a place amongst their competition riding team in 1907 and 1908. His wins for the team were enough to attract the attention of Springfield’s Indian Motocycle, who in 1909 hired him for their engineering department. He served with Indian all over the United
States, fulfilling various roles over the next few decades.
His versatility and success led him to the purchase of the Freed Cycle Company in 1928. This purchase allowed Crocker to take over some limited production for Indian. For several years, Crocker’s machine shop in California supplied Indian with crankpins and various other parts. Motorcycle racing in the early 20th century was mostly conducted on indoor wooden board tracks. Small bicycle-like machines whizzed around the tracks like electrons at speeds approaching (and in many cases, surpassing) 100 miles per hour. Promoters were never quite certain if audiences came to these events to cheer on their favorite riders, to support their favorite teams, or to see a bloody and disastrous wreck. Board racing was an extremely dangerous affair. Though no laws made board racing illegal, its popularity suffered a steady decline in the 20s. Maybe folks just suffered a sudden bout of good taste and started to feel a little guilty for enjoying the gruesome and often fatal events. (Hopefully Jerry Springer’s audience may yet one day come to the same revelation. ;-) By the 1930s, flat track racing had become much more popular. The board track dominance of American manufactures like Indian, Harley-Davidson, and Excelsior, began to ebb to the flat track successes of British machines. This inspired Albert G. Crocker to create an American machine to successfully compete in flat track races. In 1934, Crocker teamed up with his shop foreman, Paul Bigsby, to create about 40 flat track bikes. Bigsby was a man of many talents. A skilled mechanic and engineer, he was also a racer and promoter. The bikes that Crocker and Bigsby produced in 1934 performed admirably. More modern English machines were already being shipped, though, and Crocker’s dream of bringing flat track success to America was to be put on the shelf. They didn’t let a few setbacks stop them, though. Crocker and Bigsby entered 1935 with a new dream. They would build a heavyweight, high performance, v-twin motorcycle. Crocker felt that there was a market for high-speed touring bikes. It would be called the ‘Crocker’. |
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| The basic layout was borrowed somewhat from the Indian’s that Crocker had helped create. The engine, though, was quite a different story. At 3.25” bore to 3.625” stroke, the dimensions were fairly square. The 61 cubic inch plant’s cylinders were set 45 degrees apart. Compression was rated at 7:1. The machine was put together with customizers in mind, though. The cylinder walls were made extra thick to allow for over-boring. The transmission could withstand 200 horsepower of torture. This thing was made to take a beating. The Bigbsy-designed hemi-head equipped stock 1936 machines peaked at 60 horsepower. That was enough to propel the Crocker to 120 blistering miles per hour. |
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So confident was Crocker with this magnificent machine that he offered to refund the full purchase price to any buyer who was beaten by a rider on a Harley or an Indian. |
| The result was anything but graceful. It ran rough.
It was a demon to start. It made enough noise to wake the dead.
All that aside, though, once a Crocker was moving, there was nothing that
could beat it. It became an instant American classic. Harley-Davidson
and Indian found themselves caught with their pants down. Even hopped
up bikes couldn’t come close to matching the stock performance of a Crocker.
Since most parts were made in Crocker’s own facility, each bike was built to the customers’ specifications. Some models featured 91 cubic inch engines. Not until the 1998 introduction of Yamaha’s Road Star was this massive size surpassed on a stock bike. The obvious weakness to the Crocker strategy was that his small company could not hope to match the prices of mass-produced Indians and Harleys. Crockers sold for 25-50% more than their competition. This prevented any kind of a dealer markup, hence every Crocker was sold directly from the factory. There are rumors to this day that Harley-Davidson was so embarrassed by the introduction of the bike that they threatened boycotts on any manufacturer that supplied parts to Crocker’s plant. While nothing has been confirmed, it is worthy to note that Crocker instructed their own customers to buy certain replacement parts common on both bikes (rims, for instance) from Harley shops. Few doubt this action was taken unilaterally. At the very least, it certainly resembles appeasement. It is certain that Harley-Davidson threatened legal action for patent infringement. The judge must have been amused by the concept that Crocker had copied Harley in the design of his clearly superior motorcycle. The case was thrown out. By 1942, the Crocker was no more. The market for unnecessary playthings dried up as America’s population entered the grim practicalities of fighting a foreign war. Too, there was no way Crocker could have survived the competition form Harley and Indian much longer. Albert Crocker retired shortly after the war. He died quietly in 1961. He could happily look back on his life and honestly say he was the man who created the world’s first superbike. Guitarists have probably spent the last several paragraphs preoccupying themselves with the question, “was that the same Bigsby who…” The answer is yes. Paul Bigsby went on to form Bigsby guitars. His famous aluminum tremelo-arm design has graced Gibsons and Gretsches for decades. Although less than 200 hundred Crockers were ever made, motorcycle aficionados will not soon forget them. Fast even by today’s standards, they serve as a reminder to manufacturers that the classic large American V Twin needn’t be slow. Maybe a Yamaha V Max could be repackaged with classic cruiser styling to revive the Crocker legacy. Speed Star, anyone?
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