32 amcn.com.au
Ehret Vincent Series C Black LightningVincent had invited McAlpine
to ride Gunga Din, which he
did with great verve, sliding
speedway-style through the
turns to demolish the field.
McAlpine then sailed home,
taking with him the new,
unraced Black Lightning. He
returned for the TT in 1952, but
to save money and stay clear
of injury he didn’t race during
his brief return to Australia and
put the Vincent up for sale.
The £500 price asked for the
Black Lightning would have
bought a nice house in Sydney
at the time, and one of the few
riders with the necessary funds
was Jack Forrest.
Forrest bought the bike
and raced it at Bathurst in
the Senior Unlimited TT,
but crashed during the race,
without serious injury and with
mainly superficial damage
to the bike. Nonetheless, the
experience seemed to break his
love of the Vincent and he put it
up for sale with Sydney dealers
Burling and Simmons.
The Lightning sat for months
until it was bought by Jack
Ehret, who owned two Sydneymotorcycle shops. Ehret wasn’t
exactly flush with funds, but
knew that if he didn’t get hold
of the Lightning, one of his
racing rivals would. And so the
bike found a new home – where
it would remain for the next
47 years.
‘Black Jack’ Ehret’s firstmajor outing on the Lightning
was the Australian TT at Little
River on Boxing Day 1952,
where he finished second in
the Senior Unlimited TT.
At that time the Australian
land speed record was
constantly under attack, so in
January 1953 Ehret selected
a remote stretch of road in
western New South Wales to
challenge Les Warton’s Vincent
record of 122.6mph. Despite
a few problems, he averaged
141.5mph (227.7km/h) to
smash the record.
Over the next five years,
Ehret and the Black Lightning
were regular fixtures at
Australian race meetings, with
the Vincent appearing in both
solo and sidecar guise, often on
the same day.
Undoubtedly its proudest
moment as a solo came at the
much-vaunted international
meeting at Mount Druitt in
February 1955, where 500cc
visiting world champion Geoff
Duke from England was the
star attraction on his works
four-cylinder Gilera. Duke had
demolished the opposition inironlegends
Publicity shot of Ehret ahead
of his ultimately successful
Australian land speed record run
at Gunnedah in January 1953