Australian Motorcyclist – June 2017

Life is a or nothing at all!

20 days: Cape Town, Kruger

Johannesburg, Lesotho, SwazilandJJJ

Spectacular

South Africa

formerly Ferris Wheels Safaris

0022 + years

brochure I have (but which had a
sidecar attached) was road tested by
me for both Two Wheels and Classic
Bike magazines more than 30 years
ago, and that big, lumpy Henderson
remains one of the most memorable
machines I have ridden.
The 1921 in-line Henderson Four

• minus gearbox - was also used as
  a power-plant in many light aircraft,
  the punchy engine said to be very
  reliable; a good reason for it to be
  adopted in aircraft.
  At the time the four-cylinder
  Henderson was the fastest
  motorcycle on the roads, a favourite
  with many Police forces and a
  favoured racer on board tracks
  and showground dirt ovals in
  America as well, where it won
  more than its fair share of races,
  competing against Indian and
  Harley-Davidson machines.
  Did somebody mention ‘Superbike’
  back then? No they did not, for
  the word had not been coined by
  the Yanks at the time, and so was
  not entirely correct when the word
  Superbike was coined in 1969 to
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  Honda four. These types of high-
  performance machines were to be
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  the world’s roads more than half
  a century before Honda’s new,
  exciting OHC four appeared, as they
  still are today, with many of their
  owners (as described so succinctly
  above) seldom stretching the bike to
  anywhere near its limits.
  In the case of that heavy
  Henderson it is probably just as well
  the bike was not often ridden to its
  full potential, for the bike was not

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with braking distance from high

speeds all those years ago certainly a

very casual affair.

And the rear brake was not really

up to scratch either, for it was a

strange device consisting of a simple,

contracting band of brake material

which clamped around the outside

of the brake drum, with another

brake operating on the inside of the

same drum! The dual rear- braking

system was odd indeed, and even

stranger in operation. It was a far

more casual area on the open road

back in the early twenties, to be sure,

but it is reasonable to suggest that

braking distances from high speeds

on most large-capacity machines

back then were probably measured in

kilometres rather than metres.

Naturally, these high-performance

Henderson Fours, along with their

large, Harley-like Vee-twin engine

siblings – crude though they certainly

are by modern standards – were

ridden by motorcyclists just like all

of us; men who were so perfectly

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the rare 1921 brochure.

Henderson folded very suddenly in

1931 – the Depression claiming yet

another victim - but the last hurrah

for the company was the building

of two prototype in-line six-

cylinder machines of just on 2000cc

capacity. The long, long engine was,

in effect, hand-made by cutting into

and extending the crankcases and

machining a long crankshaft from

a solid billet of high carbon/nickel

steel. Thankfully, Henderson had

long since installed a (very small!)

front brake and a much more up-

to-date single rear brake drum,

for that monster of a motorcycle

would surely have taken an age to

pull up from whatever its top speed

may have been. Happily, both of

those glorious Superbikes are still in

existence in America.

At the very end of the last century

an effort was made to resurrect the

name, with new, large-capacity Vee-

twin Excelsior/Henderson machines

suddenly appearing on some

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Henderson was actually made by

the Excelsior motorcycle company

back in the twenties, the large, red

X logo of Excelsior heavily featured

behind the Henderson name on the

machine’s fuel tank. Naturally, the

new machine was also a very large,

very imposing motorcycle, built

along the lines of Harley-Davidson,

but it was doomed to fail, with little

more than 2000 machines made over

the next couple of years.

The Mantra which was chanted

by the all-new Henderson at the

turn of the century was ‘Yesterday,

Today and Tomorrow’ and so,

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name lives very quietly on, under the

auspices of the Excelsior-Henderson

Motorcycle Club in America and its

small band of rabid enthusiasts.

But if ever the appellation

‘Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow’

belongs to any modern-day

manufacturer, it belongs to

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operation, in one form or another,

into three centuries!

Three centuries? Oh, yes, for its

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a quadricycle made by the then-