SoCal VOC

The man on the far right in the photo in the Red Rapides entry, Don Mathews, is a long time friend of my father, Frank Doherty. Don recently started to send me copies of some of his old Vincent photos, and he sent a set taken in the late ’50s at Willow Springs. Lo and behold, one photo has Sonny Angel’s support truck in the background. Sonny still has his motorcycle shop down in National City, near San Diego, and has been going to Bonneville each year along with his brother Don to help support Max Lambky with the Vincent Streamliner effort.  Nice dustbin fairing on the bike.

The upcoming Bonhams Las Vegas auction will be featuring a low mileage, fairly original, barn find Red Rapide, found in the Fresno area.  I remember stopping by Hugh Darby’s place somewhere in central California, back in the ’80s, and he had a Red Rapide among his large collection.  I’ve always wondered what happened to those bikes, and wondered if this Red Rap might have been his.  I googled around, and found a few blogs with the same Bonhams info.  One long time Vincent owner from Texas posted a comment on one blog, saying the bike couldn’t be all that original, since only the fenders and tank were red.  I had to straighten him out, so I added a comment to say that it is pretty well known that not all Red Raps were all (or mostly) red.  I know of many west coast Red Rapides that only had the tank and fenders red.Here is a photo from the original LA Vincent club, on one of their club rides, and there are two such Red Rapides.  The man in the middle, towards the back, still owns his to this day.