Traverston V-Rex 2008 <-- Bikeintro Motorcycles

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Traverston V-Rex 2008

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The weather couldn’t be more gorgeous as I motor down one of Orange County, California’s mystifying backroads. With the chrome trimmed throttle fully wrapped, the liquid-cooled V-Twin beneath me hurls forward at a startling rate. The ferocious roar emitting out of the torpedo-shaped muffler builds quickly, yet contradicts the futuristic styling of this burgundy stunner I’m seated on. With the rattle of the engines two big power pulses increasing to an almost sportbike-like crescendo, I grab an up-shift while glancing down at the Harley-Davidson speedometer as the needle slams past the century mark.

But this ain’t no Harley. True, it does share a fair amount of Milwaukee DNA as evidenced by the high-revving V-Rod-sourced powertrain, elegant instrumentation and chromed-out switchgear. However, with the machine’s chiseled body panels, stuffed elongated stance and eccentric suspension componentry, it looks as if it were plucked right off the floor of Tokyo’s concept motorcycle show.

Despite the bevy of people that gravitate to the bike like Keith Richards to a bottle of liquor, a one-off prototype this bike is not.

The Travertson V-Rex began as a fairy tale two-wheeled creation engineered in the binary world by Australian designer Tim Cameron. A life-long motorcycle rider and enthusiast, Cameron has been sketching motorcycles since he was a school boy.

“A lot of my influences come from aviation and science fiction,” says Cameron. “I don’t pay too much attention to categories and styles of bikes. I’ve used motocross bike features on road bike designs and as long as it works visually, I’ll use it. I just want to create something that leaps off the page.”

Like many motorcycle enthusiasts, Cameron was fed up with the stagnant state of cruiser design, so when sketching his ‘Dream Bike’, one of his objectives was to try and move contemporary cruiser design into the new millennium.

“Currently, cruisers appear to be in stuck some kind of generic time warp,” said Cameron. “I wanted to project them into the future rather than poke around in the past for that look that I was after.”

Cameron never anticipated his design evolving past the computer screen. But when a certain Frenchman by the name of Christian Travert stumbled upon the 3D renderings on the Web, Cameron’s digital vision was about to transform itself into moving metal.

Travert emailed Cameron with the subject line “Dream Bike on the Streets of America”. And after he name-dropped his 227 mph, jet engine-powered Y2K motorcycle that he helped build, Cameron knew Travert was legit.

“At first, I studied Tim’s rendering for a few weeks. I finally found technical solutions to accommodate the look and ride-ability,” says Travert. “From day one I was looking for production.”

Thousands of hours later, the first production V-Rex rolled out of the Travert’s 12-employee, Fort Lauderdale, Florida factory and into the hands of WeRentMotorcycles.com, owner Jack Reynolds. Not one to be stingy, The Newport Beach, California-based business rents the machine to any licensed motorcyclist that can pony up the $300-per-day fee.

With a 79.2-inch wheelbase, the V-Rex is similar in length to a raked-out custom chopper. But unlike those over-stretched pieces of steel, the V-Rex’s 670-pound claimed dry weight feels low and centralized. This is due, in part, to its unique short steel frame which uses the V-Rod-sourced engine and cast-aluminum fuel tank as stressed members.

In order to keep true to Cameron’s sketch, Travert engineered a unique front suspension system that looks and works much like a swingarm/monoshock setup you typically see on the rear-end of most motorcycles. The curious looking front-end utilizes a double-sided cast-aluminum swingarm that holds the front wheel in place. The swingarm pivots on the vertical steering head axis, while damping is provided by an adjustable shock mounted vertically behind front wheel. The end result is a system that retains all the bump absorbing ability that one would expect from a conventional fork, yet it still delivers a light, nimble feel at the handlebars.

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