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What makes a custom a custom and a special a special? Hard to say for sure, but generally the latter involves an engine swap. We all know about “Tritons,” with their built Triumph Twins in the famously good-handling Norton Featherbed frame. And, of course, that rarer, costlier derivative, the “Norvin,” featuring a hulking Vincent V-Twin somehow shoehorned into the same cage (perhaps, as our own Allan Girdler has suggested, with a whip and a chair?). And who can forget from this very website the “Nortley-Fartster,” a Harley Sportster motor housed, again, in a Norton Featherbed?
To this convention of crossbreeds let's now add the “Vincati,” a 998cc Vincent Vee slotted into an early 1970s Ducati 750 GT frame. As you can read in the current October issue, we sent Peter Egan to ride a freshly cobbled Vincati, the creation of Vincent specialist (some would say legend) “Big Sid” Biberman and his college professor son Matthew.
The duo wants to build a limited run of Vincatis at (wait for it…) $100,000 a copy. For those kind of clams, you can buy a pristine stock Vincent and the best Ducati GT in the world, but, hey, nobody said building specials was an exercise in rationality.
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