Fonzie’s Triumph For Sale - Special Feature

The phone rings at Mean Marshall’s Motorcycles, a dealership in Oakland, California. It’s Bud Ekins calling from North Hollywood, where he has several hundred motorcycles stashed in a couple of dirt-floor Quonset huts. “Marshall,” he barks, “go empty your bank account.” “Why?” fires back Marshall, standing behind his grease-stained parts counter. “Because you’re coming down here and buying my bikes,” Ekins roars.

Recalling this conversation like it was yesterday instead of 20 years ago, “Mean Marshall” Ehlers is reminiscing while perched on a rather special Ekins bike. His enormous, 70,000-square-foot shop is more like a working museum. It’s filled with tools, used parts, old Triumphs, Mercedes and boats, in various states of restoration and repair.

Ekins, a legend in the Southern California motorcycle scene, made his name in racing and stunt riding, and then parlayed that reputation into a dealership and used-parts emporium. Bud was down-to-earth, friendly and generous to a fault—but also “a hustler, always ready to make a buck,” Marshall says. Ekins enjoyed hustling Hollywood as the main purveyor of motorcycles to studios.

So, what of that special bike? In 1962, Ekins bought a ’49 Triumph Trophy TR5 scrambler. The square-barrel alloy-engine Trophy was beloved by desert racers until Triumph introduced the more robust round-barrel machines. The TR5 was sitting in North Hollywood when the ’70s sitcom television series “Happy Days” called Ekins with a request. They needed a chopper for character Arthur Fonzarelli, likely the coolest guy on Earth at the time. The Triumph was sprayed silver, the fender removed and a set of high bars bolted on, and that was it.

“Happy Days” ran from 1974 to 1984, pulling in nearly 40 million viewers on Tuesday evenings during its heyday. Fonzie, played by Henry Winkler, was arguably the show’s biggest star. Never mind that Winkler didn’t know how to ride and was deathly afraid of motorcycles. When the show ended, Ekins got the Triumph back, put the stock bars and fender back on and returned it to his bulging stable of bikes. There it sat until 1990, when Ehlers showed up with his truck.

Marshall kept the square-barrel Triumph, a rarity in its own right, untouched and on display in his shop. He didn't realize he had Fonzie's bike—because Ekins didn't tell him—until 2000, when Cycle World tracked down the bike for "Lost & Found" (March, 2000). Marshall, realizing what he was sitting on, wouldn't hear of selling it, even when theme restaurant Planet Hollywood offered him "absurd amounts of money."

But that was 2000. On November 12, the bike will go on the auction block at Bonhams Classic California auction at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles. If it sells, the Fonz’s Triumph will get a new home, one likely to be very different from Bud Ekins’ gritty Quonset huts or Mean Marshall’s West Oakland working museum. But one thing is for sure: The once-dusty Trophy will finally be recognized for what it is, a pop icon.