“Time’s fun when you’re having flies,” as the frogs like to say.
Susie and I were headed north in the Subie and we stopped at the In-N-Out in Gilroy. I had an Animal Style burger. We had just had a nice telephone conversation with Steve Seidner, CEO of CSC Motorcycles. The two events had me thinking about the California Scooter Steve donated to the In-N-Out foundation. I realized that had been 11 years ago. Time speeds up as we age, I think. It feels like it was yesterday.
Steve donated a custom built bike to the In-N-Out charity auction every year during the California Scooter days, each one painted with a custom theme, with all proceeds going to the In-N-Out Foundation. That year, the good folks at In-N-Out asked us to base the color theme on Melanie Troxel’s In-N-Out funny car.
Melanie Troxel’s In-N-Out Funny Car.
The 2011 In-N-Out California Scooter was simply magnificent. Chrome Lucky 13 wheels, custom paint, a painted frame, a custom seat…ah, the list went on and on. I watched Lupe and Tony put the In-N-Out bike together and it was a hoot.
That year’s In-N-Out dinner and auction was awesome. I met one of the principals in the In-N-Out founding family who took me in tow and explained what the auction was all about, the prizes, and bit of the family’s background. She is a most charming woman…bright, attractive, and articulate. The CSC bike was the major item to be auctioned that year, she explained, and it brought a good chunk of money into the In-N-Out charitable foundation. I met and chatted with Melanie Troxel, the In-N-Out funny car driver, who is bright, articulate, and attractive (are you sensing a theme?). I asked her what it was like to pilot a funny car, and with a wink, she told me it was over before you realized it.
That was quite a night. Those were good times. And those were interesting little motorcycles. We rode them all the way to Cabo San Lucas and back. Yep, we rode to Cabo and back on 150cc motorbikes (you can read that story here). And it all happened more than a decade ago. It seems like it was yesterday. Or did I mention that already?
The 1956 Mustang Colt. I had posted this on Facebook several years ago and forgot about it. Mr. Zuckerberg jogged my memory.
I’ll bet with that title you’re thinking I’m going to write about a couple of guns.
Nope. The subject is Colts, but these are Colts that were manufactured by the Mustang Motor Products Corporation. And the few of us who know what that means would just call the company “Mustang.”
The idea popped into my mind with one of those Facebook photos on my feed. You know, it’s one of the things Facebook does when they’re not spying on you…they suggest you repost a photo you posted in the past. They did, and that beautiful turquoise 1956 Colt you see above popped up on my Facebook account. I had posted it 6 or 7 years ago. Mark remembered.
Mustang is the company that made the hottest mini-motorcycles back in the 1950s. There were a lot of companies making small motorcycles in America back then, and then they all disappeared by the early 1960s. Mustang hung on into the 1960s, but they were done in by all those nice people you met on Hondas. And when Mustang went out of business, a young Ford exec named Lee Iacocca swept in to grab the Mustang name. A lot of folks thought that was weird in 1962. What was Ford going to do with a name like Mustang? What were they thinking?
The very first iteration of the Mustang…the 1946 Greeves-powered Colt.
There were actually two Mustang Colts. The first was the very first bike Mustang made in the late 1940s. It was a tiny little bike with a tiny little Greeves two-stroke motor, and that’s what did it in the first Colt. In those post-war years, Greeves needed every engine they could make for their own bikes in merry old England, and they cut Mustang off. Undeterred, Mustang bought the Busy Bee engine company in the US and they redesigned a new Mustang around the larger Busy Bee 322cc flathead 4-stroke single. The Busy Bee engine was actually used to power cement mixers before that, but Mustang wanted Busy Bee engines for their motorcycles, unaware of and uncaring about any future impact to Joe Gresh’s future concrete endeavors.
Another view of the ’46 Mustang Colt. It’s stunning, isn’t it?
Mustang revived the Colt moniker for the ’56 model (the one you see in the photo at the top of this blog and in the photo below), but it didn’t sell well and the folks who made Mustangs in California didn’t like the bike. The Mustang was a premium product, and the idea of a cheapened Mustang (no transmission, a centrifugal clutch, and no telescopic forks) didn’t set well with the customer base or the folks in the Mustang factory.
The ’56 Colt again. I love the colors and the look.
You might be wondering how I know the folks in the Mustang factory didn’t like the ’56 Colt. I heard it straight from the late Jim Cavanaugh, who was an advisor to CSC Motorcycles and the Production Superintendent at the original Mustang Motor Products Corporation.
A young Jim Cavanaugh in front of the Mustang factory.Another view of Jim and his crew back in the day…Jim is on the left in the second row.Jim Cavanaugh a few years before he passed away. Jim is on a custom CSC 150 Mustang replica, his personal bike.
Steve Seidner revived the Mustang concept with his line of CSC 150 and CSC 250 motorcycles. They were awesome. I rode mine along with a few of my friends (including Baja John) to Cabo San Lucas and back. Many of the CSC bikes were highly customized, including this 250 Steve thought was going to be his personal bike:
CSC called this one the P-51. It fit the motorcycle’s aviation motif and Mustang lineage.World War nose art on the P-51’s fuel tank. This motorcycle was going to be Steve Seidner’s bike, but when we put this photo on the CSC blog a guy called within minutes and made Steve an offer he couldn’t refuse. The CSC Mustangs went for high dollars. Folks would point out you could buy a Harley for that kind of money, but they just didn’t get it.
So, back to the original Colt Mustangs…I think both Colts are stunning motorcycles. What do you think?
Want to read about our trip to Cabo and back and CSC 150 motorcycles? It’s right here. And would you like to read the article Jim Cavanaugh and I wrote for Motorcycle Classics magazine on the original Mustangs? You can get to that one here.
