That’s about the sort of reaction you can expect to elicit from onlookers while cruising aboard a Derringer. Unless you’re me. In which case you promptly get spotted by the cops pulling off of the sidewalk and followed for three blocks while they try to figure out whether there’s anything they could ticket you for. But more on that later. First let’s check in with the intrepid inventor of this fantastical contraption.
Before he started making board tracker/bicycle/mopeds, Adrian Van Anz had already gained access to the offices of some of the world’s wealthiest VIPs… by building their computers. We’re not just talking about installing a few extra gigs of RAM and beefing up security. Think more along the lines of vodka-cooled, 24 karat gold dipped, deer hide ensconced works of byte-crunching art delivered in silk bags. No seriously, real people actually paid for stuff like that in an alternate universe known as, “2004”. I’ll let Adrian tie it all together though, “I always loved the board track style of racing bikes. My Dad and I would go buy basket case Harleys when I was a kid and rebuild them. If you look at the computers I built (link to: http://blogcritics.org/scitech/article/lxtv-hardware-review-ava-computers/ ), they were obviously inspired by automotive design, so it was only a matter of time before they were going to get wheels on them so to speak.”
Those wheels are alternately powered by whatever you ate for breakfast, or a four stroke 2.5 hp utility engine. It’s made by Honda, but they don’t actually put it in any products that they sell. The gearbox is a custom solution with a 5:1 gear reduction and a centrifugal clutch so you don’t need to put the single speed into neutral every time you stop. The pint-sized power plant has a free wheel on the output shaft to the gearbox. That way when you’re pedaling it, it’s not turning any of the gears in the gearbox and adding drag into the mix. This system improves upon a traditional moped, where you’re basically holding the clutch in if you want to pedal.
Van Anz claims, “It actually rides great as a bicycle once you get it going. It’s heavy, but the pedals are geared lower to deal with the 60 lb dry weight because even though it’s a single speed, at higher speeds you can have the engine take over. It goes up to 35 mph and gets about 180 mpg in typical mixed use between pedaling and riding.”
While Derringers originated as ground up builds, they’ve now distilled the formula down to a base engine, frame, and tank configuration complemented by carefully selected componentry. Adrian elaborates, “Some of the stuff we still make. Most of it is off-the-shelf or modified stuff to make it work together though. The front wheel is a good example. The hub is a Sturmey-Archer 70mm drum brake. It’s got DT Swiss spokes, Wheelsmith brass spoke nipples that won’t strip out, and a German tube and tire, so we’ve got a mix of stuff on there. Basically we use high end bicycle componentry for the moving parts, and vintage looking stuff for the other parts. But everything down to the color of the spoke nipple is still an option.”
Customization has been reigned in to accommodate increases in sales volume, but still includes the paint scheme and luxe personal touches like color-matched helmets, hard-shell backpacks, Danish-made saddlebags, refurbished match-lit Carbide lamp headlights, heck, one customer even had a holster for a .22 made to fit beneath the seat!
As Van Anz puts it, “It gives people a full custom motorcycle experience for a fraction of the cost. You can look at it two ways, for $3,500 it’s either an expensive moped, or it’s a really inexpensive customized vehicle. When people say it’s expensive, I tell them that if they took their soft tail to be custom painted, they’d charge you what we charge for the whole bike. I tell them to think about it that way — all they’re paying for is the paint, and they’re getting the bike for free!”
I asked Adrian about the sales demographics for Derringers. “The breakdown seems to be about 80/20 going to men vs. women. Obviously we sell a lot in L.A. because we’re here. We also sell a lot in the Hamptons and Australia, but we’ve delivered bikes to clients in Texas, Oklahoma, all over the place. We also do large custom orders for companies like Equinox, Ralph Lauren, and others.”
When I inquired about how Derringers are classified by DMV, and what kind of license, if any, was required to ride one, Van Anz replied that the answer was complicated. “We sell them as ‘off-road use only’ because they’re legal in some places and not in others. The laws vary so much though that we just tell people that they’re welcome to figure it out on their own as far as that goes. We can limit the top speed to 20 mph for licensing reasons in some municipalities. We used to try to figure it out for people but it was like a whole research project every time somebody ordered a bike.”
Research project be damned, I made a personal choice that no gubbernmint pencil neck politician was gonna stop this ‘merican moto-journo from exercising his God given right to a test ride on the closest thing to a board tracker that he’s ever likely to straddle. As Adrian and I tinkered with the Derringer’s choke on the sidewalk in front of his retail location, I was immediately struck by how strange it seemed to be rip starting my bicycle, or checking to see if it had gas in the tank. Once underway, it became immediately apparent that this ain’t no upright beach cruiser. The ergots are ass up, head down, and board tracking correct, with the funky exception that your feet are staggered on pedals instead of foot pegs. There is a standard right handed throttle grip, and a hand lever actuated front brake, but the coaster bicycle style rear brake was a bit of an adjustment for me.
Combining all of these peculiarities with the lowest horsepower to weight ratio I had ever experienced, it took me half of the first block to figure out how I was gonna accelerate, and the other half to figure out how I was gonna brake. No matter, I was grinning ear to ear like a mad man, which was only appropriate because when I peeked behind me, I found myself followed in not-so-hot pursuit by a police cruiser full of officers who seemed to be looking at me like I must have missed the short bus to school that day. I suppose a 200 lb grown man wearing a gold glitter retro motorcycle helmet doing 10 mph hunched full over on a moped modeled after a 100 year old motorcycle was probably worth following for a block or two. Good thing that they couldn’t hear me making “vroom vroom” noises and track announcing my daring pass of Red Parkhurst beneath my bubble shield. But heck, I wasn’t doing anything illegal that I knew of, and I guess nothing that they knew of either, so eventually they tailed off and left me to my back street motordrome fantasies. I had to agree with Adrian, for a guy like me with 2004 fantasies and a 2011 budget, the Derringer delivers a collectible thrill at a decimal point of the price.
Apparently I’m not the only one who thinks Van Anz is on to something here. As Adrian tells it, “I didn’t build the first bike intending to sell it. I just built it for myself. But I took it out and it got a huge reaction. A guy offered to buy it for a lot of money the first time I had it out. So I realized there was a market for it, and I went to one of the investors for my other company and we started it up… and here we are four years later.” You don’t have to be a history major to know that this country was founded by big dreamers, and certainly the men who exceeded 100 mph riding glorified bicycles back in the 1920’s continued that tradition. Thanks to Adrian Van Anz, if you’ve got a nostalgic place in your heart for those days, and a mere $3,500 in your bank account, you can now add a pretty convincing replica of those machines to your garage.