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Although it is frequently said that it’s possible to connect any two people or places in just seven steps – or seven degrees of separation – it demands a huge leap of the imagination to guess how a performance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, Rhode Island, by one of the 20th century’s finest singer-songwriters, and a rainy North Yorkshire afternoon in 2004 might be linked in not seven, but one single bound. Even if you know that the performer in question was Bob Dylan, and that, on an afternoon eighteen months ago, rain was falling on Kirkbymoorside, the home of Destiny Cycles, you will still probably be none the wiser.

But the connection between these two events, almost forty years apart, is a song. At the Newport Folk Festival, Bob Dylan stepped out onto the stage with, for the first time, an electric guitar. Over the previous three or four years the young Dylan had built himself a reputation as a folk singer, and the folk scene of the early 1960s brooked no association with anything as new-fangled or demonic as electrified guitars. A backlash began to grow, culminating with the infamous heckle of ‘Judas’ from a member of the crowd at a Dylan gig at Manchester’s Free Trade Hall on 17th May 1966. The doyens of folk saw their protégé transforming himself from protest singer to pop star and vociferously voiced their disapproval. Dylan responded

of his field, and Vic had been very impressed with and the many Art Deco buildings in Manhattan, and with the Brooklyn Bridge connecting Brooklyn and Manhattan. This interest is unsurprising; while many custom bikes could be described as sculpture, Vic’s machines are more like works of architecture, although obviously smaller, more mobile and you can’t live in them.

Having, in just a few short years, built an excellent reputation with bikes like Saracen, Miss Liberty, Predator and Banshee, Vic was also beginning to find that, with success, came the inevitable backlash as some people began to resent his burgeoning achievements. Regretfully, it appears to be a British trait that anyone who does well for themselves becomes fair game for mean-spirited carping. The

attitude of a few seemed to be that, while Vic was still working on a farm and building bikes in his spare time, that was fine – even if those bikes were the likes of his Rock & Blues-winning Triumph. But, as soon as he set up Destiny Cycles, that suddenly wasn’t fine. The one or two people who began to treat him differently saw only the show wins and the magazine photos, and not the countless hours of toil in the workshop or the courage that it had taken to give up a secure job and wage and take what amounted to a leap in the dark. Vic and Lin were disappointed and hurt to find that certain folk who would praise them to their faces were then trashing them behind their backs. Digging through their record collection, they came across a Dylan number which echoed their feelings at that time, and, in particular, the final lines: ‘Yes, I wish that for just one time/You could stand inside my shoes/You’d know what a drag it is/To see you.

the ‘skywalkers’ who had helped to construct most of the tall buildings that dominate New York. Virtually all of the skywalkers came from the Mohawk Indian tribe, and their talent to walk high steel beams with balance and grace – apparently fearlessly – and to work iron hundreds of feet above the ground had first been recognised in 1886 when, in exchange for running its railroad through Mohawk Territory in Canada, the Grand Trunk Railway hired some Mohawks as labourers to build the Victoria Bridge spanning the vast St Lawrence River. They were so competent that more of the tribe was trained as ironworkers and, because, from the ground, they seemed to be working on the clouds, they were nicknamed ‘skywalkers’. Their reputation rapidly grew throughout the North American continent and when, in the 1900s, skyscrapers and tall bridges began to spring up in New York and Chicago, the Mohawk skywalkers were hired to work on the high constructions.

The Mohawk workers were responsible for the ‘topping out’ of many famous buildings, including the Empire State Building, the Waldorf Astoria, the United Nations Assembly Building and even the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre. (In the wake of 9/11, Mohawk ironworkers returned to the site to dismantle the Twin Towers that their fathers and uncles had built). The skill and daring of the skywalkers played an essential part in creating the legendary New York skyline, and having learned this, there was only one engine that seemed appropriate for the new bike; the Indian PowerPlus 100.

On eBay they found a PowerPlus scrap core going cheap (a Yorkshireman’s favourite price after ‘free’), and bought it to rebuild. However, that engine is not the one that you see here; at the same time, Vic had begun to build a new bike for Lin, and it soon became obvious for various reasons that this project was advancing faster than his own (by now, called ‘Manhattan’) – or, at least it would be if it had an engine… So, having rebuilt the PowerPlus, it was ‘donated’ to Lin’s War Horse. By now, Vic had also discovered that, although the scrap core had been a bargain, the cost of the other parts needed to build the engine had made it a false economy. For Manhattan he bought a second – and, this time, complete –  Indian motor, already refurbished and with a year’s guarantee, a warranty that was almost instantly invalidated when Vic immediately

it down! (The engine was taken to bits purely for re-polishing, and not for any mechanical reason).

The beauty of buying a complete motor was that not only did it work out cheaper than building from parts, but Vic could be confident that the problems associated with the crankpin and flywheel on early models had been sorted out. The 100-cubic-inch PowerPlus also has the kudos of being, at 1638cc, the largest displacement engine manufactured by any American OEM motorcycle company. But, surprisingly, the Indian engine is relatively inexpensive compared to many of the favoured custom options. J&P Cycles sells the PowerPlus as a complete kit with everything you need to build the engine (bar your time and a bit of swearing) for $3899 (£2115),

which is around half the price of a 113ci S&S motor, and over a thousand pounds less than a 100ci RevTech. For Vic, the PowerPlus also had the added dividend of already having an Art Deco feel about its design, with its distinctive rounded cylinders and the serrated pattern on the sides of the rocker box covers fortuitously echoing the subway train windows that Vic used as a motif elsewhere on the bike.

The most dramatic use of this ‘train carriage windows’ idea is in Manhattan’s amazing curving downtube. (When I first saw the frame in a part-finished state, I cheerfully and optimistically assumed that Mr Jefford had finally seen the light and was taking his inspiration from the mighty Greeves motorcycle which had a frame like this. Okay, a bit like this – it was square and had holes in it… I was

looking forward to seeing Destiny Cycles-customised Anglians and Scottishes, but when I suggested to Vic that it did look just ever so slightly like a Greeves frame, he fixed me with a beady stare, shook his head and walked away). The downtube was fabricated in mild steel plate and triangulated for strength to allow for having several really quite large holes in it. The result is a honeycombed construction, making it stronger than a tube in round steel or even conventional box section.

The incredible forks (and I apologise if I’ve used epithets like ‘amazing’ and ‘incredible’ throughout this feature, but how else would you describe this bike?) are Destiny Cycles’ one-offs, with the springs being the only parts bought off the shelf. The legs were made in steel tube, while the ally parts on the bottom of the forks are the work of a young lad, Woody, in nearby Pickering, and of whom Vic and Lin speak very highly. He measured up what Vic wanted, worked out the rest by eye, added his own creative touch and produced parts that Vic simply calls “perfect”.

With the engine now polished, a Carl’s Speed Shop Typhoon carb was obtained, again through the good offices of eBay. It was only after they had won the auction that Vic and Lin discovered that the seller was a certain Ger Conlon, one of Ireland’s top custom builders, and who also had no idea to whom he was selling. Safely delivered from the Emerald Isle, the carb was swiftly introduced to a one-off manifold and support, and, of course, a spot of polish.

Because of the spectacular downtube, the engine needed to be kept as central and thus symmetrical as possible. This required a fair amount of offset on the primaries – 100mm, to be precise. Having used Rivera components before, Vic knew just how good they were, so a Primo Brute V drive belt system was fitted, with a 3.5” belt on the front, and 2” on the rear. To use a Zodiac 6-speed gearbox, a 55mm offset kit and 45mm extended shaft were fitted, but, having learnt from his experience with the two Indian engines, Vic checked prices first and found that it was as cheap to buy a complete transmission and offset kit as a package than it was to purchase a gear cluster for the existing casing. He did, however, have to make up an extra wide pulley to fit the resulting gap between the motor plate and the gearbox.

Those of you who have studied these pictures will have noted the braided oil lines, but also the absence of an oil tank. While the PowerPlus engine might be good, it still needs lubrication. But, with Manhattan developing increasingly clean lines as the project progressed, an oil tank – while essential – needed to be hidden. The answer was to use the frame, and so the oil is housed beneath the seat in the back part of the frame and the front of the integral mudguard. To allow access to the oil tank, the seat hinges up, and

when down, a neat nodule on the underside fits into the brass filler insert. The seat itself barely seems to qualify for that description, being even more minimal than Saracen’s affair of bars. (“I didn’t want anything too seatly,” says Vic by way of explanation!) It was made the day before Manhattan’s debut at the Bulldog Bash Custom Show last year, and the obvious (and oft-asked) question is: “Is it comfortable?”. Well, not on long trips it isn’t, and Vic says that he wouldn’t want to travel too much further than the distance it would take to empty a full petrol tank without stopping. Looking at the large, swooping tank, you might well be impressed by the endurance of the Jefford bottom, but appearances can be deceptive. As the electrics have all been tucked away inside the tank, its capacity is now only about three gallons, and Vic reckons that will take him quite far enough before his bum needs a break.

The right – or wrong – choice of wheels can make or break a project, but it’s almost impossible to imagine Manhattan without these wheels, although there was a point when we might have to have done just that. Vic had set his heart on spoked wheels, and, in particular, upon British spoked wheels. But, after trying all of the usual names (and some of the less usual ones), he couldn’t find a company in the UK that was interested in making something that big. As soon as he mentioned the words ‘eighteen inches’ and ‘two-hundred-and-forty spokes’, wheelmakers would shuffle away and find something urgent to do a long way away from this obviously mad bloke. KatKris, the French company that had supplied the wheels for War Horse, only works in billet, so Vic turned to TTS in Germany, the staff of which were excellent to deal with, producing

There are other details that are more esoteric and whose provenance is less easily identifiable. At the rear of the engine is a mounting the elegance of which belies its mundane – albeit vital – purpose. Milled out of several pieces of stainless, its top resembles one of the Kremlin’s onion domes. It’s an analogy not chosen by accident, for, like the wheel spindle, it was inspired by the KGB Bar on West 4th Street, a place with, as the name suggests, Soviet-themed decor, and where Vic and Lin had once quaffed the odd vodka-laden Margarita.

As with many of his previous bikes, Vic entrusted the paint work to Badbrush Dezigns, although, after Percy had outlined his initial idea, not without a few provisos. Having talked him out of a scheme involving 3-D skyscrapers, Vic laid down some ground rules. So, after Percy had finished grumbling about the fact that Vic had had Steve at NB Coatings first powdercoat everything in a sparkly anthracite grey, he set to work (and he would later admit that, although the powdercoat did create him more work, it ultimately produced a better overall finish).

Rather than using the legendary but obvious New York skyline, Vic wanted a more abstract feel to the paint scheme, one that gave an impression of the borough of Manhattan rather than rendering a realistic depiction. The leitmotiv of train windows was continued from the downtube (the ‘windows’ now pinstriped by hand) upwards and

around the sides of the tank, while the pointillist night scene ‘above ground’ was inspired by the streets running under Manhattan’s overhead railway tracks. Swathes of bright colour act as a homage to the neon lights that personify New York after dark; the tank bears the official name of the bike, but on the mudguard is written ‘Positively 4th Street’, along with what appears to be, at first glance, stylistic graffiti tags, but which, on closer inspection, read ‘Destiny Cycles’.

On a motorcycle of such complexity and quality, it is virtually impossible to detail everything, or to convey the huge amount of work involved – the fuel tank cannibalised, modified and reconstructed from one that was lying around in the workshop, the rear lights integrated into the brake caliper, the gear linkage that would stand as a work of art on its own, and so on… With the exception of the engine and gearbox, wheels and brakes (as with War Horse, supplied by Big-B), it’s simpler to write ‘one-off’ for almost everything else, and there can be few people now who are not aware that ‘one-off by Destiny Cycles’ means something a bit special.

One of the few parts not fabricated by Vic is the Simpson Detour ‘North Star’ headlight, which could be described as ‘one-down’ rather than ‘one-off’. Having picked up the headlight three years previously, Vic and Lin had kept it safe all that time. Then, the day before the Bulldog Bash, as it was being fitted, it was dropped by someone who shall remain nameless … okay, it was Derek… Derek is the gentleman who is unofficially the third member of Destiny Cycles, but for a few seconds he was in danger of becoming ‘the gentleman who is buried in a shallow grave under the workshop floor’. But he was so mortified that all Vic could do was laugh, before beating the dent out with a hammer. Has Derek ever been allowed to forget it? Has he hell!

After Manhattan it’s difficult to imagine where Vic will go next, but then again I’ve said the same thing after each of the last four Destiny Cycles’ bikes. Yet, despite now being in my opinion the finest – and certainly the most innovative – custom bike builder this country has produced in the last thirty years, he hasn’t changed from the bloke with a gooseneck-framed GSX trike who I first met at the Farmyard Party almost a decade ago. While he takes his work very seriously, he builds and rides his own bikes for the sheer joy of it. Although Manhattan will undoubtedly pick up its share of accolades (and has done so already, winning outright both the Bulldog Bash Custom Show and the NEC’s Custom Xtreme last year), winning anything at all is just the icing on the cake, and is never taken for granted. Vic