EGLI-VINCENT, BY GODET
Adieu, Patrick. Alan Cathcart marks the anniversary of the passing of Patrick Godet by riding one of his bikes considerably rapidly. Any excuse to ride an Egli-Vincent…
Adieu, Patrick. Alan Cathcart marks the anniversary of the passing of Patrick Godet by riding one of his bikes considerably rapidly. Any excuse to ride an Egli-Vincent…
It’s already ironic that safety-minded Switzerland should have produced the kind of motorcycle that in the past half-century has conceivably brought more fun on two wheels to more people than any other. That’s the Big Twin cafe racer, which Fritz Egli invented back in 1965 by building the first of the Egli-Vincent 998cc V-twins. It’s even more improbable that, for the past 40 years, the most dedicated and capable restorer and recreator of Vincent motorcycles, as well as the most successful Vincent exponent in topline Classic racing, should not be an Englishman, but a ‘bloody Frog’. Using that term denotes no sense of chauvinism (though, of course, Monsieur Chauvin was indeed, erm… French), for that’s what the late Patrick Godet, French Vincent expert par excellence, always called himself!
Patrick Frog passed away suddenly last November, aged 67, at his home in the Normandy countryside north of Rouen, and his loss will be keenly felt by Vincent owners and enthusiasts all over the world, as well as by his many friends in the Classic racing scene. Lots of them used the vast array of high quality Godet Motorcycles parts to restore or maintain their original Vincents, while others were fortunate to own one of the 280 superbly constructed Egli-Vincent V-twins produced by Godet Motorcycles over the past 25 years, with
the approval of Fritz Egli himself. During that time, Patrick Godet produced the only officially recognised Egli-Vincent re-creations, one of which Fritz Egli, now aged 81, himself acquired, and thanks to the electric starter installed on all such Godet-built bikes, still rides today.
Patrick Godet purchased his first Vincent in 1974 at the age of 22, a Black Shadow. ‘I saw a couple of British registered Rapides in Rouen with Vincent Owners Club badges carrying all the gear for touring, and I thought – that’s the bike I want,’ Patrick once told me. ‘So when I got back from doing National Service with the Army I went looking for one, and although for a very short period I first had a Norvin café racer, that was very unreliable, then I found a Black Shadow. So I was involved with Vincent from 1974 onwards.’
Owning, riding and maintaining the Black Shadow led Patrick to become totally smitten with the British marque, and rather than go back to working for his Dad’s large trucking company, he used his saved-up military pay to establish a restoration and tuning business concentrating on Vincents, which he also raced successfully himself in the early days of French Historic racing. With the proceeds from this he bought a Black Prince, and as the founder of the French section of the Vincent OC, Godet used this and the Black Shadow on the road for many years, the latter clocking up over 100,000km with a Precision sidecar attached in attending VOC rallies all over Europe.
After a topsy-turvy business career which saw him restoring cars for a living with Vincents just a sideline, in 1994 Patrick restarted his motorcycle business, originally focusing exclusively on making Vincents live again. He tracked down several bikes in Argentina, where thanks to Phillip Vincent’s father being a well-connected rancher there, his son’s company had exported many hundreds of bikes post-WW2. After various ups and downs, Patrick’s long hours of hard work eventually paid off in 2006, when he formed Godet Motorcycles in partnership with one of his customers, legendary French singer Florent Pagny, a younger version of Charles Aznavour with a collection of 40 Triumphs and half a dozen Vincents in his garage, many of which he rides regularly.
After expanding into a new 600m² factory at Malaunay, just outside Rouen, with a six-man workforce including his long-time helper Bruno Leroy, the only French rider to win a race on the Isle of Man TT Course,
Patrick’s fanatical attention to detail and dedicated enthusiasm in satisfying his customers brought him business from all around the globe – many of them for brandnew Egli-Vincent café racers.
Godet’s Egli connection dated back to 1995, when he constructed the first half-dozen replicas of the bike which had originally invented Big Twin café racing. The supply of replica parts which he’d commissioned for his many Vincent restorations meant that, when Patrick decided to start recreating brand-new EgliVincent café racers, he already had a pretty good platform for doing so.
‘I had several original Egli frames, one of which I used to make a jig to replicate them,’ Patrick told me. ‘ To begin with, I didn’t think it’d be as popular as the original British-built Vincents – but after I’d built a dozen or so, and the orders kept coming in, I decided I had to obtain Fritz Egli’s approval for what I was doing – it just seemed right to do so.
‘So I went to see him in Switzerland, to show him what I was making. He was really complimentary, and gave me exclusive permission to use his name on the bikes, because he said I was building them better than he used to himself! He even refused to accept me paying him a royalty on each bike – he said I couldn’t possibly make enough profit to do so! But it means that since then we are the only company in the world licensed to build genuine Egli-Vincents – there are other people claiming to do this, but they’re not the genuine article like ours, and Fritz confirms they don’t have the right to call them Egli-Vincents.’
Godet’s replica of the distinctive Egli spine frame saw its central tube, which doubled as the oil tank, made from cold drawn steel, but with Reynolds 531 chrome-moly hangers
embracing an engine acting as a fully stressed chassis member. This was a period motorcycle hand-built out of modern components, which succeeded in the tantalisingly difficult objective of matching the spirit of the past with the function of the present. Well, just so long as you gave that meaty 230mm 4LS replica Fontana front drum brake a good squeeze before you started exploring the limits of the Egli’s braking potential. Oh, and take account of the rangy steering geometry’s kicked-out 28-degree head angle, and the lazy but stable feel of the 19-inch front wheel, before you try to change direction too fast. Or… but hang on: the whole point of a bike like the Godetbuilt Egli is not that it should be compared to modern sportbikes, but that it provides period-style riding pleasure in complete safety, and with added convenience. And that it’ll get you home again at the end of the day, with none of the irritating but inevitable inconveniences that can befall even the most carefully
restored classic bike. It’s a
Modern Classic in all senses of the term.
That’s thanks to the finely engineered pushrod ohv 50-degree V-twin Vincent engine, a power unit assembled by Godet Motorcycles using 100% new parts commissioned from top-level suppliers around the world. Originally, Patrick built these as faithful replicas of a 1950s Black Shadow-spec Vincent 998cc engine – but then he went large, and the bored and stroked 1329cc version of the V-twin motor powering Florent Pagny’s own personal Egli-Vincent café racer gives much more performance, as well as an easier ride in modern traffic conditions.
To create this uprated 92 x 100mm 1329cc version of the traditional 84 x 90mm 998cc Vincent motor, Godet cast new crankcases with a wider cylinder stud spacing for the bigger bore, and on Pagny’s bike as well as others, made these in magnesium, for a massive 14kg weight saving over aluminium cases. This allows the complete bike to scale 164kg with oil, but no fuel – a 9% weight saving compared to the 178kg aluminium version.
The forged Wossner pistons, made in Germany and running in Nikasil chrome bores, are mounted on new-type JPX conrods and a crankshaft assembly incorporating an INA big end, and give a slightly higher 8.4:1 compression via a reshaped combustion chamber with greater squish. The new cylinder heads are fitted with oversize G&S steel valves – two per cylinder, of course – running in seats and guides whose modern material allows the use of unleaded fuel. Even with exhaust valves that are actually smaller than original, the soup-plate sized 49mm inlet valves dictate the use of offset 10mm spark plugs fired by a Hall-effect Grosset electronic CDI with mechanical advance, have uprated springs, and are fed by a pair of 36mm Mikuni VM carbs, rather than the 30mm Amal Concentrics of the one-litre bikes. The net result is a considerably enhanced output of 88bhp at the crank at 5300rpm – around 20bhp more than the smaller engine, and with much greater grunt, too, of course.
I could exploit the 87ft-lb of torque peaking at just 3000rpm to save gearchanges on such a tight circuit as Carole – though the five-speed transmission Godet had developed for the engine shifts sweetly. Florent’s 1330 Café Racer is geared for speeds in excess 140mph, so I only got a true fourth gear at Carole on this long-legged modern classic…
Stopping the Egli-Vincent test bike from those speeds is a task entrusted on the Pagny motorcycle to an oversize version of the drum brake package fitted to the original Eglis, now featuring a replica 230mm Fontana 4LS front (210mm originally) and seven-inch Vincent 2LS rear, with the Ceriani 35mm tele forks matched by twin British-made Maxton rear shocks that are adjustable only for preload. That large front brake worked OK at slow speeds without grabbing, thanks to a careful choice of tipped linings which heated up quite fast. This meant I didn’t need to squeeze the lever as hard as on other Godet-built Eglis I’ve ridden with the smaller front brake, in order to get the bike to stop remotely quickly from high speed. The extra security of the larger Fontana drum is welcome, albeit at the expense of a slight increase in unsprung weight and heavier steering. The rear twin leading-shoe Vincent brake also worked quite well, especially for correcting corner entry speed via a brief brush of your toe on the foot lever.
The French-built frame’s swinging arm features the same distinctive semi-elliptical tubing as the original Egli chassis, and the fivespeed gearbox features triplex chain primary drive, just as back then. The timing gears, rear hub assemblies and many other smaller components, were manufactured for Godet by the engineering company run by today’s British owner of the global Vincent trademark David Holder, another admirer, and supporter, of Patrick Godet’s work. Modern updates are provided by the French-made Alton alternator, a multiplate dry clutch with Kevlar friction plates – and praise be, an electric start!
Best to own up now that I, too, had a Vincent, once – but I got better the day I sold it, which was also the one and only time I ever persuaded it to start first kick, when the guy who wound up buying it came to inspect it. Hallelujah! That early-50s V-twin Rapide was frustratingly headstrong and self-willed, with all the potential for terminal handling problems that the Vincent Girdraulic fork offered with a shock that was not justso. But my Vincent kept offering tantalising glimpses of the performance utopia which the Stevenage factory’s V-twin family represented by the standards of the era – a nirvana which couldn’t be reliably accessed until the 60s advent of the Egli frame, which the Godet reproductions made even more user-friendly.
The chance to enjoy lapping the Carole track aboard Florent’s beautiful 1330 Café Racer re-introduced me to a Vincent done right, with its nicely run-in engine showing 3578km on the big Smiths speedo which dominates the view from the bridge. Just as on the Godet-built 998cc Egli Café Racer I’d tested some years earlier, there was no need to grope around with my right leg for the kickstart lever while balancing the bike on my left foot, hoping to get enough of a swing to persuade it to light up from cold – because there isn’t one. A kickstart, that is.
Instead, Godet had grafted a French-made electric start to the rear of the V-twin ohv engine – a mechanical convenience that’s hard to overstate. However, there’s enough drag from the multiplate dry clutch fitted
– to replace the oil-bath unit on previous examples – to prevent you starting the Vincent in gear if you fail to find neutral when stationary. This is difficult to select at rest, so the trick is to find it as you coast to a halt, rather than hold the light-action clutch lever in while stopped.
As soon as it lights up, the 50º V-twin engine settles down to a quiet 1000rpm idle – with relatively little mechanical noise despite the pushrod valvegear, which makes subdued and barely noticeable clicks and rattles. On this bike Godet had switched from the full-electronic Boyer Bransden CDI ignition he previously used, which wouldn’t maintain the correct ignition timing over an extended period of use. This caused it to backfire after some mileage, and to kick back through the electric start – thus destroying it! Instead, he’d fitted a Hall-effect CDI with mechanical advance, and the result is a smooth, refined-seeming motor, with very little vibration, even at higher revs.
I got the impression this was an engine on which lots of attention had been lavished to make sure that every clearance was just right, every adjustment just so – as you might expect, for this was the bike with which Godet Motorcycles secured Euro 3 compliance for its range.
At the same time the Vincent motor sounded poised for action, thanks to the muscular offbeat crack issuing through the gracefully curved 2-1 exhaust’s single silencer, and the fruity suck from the twin Mikunis when you twist the wrist, thanks to the use of two front Vincent cylinder heads on the engine, to ensure both carbs are the same (left) side, XR750 Harley-style.
Pausing only to take in the undeniable presence of that massive trademark five-inch 150mph Smiths speedo parked right in front of your
eyes, the smaller 8000rpm Chronometric rev-counter beside it on the right, and the Monza cap for the oil tank which comprises the frame’s central spine parked just j in front of the matching fuel filler, reach for the one-up o gear lever with your right foot, and try hard to ease e it into bottom gear without crunching it – which is i difficult, if not impossible, at rest. There’s no way to do d it smoothly, agreed Florent, after I apologised for graunching g the transmission in front of him! Ease out t he very light-action clutch, and the meaty Vincent engine e lives fully up to expectations by the prodigious a mount of torque on hand from very low revs - barely off o idle, in fact, so it pulls smartly away from under 1 500rpm. Indeed, it’s so tractable you can maximise ac cceleration simply by cracking the throttle wide open as s soon as you’re on the move – no need to slip the cl utch to coax it into the powerband.
And that acceleration is really impressive – the 1330 Café Racer R is a living reminder that there ain’t no substitute for cubes! You can treat the Egli-Vincent as a thoroughly modern motorcycle, with no allowances to be made for its period ancestry. That’s because this is indeed a practical mile-eater – it feels very modern in concept and especially in execution. Fit a set of small disc brakes, and you’d have a 21st century motorcycle in period drag – but one that’s more than able to live with modern traffic conditions, as I’ve experienced on previous Egli-Vincent rides. It’ll run unfussedly along in third gear to go with the flow, before you just wind the throttle wide open when a gap appears, and the Egli lunges forward as you surf those waves of torque.
Having built up speed, the Egli-Vincent is also incredibly long-legged. There’s a much more relaxed gait to it than to a modern V-twin – even a Ducati or Moto Guzzi with their lazy-sounding 90-degree engines – and it certainly feels to have greater reserves of torque than the heavier modern Italian bikes. As stated, the Egli’s uprated 1330 motor has superbly meaty grunt, helping it accelerate very impressively from way low – it pulls wide open from as low as 1500rpm, with zero transmission snatch. Changing up at 5000rpm leaves you still fat in the powerband, and there’s relatively little vibration at higher engine speeds from what is obviously an extremely well-balanced engine.
It’s really unnecessary to rev it right out to the 5500rpm rev limit, just to ride that torque curve and focus on getting it into top gear via a change made sweeter than before via needle roller gear shafts, so you can play the throttle to deliver performance to go. 80mph on the big speedo equates to just 3000rpm on the typically jerky-action Smiths tacho, so what we have here is a genuine classic-era mile-eater, that’s enjoyable to ride hard and long. Well… once I try to forget I’m riding a €60,000+ motorcycle, which its watching singing star owner has to ride home after I’ve finished playing with it. So no pressure, then…
The stretched-out riding position is actually quite comfortable, with ultra-rearset footrests delivering a semi-reclining, wind-cheating stance, and the clip-on handlebars set just right for good control. And in spite of minimal padding, the seat seemed comfortable, too.
The 35mm Ceriani forks and that raked out chassis geometry deliver lazy but predictable steering. Even over the Carole circuit’s few bumps taken at speed the bike didn’t display a trace of the front-end foxtrot that Girdraulics will spring on you when you least expect it. The Egli frame felt firm and well-balanced to ride, if not exactly agile by modern standards, just solid, with well set-up suspension whose twin-shock rear end offered excellent compliance, especially in the context of the era the bike was designed in. It’s a sign of how well-sorted the chassis geometry is that it doesn’t need a steering damper, and never once flapped its head despite being given every opportunity to do so at Carole.
The handling of this Egli-Vincent and other Godet-built bikes I’ve ridden on the street reminded me a lot of the green-frame 750SS Ducati I’ve had in my garage for the past 40+ years, which was of course the Italian firm’s take on the Egli-Vincent café racer concept. Same rangy steering geometry (though thanks to its 50º V-twin motor, the Egli has a shorter 1445mm wheelbase than the 90º Latin lovely’s 1500mm stance), same planted feel to the handling, same spacious riding position, same slim, cobby stance to the bike as a whole, and same offbeat lilt to the engine note – only an even lazier gait.
Compared with what back in the 1940s/50s was the established order represented by British parallel-twins, this was a new generation of sporting motorcycle – one that eventually led to the Ducati V-twins’ later dominance of World Superbike racing. This EgliVincent was the prototype for those bikes’ format.
So, in more than just a single way, the importance of what Patrick Godet did before his sad passing deserves to be recognised. On one level, he built the ultimate replica – one praised by the man who created the original it’s copied from as being equal to or better than anything he made himself. In that way, he kept an important piece of motorcycle history alive and well for today’s enthusiasts to appreciate – if they could afford what was an undeniably, if inevitably, costly entry ticket to the Godet-Egli owners club.
Patrick also provided a reminder of the excellence of what many will say is, within the context of its era, the finest British motorcycle engine ever built, for those who never sampled it in its heyday to appreciate and enjoy in the 21st century. And finally, he recreated a key model of a bygone world, which was a vital ingredient in the evolution of today’s superbikes. Yesterday once more – but with a practical classic. Though Florent Pagny intends to continue running Godet Motorcycles, it’s uncertain whether that will extend to building any more Egli-Vincents – leaving the 280 such bikes built as a suitable memorial to Patrick’s genius.
My day at Carole riding the Egli-Vincent ended with Florent donning his helmet to ride the bike home in the Paris rush hour traffic, bidding farewell to a relieved as well as grateful yours truly for having been able to cover 25 laps of the Paris circuit before handing the keys back to the fortunate owner of such a beautiful and impressive bike. But sadly it was the last time that I’d see Patrick Frog, and our handshake before
I set off for Calais on the drive home was adieu, not au revoir. The best tribute that I can pay to my friend of 35 years is to own up to the fact that every time I’ve ever seen one of his gorgeous, exquisitely-engineered bikes, I’ve desperately wanted to ride it. And that afternoon at Carole, I did… Godspeed, Patrick.