Director David Lancaster with his Vincent

SPEED IS EXPENSIVE
Directed by David Lancaster
Certificate: PG
☆☆☆

GONZO journalist and motorbike nut Hunter S Thompson raved on about a motorcycle built by a British firm Vincent.

While he wrote extensively about Harleys and “chopped hogs”, drove Enfields and Nortons and BSAs, followed the Hell’s Angels about and put them in all their grease-stained glory into a book, he always hankered after owning a Vincent.

Other high-profile fans felt and feel the same – Brad Pitt and Ryan Reynolds proudly zoom around on them – and in today’s market, you can pick up a Vincent at an auction for £1m, if you should so wish.

The man who designed and built these incredibly fast machines, Philip Vincent, changed the world of two-wheeled petrol propulsion, but he died in anonymity in a west London council flat in 1979.

Director David Lancaster brings this story of a 20th-century engineering genius to life using an array of home video footage from the Vincent family, old news reels that celebrated the bikes performances at races such as the Isle of Man TTs, and from those who knew him.

It builds up a picture of a peculiarly British inventor – cut from the same cloth as the likes of Barnes Wallis – and follows his firm’s rise to making the fastest bikes in the world during the 1940s and 1950s, to the firm’s decline.

The story begins in the 1920s. We learn Vincent came from a privileged background. A Harrow schoolboy, he went to Cambridge to study engineering. He was fascinated with motorbikes from childhood, and enjoyed the tales of the derring-do of a First World War fighter pilot HR Davies, who also happened to design his own rides.

At Cambridge he sent more time building motorbikes than going to lectures and was asked to leave.

His father said – OK, let’s build motorbikes ourselves. They sold a farm in Argentina for £450 and, aged 19, Philip became the owner of a motorcycle.

Talking heads tell us of how Vincent had a vision of unique re-designs that worked. Lawrence of Arabia became a fan. The film puts his work into context, and explains his impact, as well as the world that created him.

The film cites JB Priestley’s seminal book, An English Journey, written in 1933, we are told how motorbikes caught the imagination of young men,who were known as Promenade Percies. Style and performance were everything for them, and as this film shows, Vincent had tankfuls of both.