American Excellence

Few series-production motorcycles ever made have achieved such mythical status – especially among American vintage enthusiasts – as the V-twin Crocker, of which up to 110 examples were built in Los Angeles, California between 1936 and 1942, each one unique. The fact that Albert G. Crocker, their creator, was notorious for not numbering his products consecutively not only means that nobody is exactly sure how many bikes altogether he ended up making, but also gives a hint of the kind of man he was.

Rather than concentrate on paperwork and focus on filling in registration forms or company records correctly, Al Crocker had a single-minded intent to create the fastest, the lightest, the most powerful and the most sophisticated street motorcycles that money could then buy. Unfortunately, this was an ambition which ultimately proved inconsistent with making a profit, thanks to his insistence on using high quality materials and components worthy of a single-minded racebike. While forced to compete on price with the much larger Harley-Davidson and Indian companies, Crocker suffered a crippling loss on every machine sold, even though each of his bikes was supplied directly to the customer, thus avoiding having to add in a dealer margin to the already high cost.

This meant that manufacture of the motorcycles bearing his name was subsidised by the profits of the high-tech machine shop in which the Crocker bike factory was housed. When America entered the war in 1941 after Pearl Harbor, and Crocker turned his business over to supporting the war effort, it no longer left room for him to continue building bikes of such uncompromising specification. Crocker V-twins were very expensive to buy, and also to make – but the payoff was a level of performance that riders of rival machines, mostly inferior Depressionera sidevalve models of greater capacity, but built for robustness rather than performance – could only dream of.

Crocker offered a refund to any owner who lost a race to an Indian or