Motor Couture

Am I obsessive? Yes, totally,” admits Ian Barry, the Los Angelesbased designer and engineering mastermind behind the fabled Falcon Ten, a series of painstakingly constructed motorcycles that has created an international media frenzy. “I once worked 48 hours straight without sleep. When I get a spark of inspiration, I can’t stop or I’ll be miserable.”

This month, Barry will reveal The White— his just-completed fourth Falcon motorcycle. “There is never going to be another bike like this on the planet,” he says. “We built everything around the engine”—a rare 1967 Velocette— “and every component is designed, engineered, and handmade, including the suspension. Every detail at its most minute and expansive has been considered.” Each of Barry’s bikes requires thousands of hours of work; The White took more than two years to complete.

To Barry, a finished Falcon motorcycle must not only be an engineering feat but also evoke a living, breathing creature with “animal musculature”—a sort of mad-scientist half-beast, half-machine approach that has proved an intoxicating formula to collectors: the first three bikes sold even before completion. With an object this preciously constructed, one has to wonder: Is it a motorcycle or is it art—meant to be admired, but never touched? “No—they’re hyper-functional,” promises Barry, who tests each one for six months before selling it. Not only that, “I give the engines more horsepower; The White’s was increased from 500 c.c.’s to 000 c.c.’s”—which should add just the right amount of James Dean badassness. (The White’s price is available upon request; inquire at Hollywood’s Michael Kohn Gallery.)

LESLEY M. M. BLUME