MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION
OUTBACK South Australia is home to salt racing and one of the fastest Vincents ever built, Mal Hewett’s 185mph Land Speed Special. Just shy of 300km/h in the new money, it’s a phenomenal speed for any naturally aspirated OHV V-twin, let alone one that’s 70 years old, so it’s no surprise it didn’t happen overnight.
Mal got his introduction to Vincents as a young Triumph-riding apprentice through the pages of Classic Bike magazine in the early 1980s. “The more I read, the more I was fascinated with them,” he says. “They had a lot of mystique and I thought they looked fantastic. And they were said to be fast, well, the fastest in their day, and I liked that even more.
“THE VINCENT MOTOR IS SUCH A
