{"id":6666,"date":"2018-01-12T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-01-12T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hotbike.local\/basic_content\/dron-mk-i-buell-concept-bike-from-archives\/"},"modified":"2022-01-02T17:41:35","modified_gmt":"2022-01-02T17:41:35","slug":"dron-mk-i-buell-concept-bike-from-archives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hotbike.com\/dron-mk-i-buell-concept-bike-from-archives\/","title":{"rendered":"The Dron Mk. I Buell Concept Bike"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Bob Dron was a man on a mission. His goal was to create something new and fresh with the Buell S1 Lightning. Enter this concept known as Dron Mk. I Buell.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Jeff Allen<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

This article was originally published in the April-May 1998 issue of Cycle World’s Big Twin magazine.<\/em><\/p>\n

B<\/span>eauty, as they say, is in the eye of the beholder. And if the person doing the beholding happens to be a mechanical engineer, beauty may well be found in the way the object works rather than in the way it looks.<\/p>\n

To a large extent, that describes Erik Buell and the H-D Sportster<\/a>-powered motorcycles he builds under his name. Buell the motorcycle-company owner (in partnership with The Motor Company) is an engineer\u2019s engineer, a man who dreams and designs things that work wonderfully first, and are wonderfully stylish second. As a result, Buell motorcycles tend to have a certain look that many gearheads find appealing but that often falls a bit short in the eyes of those who value form over function.<\/p>\n

Bob Dron set out to change all that with a visually striking machine he calls the Dron Mk. I Buell concept bike.<\/p>\n

A couple of years ago, Dron\u2014owner of Oakland Harley-Davidson<\/a> and the Bob Dron Design Center, both in Oakland, California\u2014discussed some of his styling ideas with Erik Buell. Buell was impressed, enough so to send Dron a new S1 Lightning as a testbed, and to give him a free hand to come up with something new and fresh.<\/p>\n

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With that mission in mind, Dron drew upon the talents of Steve Moal, owner of Moal\u2019s Automotive Body and Dron\u2019s partner in a few other motorcycle and hot-rod projects. Their first criterion was that the base motorcycle had to remain untouched: no frame cutting, no raking, no chopping, and for God\u2019s sake, no lowering. And because this was to be solely an exercise in styling, the engine was left stock.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThis was a very difficult job in terms of styling,\u201d says the effusive Moal, \u201cbecause how do you create a sportbike without making it look like a Japanese motorcycle and still put a little different twist on it? All those oriental bikes have been done beautifully, by the way, but we tried not to be overly influenced by them. We also wanted our Buell to look aggressive because it truly is an aggressive motorcycle.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Though the engine and all the other mechanicals are stone-stock, touches on the bodywork like the dramatic Ferrari Testarossa-like fin treatments add not only to the look but the function as well. They are actually a means by which to anchor the fairing to the bike while providing a more aerodynamic look.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Jeff Allen<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

If a few long-time roadrace fans see something vaguely familiar in the Mk. I\u2019s styling, blame it on Irishman Jimmy Kilroy, Moal\u2019s chief fabricator. Kilroy has a soft spot in his heart for the dustbin-type full fairings used on some British roadrace bikes of the post-war era, and that influence is apparent on the Mk. I. Look closely, especially where the windshield meets metal, and you\u2019ll see some of those classic Anglo-Saxon lines at work. The wind\u00adshield itself is a three-piece design intended to break up the frontal area and prevent a massive appearance.<\/p>\n

Throughout the entire process of creating the bodywork, there never were any sketches of what the end result should look like; Moal and Kilroy just started bending aluminum around the bike, adding onto what they had created just an hour or two before. \u201cOnce you start building this stuff,\u201d says Moal, \u201cthe next thing to be done is obvious.\u201d<\/p>\n

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What became more and more obvious to the design team was that they needed to give the blocky Buell<\/a> a longer, sleeker profile. \u201cThe Buell has sort of a dirtbike look,\u201d says Moal, \u201cand it looks like it has a much higher center of gravity than it actually does. Be\u00adsides that, it\u2019s a short motorcycle. So, we tried to bring all of that into some sort of visual balance and give it a pleasing look. That was a tough job, probably tougher than with any bike we\u2019ve done before.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the more dramatic aspects of the bodywork is the Ferrari Testarossa-like fin treatment amidships. Although the fins look entirely cosmetic, they\u2019re actually a means by which to anchor the fairing to the bike while providing a more aerodynamic look.<\/p>\n

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Moal is equally proud of the tiny gills up front, behind the wheel. They\u2019re not just flat pieces; they\u2019re teardrop-shaped in their cross-section, much like a shark fin, and they exist to fill the gap between the wheel and the motor. \u201cWhen we finished the front of the body, the thing was looking kind of straight and sawed off on the bottom,\u201d says Moal, \u201cso we put those little fish gills in there. I think they look really cool. But to appreciate them, you\u2019ve almost got to feel them.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Dron’s swoopy bodywork, combined with Steve Faraone’s spectacular paint treatment, embues the S1 Lightning with a new and electrifying personality.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Jeff Allen<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

When fabricating the individual pieces for this bike, Moal and Kilroy maintained an almost fanatical reverence for continuity of line. That\u2019s why the front fender aligns with the fairing, which accentuates the gas tank, which flows down into the center cowling and rear fender. But the one design element that pulls everything together is the brilliant graphic treatment created and applied by master painter Steve Faraone. As you scrutinize the almost perfect alignment of the stripes and checkers, do so with the knowledge that Faraone never saw all the pieces assembled on the bike before he painted them. He merely laid them on the floor, eyeballed the alignment and started spraying.<\/p>\n

Moal was blown away by Faraone\u2019s work. \u201cI think the paint job is a knockout. When we first saw at it, we all said, \u2018Man, this guy did us some favors. He made our work look really good.\u2019 Faraone took our design to a higher level.\u201d<\/p>\n

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After the work was completed, the result was shown to the Buell people, who, for some inexplicable reason, had lost all interest in the project. So, Dron removed the Mk. I bodywork from the borrowed S1 and shipped the stock bike back to Buell. He then mounted those pieces on an S1 White Lightning from his inventory and put it on display at his dealership.<\/p>\n

So, then, will Bob Dron ever make Mk. I kits available? Perhaps, if there\u2019s enough demand for them. But for now, this styling exercise remains a concept that exists merely to raise the ante of the customizing art.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bob Dron was a man on a mission. His goal was to create something new and fresh with the Buell S1 Lightning. Enter this concept known as Dron Mk. I Buell. Jeff Allen This article was originally published in the April-May 1998 issue of Cycle World’s Big Twin magazine. Beauty, as they say, is in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":45456,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5043],"tags":[4646,2508,970,13,4,4168],"motorcycle_parts":[],"motorcycle_models":[],"motorcycle_builders":[],"motorcycle_gear":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hotbike.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6666"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hotbike.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hotbike.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hotbike.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hotbike.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6666"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hotbike.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6666\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hotbike.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hotbike.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hotbike.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hotbike.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6666"},{"taxonomy":"motorcycle_parts","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hotbike.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/motorcycle_parts?post=6666"},{"taxonomy":"motorcycle_models","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hotbike.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/motorcycle_models?post=6666"},{"taxonomy":"motorcycle_builders","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hotbike.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/motorcycle_builders?post=6666"},{"taxonomy":"motorcycle_gear","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hotbike.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/motorcycle_gear?post=6666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}