One of the shortest books in the world must surely be the history of French motorcycle manufacturing with few notable entries from Peugeot, Sherco and Voxan.
Now there is a new chapter being added by Avinton Motorcycles who will start exporting their bikes to Australia, New Zealand, Asia and North America in mid 2014.
The new French motorcycle manufacture is the vision of company president Cédric Klein.
“As far as I’m concerned, motorcycles and mechanics seduced me at a very young age, and the flame never flickered. The passion continues to become stronger as the years go by. After a long period of pondering the direction of the motorcycle industry, I wanted to take my passion to another level, and finally created this line of devilishly sexy motorcycles,” Klein humbly states.
“Avinton will bring back the concept of the gentleman rider and even go further to sculpt the idea into a new type of motorcycle culture.”
The muscle bikes are visually and dynamically inspired by the late Carroll Shelby’s famous AC Cobra race cars from the compact body with a high power-to-weight ratio, right down to the GT stripes.
These gentlemen’s bikes are powered by a Keihin carby-fed 1647cc S&S V-twin engine with 90kW of power and 168Nm of torque, a five-speed Andrews gearbox and aluminium or carbonfibre where a lot of bikes use plastic.
“It breaks my heart to see plastic pieces replace those that were once made of metal,” says Klein.
“The idea of sacrificing quality in hopes of slashing prices takes away the motorcycle’s natural nobility, as if the object itself is no longer of importance.”
About 300 Avinton bikes a year are handmade by five craftsmen in the village of Sommières, near Montpellier, in the south of France.
So, although they may not weigh much, expect a hefty price tag ranging from about $40,000 to $65,000, plus duty and shipping costs.
There are three models, the Roadster muscle bike, the GT cafe racer and Race superbike with six different finishes; Collector, Vintage, Deluxe, Grand Sport, Super Snake and Cult.
Avinton allows customers to pick and choose from a range of expensive and exclusive options so that each bike is different.
All bikes come with a two-year parts and labour warranty.
Marketing manager Stéphane Devaux says they have received “a lot of requests” from Australia and New Zealand.
“But for the present time, we haven’t taken any order, because we have found an official importer for all the Asia/Pacific area (including Australia and New Zealand) and we prefer to wait for his official establishment to sell our bikes,” he says.
“These two countries should be open in just one year. He has to open before some other countries like Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia.
“The Avinton Muscle-bikes should be available on the US market in less than one year because it’s a lot of job to find the different dealers and to organize a national launch.”