By Bill Hoddinott

---

Russell, 74, and his wife Elaine live in comfortable retirement today in Queensland, Australia.  Mike Stanton of the Speed Record Club in England recently put your scribe in touch with them.  It is a privilege, as a lifelong Vincent owner myself, to bring you this story!

Bill: Russell, thank you so much for agreeing to this interview. Everyone in the world Vincent movement has always looked up to you and Bob Burns for your tremendous achievements back in the '50s.

Russell: Thanks, Bill, it's good of you to say so.  Bob and I had a lot of fun in those times.  He has already passed, and it was in his will that his ashes were to be scattered up at the memorial that was placed at the site on the Tram Road in New Zealand to commemorate those records.  I have it in my own will to have the same done with mine!

Bill: While we've got this chance, I'd like to go over your whole life, for the record.  When and where were you born?

Russell: Invercargill, New Zealand in 1929.  My father was Charles Herbert Wright and my mother Isabelle Wright.  I was the eldest of three boys and a girl.

Bill: What do you remember growing up?

Russell: My dad supported his family with a small business devoted to delivering bread, mail and supplies daily to the farmers in the rural area around the town, which is located in the south of NZ.  We never saw that much of dad, because he had to get up at 3AM and go to work, and slept part of the day.  I remember the first money I made, as a lad of ten.  I had two pet ferrets I would carry in a sack on my back, and cycle out into the country to catch rabbits.  Rabbits were a plague in NZ and Australia in that day, but easy to catch with ferrets and nets. And there was a market for their meat and pelts.  I remember getting eight pounds for my first 100 winter pelts.

Bill: When did you start motorcycling?

Russell: At ten, with that first rabbit money, and some help from my mom, I got a little James two-stroke.  My dad had a great dislike of motorcycles, and wanted nothing to do with it.  I was apprenticed to a carpenter at 15, and by 17 got interested in motorcycle racing.  There was a lot of motorcycle sport in NZ right after WW II.  But you know, I never had any inclination to ride a bike on the road, then or ever. After the World Records, I liked to trail-ride for years, though.  Bob Burns, on the other hand, did like a road bike, always had one.  He had quite a bad accident in his 70s; but recovered, and lived right up to, I
think, 82.

Anyway, once I started racing I jumped into it all the way; built my own racer with a JAP Speedway racing engine in an old Triumph frame.  I won the NZ Hillclimbing Championship on this bike.  In '48 I also bought a new 500cc AJS single to race.  I was working all week as a carpenter, and every weekend in the season out at some track.  I did grasstrack, beach racing, speedway, and hillclimbs.  My very first year I came third in the NZ grasstrack championship.

Bill: None of those forms of racing are well-known in America, would you describe them a little?

Russell: Sure; grasstrack is an oval track marked out on a smooth field with grass cut short, maybe a half mile or whatever's convenient.  A number of laps of it makes a race.  Beach racing as then done was a course laid out with maybe two marker flags a mile apart on a hard beach.  Four or five laps of this made a race.  Speedway was a quarter-mile oval on clay, here again you race by engine sizes and perhaps a sidecar class for big engines like Vincent twins.  Hillclimbs were maybe a mile, mile and a half up somebody's private gravel road. You got timed for bottom to top, and tried to stay up on the hump of the
road.  So you see I was mad about racing in those days!

Bill: How did you come to partner with Bob Burns?

Russell: It happened that I became friends with long-time racing man Bert Munro, known in America for his Bonneville Indian streamliner. Bert held the NZ National Motorcycle Speed Record at the time at about 139 mph with that bike.  By the age of 20, my apprenticeship completed, I had a partner and we were building houses on our own account, you see. In mid-'52 I got the idea of buying a new Vincent Black Lightning for the purpose of taking Bert's NZ record.  I did place the order, with my
local dealer(not a Vincent dealer, by the way), Rupert Tall Motor Cycles.  Rupe put it with the NZ Vincent distributor in Auckland, and it made its way to the Vincent company in Stevenage, Herts, England.

After about a year, finally Vincent delivered to me the Black Lightning they had displayed at the Earls Court Show in London.  This was mid-'53 by now.  It was a dead standard Lightning with 13 to 1 pistons for methanol fuel, two front heads with 32mm Amal T.T. carburetors.  But being a Show Model all the steel parts normally cadmium-plated were finished in chromium, and the paintwork and so forth were extra nice.

Bill: Well, Russell, let me interrupt here to ask you how in the world you could manage to buy a very expensive new Black Lightning at such a young age?  At that point in my own life, I hadn't two shekels to rub together!

Russell: Trade conditions were very favorable and my partner and I were making very good money building houses. I saved my money, didn't drink or smoke, or throw it away.  Single-minded racing lad, you see!  The bike cost about 600 NZ pounds.

So anyway, after a little familiarization on this beautiful new bike, riding it around, and trying it out on a hard beach(where, incidentally, I got a speed-wobble over a hundred and almost lost my brand-new beauty there and then!), I entered it for a speed trial early in '54.

Bill: What sort of fuel did you use with it?

Russell: The standard methanol-based fuel of the day, known as 80-10-10. 80% methanol, 10% petrol, 10% benzole.  You bought it pre-mixed from several fuel companies.

Bill: I imagine the petrol-benzole content was to help it vaporize and fire in coolish weather conditions when methanol by itself might not vaporize enough to give easy starting.

Russell: That sounds right.  I had my Lightning up to this meet at the Tram Road near Christchurch, over 300 miles from my home.  This Tram Road is a dead-straight, ten-mile-long public two-lane highway about 30 miles from Christchurch.  It was used long before then, and still to this day, for speed trials events for cars and motorcycles.  The local authorities permitted it to be closed long enough for meets as a local recreational sports activity.

I had my bike prepared right by the Vincent Rider's Handbook, the only guide I had.  When it was my turn I made my two runs, and just like that I had the NZ Record at 140, just about one mph more than Bert Munro!  So my pals and I were pleased with this.

Also at the meet was Bob Burns, who was running his race-converted Vincent Rapide as a sidecar machine.  He already had his streamlined shell at that point.  Bob had designed it after the existing World Record NSU, with care over the downforce and fin aspects.  Bob made the plywood frame for it, and a man named Bill Rogers with a body shop did the aluminum panels in two pieces.

Bob and I got acquainted there, hit it right off, and in a very short time we decided to form the partnership that was to take both of us to World Speed Records!

Bill: What were the basic terms of your agreement?

Russell: Bob already had World Records in mind.  The solo mark then was NSU at 180, and the sidecar record 154, also to Germany.  Bob saw my Lightning and he figured right away that we could use his shell on my bike, and we could take the Records.  So our agreement was to use my bike and he would provide the shell.  He wanted sidecar only, and I wanted solo only.  Any prize money we won, we'd split down the middle.

The other part of our agreement was that Bob would undertake all the mechanical preparation of the bike.  I was a capable mechanic, but he was a precision engineer by trade; so I was quite happy to let him handle that side of things.  Which he did, superbly, and for the most part all I had to do when a meet was scheduled was drive the 300+ miles up there, get on the bike and ride it.  Right from that very first meet, I left the bike in Bob's care, and drove back home with an empty trailer.

Bill: What did Bob do with it?

Russell: He went to work on it straightaway.  After my NZ record and his previous records, the Vincent Works sent over a pair of their very special Big Port racing cylinder heads and the special 1-7/16" Amal T.T. carburetors for them, to help us out.  These were the same parts used on the factory 1950 T.T. Grey Flash program.  Bob put these heads on my Lightning and put its original heads with their 32mm T.T. carbs on his Rapide, which henceforth was to be our backup machine.

In December '54 Bob had the first go with the Lightning and did take the previous 154 record up to a new F.I.M. World Sidecar mark of 157!  Comes February '55, we were ready for a serious crack at the solo record, and took the bike to the meet with the required F.I.M. timers, observers and equipment; but it was not to be that day!  Everything worked fine, but
due to an unsuspected error in our gearing, we did not get quite the speed we needed.  The Lightning had been sent out from the Works with a 21 tooth gearbox sprocket mistakenly fitted instead of the standard 22 tooth.  So we were geared a little low.

The Works had made a red paint-mark on the face of the rev counter at 6,400 rpm, and this is what I had seen on my 140 mph NZ National Record runs.  There had been a little confusion afterwards because people expected the 'naked' Lightning to give a bit more speed than that, and wondered whether I had been able to watch it at speed, etc.  Now with the streamlined shell we had put a small sprocket on the rear wheel, never thinking to question the gearbox sprocket.  And our speed was a
little short; and at first we couldn't figure out what was wrong. Finally Bob did realize the sprocket was one tooth off, and he was quite angry about the time and effort that had been wasted over such a small thing; and he let Vincent know about it too!

Bill: What was next?

Russell: The next meet was set for 2nd July, 1955 and this time we were ready.  Away I went on the first leg of the required two, no problems at all.  We had a white mark on the rev counter to show 180 mph (the existing NSU record), and I saw we were nicely over that as I went through the timing trap.

Bill: Russell, let me interject something here; this was a big 1000cc, 50 degree vee-twin engine, what was the vibration like in the 6000 rpm and over range at top speed?

Russell: It was very smooth, Bill.  Vibration was not a problem. Whatever balance factor the Works was using, it worked like a charm on this Lightning.  The bike steered fine, too, with the shell.  It was no trouble at all to keep it dead on the centerline of the two-lane, 21 foot wide public road at 185 mph.  Except for the bit I'll tell you about in a second!

Anyhow, we had our first leg in the bag, went down, turned around and up the other way.  Up through the gears, very fast on first and second with the Lightning intermediate gearbox and very tall gearing on the sprockets.  Into third and top gears, flawless and pulling all the speed we needed, big engine running like a charm.  UNTIL just past the traps I emerged from some hedge and there was an unexpected crosswind that ALL BUT put me off the road at 185 mph!!!  You know crosswinds have a great effect on bikes with full shells.

I just managed to keep the model on the road, fortunately, and bring it safely to a stop.  When I stepped out of the shell, my pals said my face was dead white!

But no matter now, the work was done, and everybody including me said surely the World Record's in the bag!  And before long the F.I.M.-certified timekeeper confirmed it.  Then Bob had to strip the bike for engine size measurement.  And in due course later on came back word from Paris that F.I.M. had accepted the Record, 185.15 mph!

Bill: I know this started up a lot of celebration.  A tremendous achievement, two amateurs on a very modest budget taking the World Speed Record with their privately-owned racer!

Russell: I suppose so, Bill, both Bob and I had families, not a lot of money, and doing it all out of our own back pockets, except for the Works help as noted.  And yes, the celebrations began, telegrams from Phil Vincent and many others.  In fact, the very first one I received was from Wilhelm Herz, whose '51 NSU record I had just beaten.

The weekly English motorcycle magazine, The Motor Cycle, awarded me a gorgeous 56 centimeter sterling silver trophy, and a 1000 pounds sterling check(which Bob and I split).  Arrangements were made for this trophy to be presented to me at a ceremony by Mr. S.G. Holland, Prime Minister of New Zealand.  Just for the record, let me tell you the inscription on it:

THE MOTOR CYCLE TROPHY

Presented to Russell Wright of New Zealand by The Motor Cycle - London

In recognition of his gaining the World Motor Cycle Maximum Speed Record.  Swannanoa 2nd July 1955.  998cc Vincent 185 mph

Bill: Were your dad and mom thrilled?

Russell: Mom was over the moon, but dad did not display much emotion. He was never one to show his feelings in public.

Bill: What came next?

Russell: The Vincent company wanted us to bring the Record bike over for the Earls Court show coming up in the fall in London.  So we set to work to book passage, get our passports and so forth.  The plan was they would sponsor us for the expenses.  But as time went on it turned out that they were in financial difficulty, and could not follow through; but other English motorcycle industry firms jumped in and provided the necessary, so we did make the trip.

We were asked to bring the grand trophy along, and it was re-presented to me at the Earls Court Motor Cycle Show by the F.I.M. Secretary-General Mr. T.W. Loughborough.  We had a wonderful time on the trip, and when we took the bike up to the Vincent Works, Phil Vincent had his men install the latest super-duty Picador crank assembly in it, together with a double-speed oil pump; since we already had plans to go to Bonneville in '56 and try to push our record up higher.

It should be mentioned that after the fright I had on the Tram Road with the crosswind, I had stated that I would NOT use that road again.  The risk of a crosswind pushing the bike off the road was just too great. We needed the expanse of the Salt Flats for any more record attempts!

Bill: Russell, just for the record again, because Vincent men care very much about these exact details, let's go over the specs of your Lightning as it took the World Solo Record.  You had the standard late Lightning caged-roller big-end bearings with standard one-start oil pump, Vibrac rods, 13 to 1 Specialloid racing pistons, Lightning clutch and gearbox, 2" x 44" exhaust pipes, Lucas KVF TT racing magneto, Big Port heads and 1-7/16" Amal T.T. carburetors, with a factory red-line at 6,400 rpm.

Russell: That's correct to the best of my knowledge, Bill.  The bottom end of the engine was never disturbed from the factory.  Bob Burns' unpublished manuscript, "World Record-Breaking on a Shoestring" tells about all this, and how he bored the Big Port heads out before we went to Bonneville in '56 to use 1-1/2" Amal G.P. carburetors.  He wanted every possible ounce of power out of the engine.

I might tell you a little story about the KVF TT magneto, just to show how unpredictable racing is.  I used this mag for the NZ Record, and Bob used it for his successful Sidecar Record in December '54; but not long before we were to take our second crack at the Solo record in July '55, the magneto went bad and didn't spark right.  So I had to take it to a local Invercargill auto electric shop for repair.  They stripped it and rewound the armature for me, tested the mag and handed it back to me.
The man who did it was Jack Cockburn, and he's still a friend of mine today, 50 years later!

Anyhow, I had to drive 300 miles down and back to rush the mag to Bob so we could race the bike.  And this locally-rebuilt product of the Lucas Racing Magneto Section in Birmingham, England, then worked flawlessly to take the Record!  Later, Lucas sent us one of their Works specials to use in '56.
Bill: Okay, let's move on to the 1956 adventure at Bonneville.

Russell: Right, Bill.  Bob Burns in his manuscript recorded all the details of the story, and preserved all his international correspondence on it.  I might mention that I obtained permission recently from his sons Stuart and Dave for "World Record-Breaking on a Shoestring" to be published in "Fast Facts", the quarterly journal of the Speed Record Club in England.  The Chairman, Mike Stanton, asked me for that and Bob's great story is at last to be published there.

Bob and I wanted very badly to go to Bonneville in '56, to improve our performances and to be the first to break the 200 mark on a motorcycle. We had substantial sponsorship for it to cover the expenses, even the government of NZ kicked in a sum.  But the venture turned into an administrative nightmare.  We didn't really have the support we needed to make a serious effort.  There was mystery the whole early part of the year whether we could get any time to run, and if we did, if F.I.M.-certified timekeepers and equipment would be on the scene; where we would stay, what shop facilities we would have, etc.  We knew that NSU was coming in great force with a full factory effort, renting the Flats for two weeks, flying over F.I.M. timekeepers, several machines, riders, mechanics, factory managers, etc.

Capt. George Eyston was also going over to run a BMC record effort, and we tried to get into his program.  George wanted to be helpful, and eventually was, on the site.  Anyway, we went over, to make a very long story short, and we ran our equipment.  I might mention that we had experimented with nitromethane before leaving home, since that was about the only practical means available to get a big power increase.  But we were handicapped by very poor information on the use of it (nitro was still in its infancy as a racing fuel anywhere, then).  Our information said to limit the use to 20% with methanol.  This gave a noticeable power increase on our tests at home.

Bill: The classical literature on racing fuel indicates that 25% nitromethane gives only about 10% more power than straight methanol. Most people went to using 50-90%, but it always had a reputation for being hard to handle, and could easily go into engine-wrecking detonation if not tuned just right.

Russell: It seemed okay the way we had it tuned in NZ, but when we got up to the 4000+ altitude at Bonneville, everything was way off.  In fact, the very first time Bob went for a test run with the sidecar, he burned both pistons by the time he got to two miles!  So we had to do a load of overnight re-building to fix that.

We had to hang around waiting for a chance to run our bike, and finally did set a new Sidecar mark that should have been a record, and I was able to get the solo bike to 198+ mph.  But NSU put the World Record up to 211 there, which F.I.M. accepted.  And after a lot of dithering, F.I.M. would not accept Bob's new Sidecar record because they were not
satisfied with the timekeepers and clocks on the site.  So that was heart-breaking to him.

Bill: Russell, World Records are a very tough game, and what counts for all time is that you and Bob Burns held the F.I.M. official World Solo and Sidecar Records for a while back in that day.

Russell: Yes, my Solo Record lasted a year and a month.

Bill: How did you and Bob come to sell your bikes to Harry Bellville of Ohio, USA?

Russell: Bill, this is one subject on which I want to set the record straight!  It has been erroneously printed before that Bob and I had to sell our bikes to get back home because we were broke!  Rubbish!

The fact is that we had made contact with Harry before we went up to Bonneville because we knew, win or lose, this was going to be the last phase of our program. Harry wanted to buy these bikes, and we agreed a good market price for them; the Black Lightning and the Rapide as a pair.  I received quite a bit more than the new price for my bike, since of course it was the World Record model.  Bob and I knew NSU was coming on strong, and obviously there was no way two enthusiasts could keep overcoming a major factory effort.  But we had good sponsorship to go to Bonneville, and we went over there; and we did our best for ourselves and our sponsors.  But by no means were we "broke".

Understand, Bill, that I had a young wife and three babies at home, and Bob also had a wife and family.  We felt that we had done enough with this lark, by '56!

Bill: That is all perfectly sensible.  Both of you had done far more than enough, and in fact more than any other Vincent riders ever!  Tell me, what was it like, partnering with Bob?

Russell: The first thing to know is that Bob was a dour Scotsman.  He didn't suffer fools gladly, and he could be blunt.  He rubbed plenty of people up the wrong way.  But Bob and I always partnered in harmony, even though he was 21 years older than myself.  Right from day one there was a bond of trust and mutual respect between us.  I think both of us recognized that we were deeply committed racers, and when the chips were down we were going to "screw it on all the way" and do our utmost to obtain success!  We worked together in close contact for long periods over several years, traveled far together, and never a cross word.  We stayed in touch all down through the years after that, too.

Bill: How did you make your living later?

Russell: Various ways.  I built spec houses for a while back home in Invercargill.  It was surprisingly profitable in good real estate markets to build a home, live in it for a while, build another, then sell the first.  I went to work for Hurricane Fence Co. as a salesman for 12 years, traveling around to their dealers and the farmers.  Fence was a big item in a developing country then.  Another time for several years, I had a bulldozer and did grading work.  The last 20 years of my working life I was a salesman for National Mutual Life Insurance Co. This was and is one of the biggest NZ insurance companies and there was
very good money in it.  Without getting your hands dirty!

Bill: Would you say that once a man has taken the World Motorcycle Speed Record, he is 'marked for life'?

Russell: Not to the world at large, no.  In motorcycle circles, perhaps. All the NZ motorcyclists and beyond knew about it at the time, and I suppose some still do.  In the Vincent world, certainly.  I was and remain Honorary Member #2(never heard who #1 is!) in the Vincent Owners Club and they have always been very kind to me.

Bill: My friend Dave Campos has the present F.I.M. World Record at 322+ mph. He said when he's out at a meet, and people hear that he has the Record, some people are absolutely floored, and others are totally indifferent!

Russell: That's exactly the way it is.  If people know or care nothing for motorcycles, it means nothing to them.  I never mentioned it to anybody in later life.

I had wonderful fun attending International Rallies of the Vincent Owners Club in the later years.  In '87 I went to the International in Germany and several countries and spent a lot of time with Phil and Edith Irving and American speedman Marty Dickerson.  In '95 they had an International in New Zealand.  There were 107 Vincents and about 350 enthusiasts present.  The high point of the occasion for me came when I walked into the Luncheon, was introduced and got a standing ovation from
everyone in the hall.  That brought tears to my eyes...

Bill: Russell, having been to a number of International Rallies myself, I can just see the smiles on every face!  You moved from NZ over to Queensland, Australia a while back, why was that?

Russell: Yes, about ten years ago Elaine and I retired up here to the Sun Coast because it has such an ideal climate.  Very much like that of Southern California in America.  The south of New Zealand is a beautiful place and I love it, but six months out of the year it's extremely cold. That's what we wanted to get away from at this point.

Bill: Well, Russell, I guess that covers about everything.  Thank you so much for taking the time to tell us this story.  It will be of great interest to Vincent riders everywhere, as well as all speed trials enthusiasts.

Russell: I enjoyed it, Bill.

End