In 1948, an eighteen-year-old walked into Mickey Martin’s Burbank Vincent-HRD dealership and put a cash deposit down on the $1120 sale price of a new Series B Touring Rapide, starting a payment plan on what was then the most expensive motorcycle in the world. The inspiration for his trip was the boasting of a Vincent-owning Scotsman who spoke of leaving “long black streaks” on the highway while passing cars at seventy miles per hour, in third gear. Readers of the late 1940s motorcycle press were familiar with Vincent-HRD ads touting impossible speeds, right beside ads for X-ray glasses and miracle bodybuilding powders. Very few Americans had actually seen a Vincent, even fewer had ridden one. Marty Dickerson, the youth in question, thought the Rapide was ugly, but he “wanted that power, wanted that speed”.

Marty was not disappointed with his purchase and quickly came to understand he now owned one of the fastest motorcycles on the planet. Soon, he set about proving it to southern California motorcyclists. Harley Davidson had been around since the early part of the century, as had rival Indian, and their American devotees used the collected wisdom of decades of engine-tuning to make some pretty hot bikes by the 1940s, the toughest and fastest of which tended to be “strokers” with huge motors of over 100 cubic inches displacement (1600cc). Dickerson and his Vincent aroused the curiosity and pride of Los Angeles’s fastest street-racers, who formed an increasingly short line to challenge him to a “drag”. No matter the fame of the engine builder or skill of his rival at fast getaways, it was always Marty’s Rapide that crossed the makeshift waved sweater or crossed headlamp finish line first.

There were other ways to test speed, and the SCTA (Southern California Timing Association) provided timed evidence to bolster the reputation Marty gained on the streets. At Muroc Dry Lake, Marty squeezed 118 mph from his Rapide, while his buddy, Tex Luce, a Vincent mechanic fated to make his own mark on the racing world, found just a bit more, recording 122.04 mph on the bone-stock machine with all of its lights, mudguards, and mufflers in place.

Motorcyclists are a loyal bunch, and the evidence of a new “fastest” motorcycle didn’t translate into immediate sales. In truth, Vincent-HRD sales were dismal in California, and by June 1949, Mickey Martin had twenty unsold Vincents languishing on his showroom floor. Knowing of Dickerson’s antics in backroad street racing, Martin hatched a plan to send young Marty on a tour of the southwest quadrant of the U.S. to raise awareness of the Vincent-HRD marque in the best way (nudge, wink) he knew how. Martin offered to cover all travel expenses and to take over the Rapide’s loan payments, and soon Marty Dickerson had a nineteen-year-old’s dream job: he was being paid to street race all comers in small towns across the southwest astride the fastest motorcycle in the world.

For one month in that summer of 1949, Marty Dickerson had the “drag racing adventure of a lifetime”, covering 5,000 miles that took him through Phoenix, Dallas, Tulsa, Fort Worth, Tyler, Kansas City, and smaller towns in Colorado and Utah. He raced the fastest motorcycles and cars the locals could muster, sometimes legendary monsters that had never been bested. There were close calls, such as when he didn’t have time to change a fouled spark plug before a race, and the Vincent spluttered on one-and-a-half cylinders while his rival rocketed ahead.

Quick thinking and a “poor man’s tune-up” (downshifting from third to second at high revs to blast the plugs clean) cleared the cough and helped Marty take the lead, once again. There were other times when sore losers, with much time invested in and reputations riding on their Harleys or hot rods, made a hasty exit the prudent choice for young Mr. Dickerson. The Vincent had its share of problems, too, in that hard month of racing, requiring the total replacement of a clutch cable and a few engine shock absorber springs.

Dickerson’s exploits became legend, rumors spreading like pond ripples from a cherry bomb about a kid with a really fast Vincent, coming and going so fast that few people remembered his name. But tales of Marty Dickerson’s races reverberate to this day, forming the backbone of the Vincent story in America.

Dickerson returned to Los Angeles undefeated and was employed at Martin’s Vincent dealership as a mechanic, alongside Tex Luce and Rollie Free, who also had a history of street racing and record breaking. In 1950, Marty and Rollie took a newly delivered Vincent Black Lightning to the Bonneville Salt Flats and set about taking records in Class A racing, in which special fuels were used. Rollie Free raised his infamous “bathing suit” record (taken at 150 mph in 1948), proving the new bike to be the fastest standard motorcycle in the world, averaging over 156 mph.

Marty modified his Rapide for higher speeds, choosing Class C (pump gas) to avoid direct competition with Rollie. The Rapide’s transformation from daily rider to salt flat racer was completed with Lightning parts from the Vincent factory and a change of color scheme, becoming the “Blue Bike”. A new set of crankcases was required after three years of drag racing, and the Blue Bike gained engine cases marked 301. Two years of development were required before things really came together for this machine; larger carbs and hotter cams yielded a new Class C record in 1953, averaging 147.58 mph, with a fastest timed speed of 150.959 mph on pump gas with Marty sitting on the seat (not stretched out as Rollie did) and a class-mandated 8:1 compression ratio. The Blue Bike was massaged, but all the parts were Vincent items, and the bike wasn’t so high strung that it couldn’t be ridden on the street. That 150 mph record stood for over twenty years. It took a change of rules and a hot Yoshimura Kawasaki to break it.

Over the years, Marty continued to develop the Blue Bike, returning to Bonneville in 1976, 1980, 1986, 1996, and finally in 1997, when the bike was forty-nine years old and the man was sixty-seven. His later years competing at Bonneville were less dramatically successful than those early days but served the important function of cementing Dickerson’s reputation among younger riders and new generations of racing enthusiasts amazed at his stories, all of which happen to be true.

The number of motorcycles worldwide that have endured serious competition for fifty years can be counted on one hand. Within this very special group, machines that have taken world records at Bonneville and cemented the reputation of an entire brand in recognizably stock form can be counted on one finger. The Blue Bike is unique in the world and is among the most important motorcycles of the twentieth century.