You may not have heard 'round these parts, but choppers are dead. Not dead dead. The cool kids are riding home-built rat choppers, and there are always the Texans and Swedes with their ridiculous tall and long (respectively) styles, but for all intents and purposes, the era of OCC and WCC being practically Fortune 500 material is over. More importantly, for now, the era of $50,000 production choppers is deader than denim skirts, leopard print, and leg warmers. Someone forgot to tell Kevin Alsop.
Chances are, actually, someone did. And he doesn't give a s#!t. These are the bikes he builds and loves and it's what he does. His company, Big Bear Choppers (BBC), came a little late to the party, gearing up for full-on production in only 2002, but is primed for the return of the good times. The company first came to our attention with a huge demo fleet at Daytona Bike Week in 2006. Back then the company was producing 100ish bikes a month with the capacity to expand to as much as 2-300 if needed. Needless to say, that's not the sort of numbers BBC churns out now, with both complete machines and kits bikes going out to its dealer network (67 USA, 21 international) at a monthly rate somewhere in the 30s as of this writing.
Last year, with the writing on the wall and the current bagger craze really starting to boogie, Kevin (CEO and Lead Designer at BBC) turned his mind to the sort of bike he'd like to kill a few mile markers with. The result is the GTX. The name actually means Grand Touring X-Wedge, but the one we tested sports the more conventional S&S 100 Smooth Evo-style engine.
At first glance, "bagger" is not what you're thinking. Sure, it's got bags, pretty good-sized bags at that, but it looks way more like a one-off custom piece than a bike designed to be flogged mercilessly on endless miles of backroads or interstate. The long, low machine strikes an aggressive profile, slathered in chrome, and instead of wraparound fairings it simply wraps the frame in composite panels to complete the smooth lines of the bike.
Overall, Kevin and his crew tried to rethink the whole concept of a touring motorcycle, based on their experience with custom choppers. All of the riders switching from bar-hoppers to road-burners didn't suddenly take a liking to tall, fat and short bikes, they simply had no choice if they wanted a touring bike. Taking the basic lines of a "pro-street" custom, and giving it a massive 12-inch stretch through the middle created a bike upon which both the passenger and rider sit in front of the rear wheel. BBC thought that such a good idea that they patented it. Dropping the humans down between the wheels not only puts payload weight in a central location, it also shows off the massive 300mm rear tire beneath its radiused steel fender. Even the saddlebags only do a minimal amount of shrouding as they too are positioned forward relative to the rest of the machine.
The motor is an S&S Super Sidewinder (based on Harley's Evolution engine), built out to BBC's specs as the 100 Smooth. The Smooth's secret is it's lower compression ratio, which makes for less violent combustion cycle, which in turn make for very linear, predicatble power. As a rigid-mounted 45-degree twin without any sort of counterbalancing it's still a bit of a paint-shaker at high rpm, but for those familiar with engines of this sort it's definitely an improvement. The transmission is a Baker 6-Speed with Right Side Drive which allows the use of the ridiculously fat 300mm rear tire without having to offset the engine and transmission to one side. The long, sculpted bags are very narrow, but hold a decent amount of stuff as long as it's compressable to the long skinniness of the bags. The fiberglass bags are extremely solidly built, which is a good thing, as they like a nice slam to shut (like my old Caprice). That said, the seal around them looks extremely hearty, though we didn't have a chance to test the waterproofing of the units.
Controls and instrumentation is very minimalist, with a few notable exceptions. The single analog gauge looks to be a mere speedometer, but actually also contains a low fuel light, trip meter, turn signal, high beam, oil pressure, and neutral indicators. The hand controls should look and feel familiar to Harley riders as they're the aftermarket equivalent, only dipped in thick chrome. The foot controls feature a pair of multi-adjustable mini-floorboards that can slide forward and back as well as tilt fore and aft. Our smaller tester thought they were the nicest pair he'd ever set foot on. The rear boards are of the same design and are similarly adjustable.
Sitting on the GTX for the first time, we were surprised as the controls fell readily to hand. For such an extreme-looking machine, you'd expect a bit of Maquis de Sade in the riding position. Thankfully suffering for style was not part of the design parameters for this Big Bear Chopper. The seat needs higher-density foam to really rack up the miles, as our 190-lb tester sank right through it to the hard parts underneath. But the upright stance, with feet forward is very conducive to putting down the miles, so we did. Our ride was out of Big Bear Lake, down the mountain to the deserts north of the San Bernardino Mountains.