Speed is expensive, as Ewan McGregor did not say in Trainspotting. The line was uttered by Philip Vincent, a Harrow-educated motorbike designer who made some of the world’s fastest – and priciest – motorbikes of the postwar era. This serviceable documentary narrated, a bit blandly, by McGregor tells Vincent’s story with contributions by fellow celebrity petrolheads Jay Leno and the Clash’s Paul Simonon.
Vincent was clearly a man of extraordinary drive and determination. He went into business aged 19, after being booted out of Cambridge for spending more time tinkering than studying engineering. When he opened a factory in Stevenage, they’d test drive the motorbikes on local roads; an employee once got caught doing 110 mph. This was in the 1930s, and when the case came to trial, the judge refused to believe a motorbike could reach such a speed, and dismissed the case, warning the police not to waste court time.
The profile of Vincent here does, however, feel somewhat underdeveloped, perhaps out of politeness. Employees remember him as high handed and arrogant – “he wound people up” – but we don’t hear the stories and anecdotes that would have brought the man to life. What is clear is that Vincent was a better inventor than business owner, and by the 1950s, his factory was losing huge sums of money. Its bikes fell out of fashion, too; one of its final models laughed off as “an old man’s wheelchair”.
After the factory went under, Vincent scratched a living writing for motorcycle magazines. His daughter recounts his unhappy final years, living in a council house in west London. Inevitably perhaps, Vincent bikes have become collector’s items – in 2018, a 1951 Black Lightning sold for nearly $1m, setting the record for most expensive motorbike at auction.
• Speed Is Expensive is released on 14 October in UK cinemas and is available now on digital platforms.
• This article was amended on 10 October 2023 to remove a reference to “motorways”, which were not in existence at the time.
