THE MOTORCYCLE: DESIGN, ART, DESIRE PREVIEW - 1920 INDIAN - JUST BIKES

The Motorcycle: Design, Art, Desire PREVIEW - 1920 Indian Scout streamliner

‘The Motorcycle: Design, Art, Desire’ opens at Brisbane’s Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) on 28 November, 2020, and runs through to 26 April, 2021.

Presenting the motorcycle as a design object, the exhibition will feature over 100 machines, documenting almost 150 years of motorcycle history - from the 1870s to the present day – including steam and electric-powered bikes, as well as conventionally-engined machines.

Thanks to The World’s Fastest Indian, pretty much everyone knows about the Burt Munro Indian streamliner. But if you’re thinking the bike pictured doesn’t look like the one in the film, you’re right. It’s not the one you may have seen in Invercargill, either, but it is a genuine Burt Munro Indian racing streamliner.

What most people don’t know is that there was more than one streamliner that Munro campaigned.

Across the course of his numerous visits to the Bonneville Salt Flats, Munro refined and modified his design, but shipping the bike and all its components back and forth was expensive. As such, Munro would leave frames, streamliner bodies and other parts in the US, bringing just the engines and gearboxes back with him to New Zealand for further development.

One of two surviving genuine Burt Munro streamliners, this bike was used in 1967 - Munro’s seventh and last Bonneville campaign - and is the one on which he set an SA 1000 class land speed record that stood unbroken for 50 years.