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Dan Gurney’s Two-wheeled Terror at IMS

Tue, 09 Dec 2008

When the Gurney Alligator A6 made its debut in 2002, the world saw a glimpse of a new concept in sport motorcycles. Long, low, quick and efficient like its namesake, the ’Gator was like nothing we’d seen before.

The bike was the brainchild of Dan Gurney, the legendary F1 and Le Mans winning driver and championship-winning sports car builder. It was the fruit of a 25 year exploration of the low-CG concept applied to a motorcycle.

At this year’s IMS show, we saw Gurney’s latest iteration called the Instigator. Instead of the A6’s modest hot-rodded Honda XR650L single-cylinder engine, the Instigator has a massive 124-inch S&S V-Twin rubber-mounted inside the confines of the chromoly trellis frame. The swingarm (and the engine cases) are made from billet aluminum. A rider sits just 20-inches off the ground, surrounded by carbon-fiber bodywork.

With its ultra-low center of gravity, Gurney’s bikes are able to accelerate out of the hole at a pace taller conventional motorcycles can’t. When Cycle World tested the old A6, its 0-30-mph time of just 1.1 second turned out to be quicker than any streetbike the magazine has ever tested! We wonder how much quicker the Instigator can accelerate with double the original bike’s 65 rear-wheel horsepower!

Check out the gallery in our IMS show coverage for more pictures of the Instigator.


By Kevin Duke


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