Photos courtesy Steve Tremulis
Designer Alex Tremulis maintained over his decades-long career that streamlining and aerodynamics provided the solutions to many a problem faced by automotive designers and engineers. It wasn’t until after Ford gave him the boot, however, that he could focus on applying his then-radical ideas to a practical project, a streamlined motorcycle that would end up setting the world’s land speed record for two-wheelers at more than 240 MPH.
More than 40 years later, that same bike, the Gyronaut X-1, remains in the hands of the man who drove it to that record and is undergoing a full restoration, with plans to return it to Bonneville, the place where it was conceived and proved.
The story of the Gyronaut project begins in one place – Detroit – but with three men pursuing two different goals. Tremulis, who had worked at Ford as a designer in various roles since 1952, had hit upon the ultimate idea in streamlining: To reduce a vehicle’s front surface area, it needed two wheels instead of four. A two-wheeled automobile would need a gyroscope to remain stable and upright, he reasoned, so he began the resulting Gyron concept car to test out those ideas. While the Gyron would be built as a show car, introduced in 1961, it would use a pair of outrigger wheels rather than a gyroscope to remain upright and its development process would create plenty of friction between Tremulis and his superiors, ultimately leading to his separation from Ford in February 1963.
Meanwhile, Bob Leppan, the owner of Triumph Detroit, and his mechanic, Jim Bruflodt, built and campaigned one of the most potent drag bikes of their day, the Cannibal II, powered by dual 1959 Triumph twins. From 1959 to 1962, they cleaned up at both the drags and the indoor shows, but Leppan felt they could do better; he felt they could capture the world’s land speed record for motorcycles. With that goal in mind, he bought Bill Martin’s Triumph-powered streamliner out of Burbank, California, and fitted the twins from the Cannibal II. Though circumstance led him to make just one pass at Bonneville in 1963 – a pass that broke merely a chain rather than records – it was at Bonneville that he and Bruflodt met Tremulis, then trying to figure out how to best implement his ideas on aerodynamics.
Though Tremulis intended to eventually build a streamlined two-wheeler powered by a Ford V-8 (notice the Cobra logo that Tremulis included in his rendering above) and stabilized by gyroscopes, meeting Leppan and Bruflodt led him to develop the Gyronaut X-1, a streamliner powered by the Cannibal II twins that made do with automatic pneumatic kickstands instead of a gyroscope. Ron and Gene Logghe had a hand in building the Gyronaut X-1′s chassis, as did Maynard Rupp, and Tremulis recruited Vince Gardner to help shape the Gyronaut X-1′s fiberglass body.
The end result made its debut at the 1965 Detroit Autorama, then made its first speed runs at Bonneville later that year, running 212.689 MPH for a class record. A year later, with Leppan at the controls, the X-1 ran 245.667 MPH to capture the world land speed record for motorcycles, a record that would stand for four years.
Tremulis would later succeed in planting a gyroscope in a two-wheeler he called the Gyron I (and set a land-speed record himself in a rather un-aerodynamic 26-foot Travoy motorhome), but the Gyronaut X-1 remained with Leppan, who nearly lost an arm when the streamliner crashed in 1970. Several years ago, Leppan began the task of restoring the Gyronaut X-1, a project recently kicked into higher gear with the purchase of the Gyronaut by Tremulis’s son nephew, Steve, who has started to document the restoration at GyronautX1.com.
Late last month, the partially restored chassis – still fitted with its original engines and transmission – was shown in public for the first time since 1970 at the ceremonies for the Dry Lakes Racing Hall of Fame in Buellton, California. According to Steve Tremulis, the goal is to complete the restoration in time for Bonneville Speedweek in 2013, the 50th anniversary of the Gyronaut X-1′s inception.