Mac Motorcycles
A story of inadvertently starting your own bike manufacturing company over too much tea and biscuits.
A story of inadvertently starting your own bike manufacturing company over too much tea and biscuits.
We first met Ellis Pitt just before Christmas in 2008. Well spoken and immaculately groomed, on first appearance he didn’t strike me as a ‘biker’. It quickly became apparent that he had a chilld-like enthusiasm for all things 2-wheeled which struck a chord- we were going to get along.
Ellis had an aspiration to build a custom, but wasn’t into ‘Chrome dildos’ as he put it. The only starting point was a Buell Blast engine and a series of images that Ellis had amassed of various bobbers, cafe racers and small capacity Italian bikes seen on the Motogiro.
We set about sketching up a few ideas of what his bike could be. We did too well. A one off turned into a range of 4 bikes sharing a platform that could be built to order. A series of renderings, a website and press release later and Mac was born.
Cue a wave of press the likes of which I have never experienced in the bike market. Within two weeks Mac had been on pretty much every well known bike magazine or blog site in the Western world and was worming it’s way into the mainstream press. Even GQ, Mens Health and Playboy have featured the Mac bikes, which at that point existed only in a PSD file. The Mac site killed our web hosting account, doing a months bandwidth in 5 days and taking 4000 emails in the first month. This was getting serious.
Just over a year later, we're pleased to report 'Spud' is under construction under the watchful eyes of Steve and Lester Harris, watch this space!
Ellis had an aspiration to build a custom, but wasn’t into ‘Chrome dildos’ as he put it. The only starting point was a Buell Blast engine and a series of images that Ellis had amassed of various bobbers, cafe racers and small capacity Italian bikes seen on the Motogiro.
We set about sketching up a few ideas of what his bike could be. We did too well. A one off turned into a range of 4 bikes sharing a platform that could be built to order. A series of renderings, a website and press release later and Mac was born.
Cue a wave of press the likes of which I have never experienced in the bike market. Within two weeks Mac had been on pretty much every well known bike magazine or blog site in the Western world and was worming it’s way into the mainstream press. Even GQ, Mens Health and Playboy have featured the Mac bikes, which at that point existed only in a PSD file. The Mac site killed our web hosting account, doing a months bandwidth in 5 days and taking 4000 emails in the first month. This was getting serious.
Just over a year later, we're pleased to report 'Spud' is under construction under the watchful eyes of Steve and Lester Harris, watch this space!
Mac Motorcycles Spud
Mac Motorcycles Peashooter
Mac Motorcycles Ruby
Mac Motorcycles Roarer
