A visionary in every sense, Charles B. Franklin posing with a purebred I912 Indian Big Base 8-Valve after having won a 3-mile race at England’s famed Brooklands track on March 28, 1914.

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There are names spoken in reverence whenever early American motorcycling legends are recalled; Hedstrom, DeRosier, Ottaway, but etched just as indelibly into the books of our two-wheeled past is that of, Charles Bayly Franklin, the soft-spoken Irishman who defined what a motorcycle was to be for a new modern era and cast the mold for its future.

A Dubliner, innovator, racer, and genuine pioneering motorcycle icon, Franklin remains among the most significant contributors to motorcycling culture to have ever jockeyed a throttle. Long before he reshaped the fortunes of the Indian Motorcycle Company, Franklin was a rising star in Ireland’s young yet burgeoning motorcycling scene. After studying as a young man to become an electrical engineer, Franklin was hired by the Rathmines Electricity Works, a power company in Dublin, though his real passion was pistons and speed. In 1903, he began tinkering with the company’s new F.N. motorcycle, a Belgian-built single that set his imagination and ambition into high gear. Within a year, he was competing in Irish speed and reliability trials, joining the Motor Cycle Union of Ireland at its earliest meetings, and earning a reputation as one of the most daring young riders in the Isles.

Franklin’s success, however, wasn’t the result of his abilities in the saddle any more than the careful and skilled tuning he ensured his machines received before each event. In that regard, Franklin was one of the early virtuosos of the motorcycle, a skill noted and solicited by may of his competitors as he was often caught out to attend to the gremlins that plagued anyone’s machine.

*Franklin and his brutish 1906 International Cup OHV JAP.*

To Franklin, racing wasn’t just about speed, of course you had to be gritty and daring, but to get the most out of a machine you had to master its mechanics. That mastery carried him to the continent in 1906, where he joined teammates Harry and Charlie Collier (of Matchless fame), their team manager the Marquis de St. Maur, and Auto Cycle Union official Freddy Straight to run as the British team at the International Cup in Austria. These earliest European races were rife with experimental one-off brutes, excessively powerful, spindly and unreliable machines ridden by death-wish playboys at events with little-to-no oversight or regulation. Franklin’s machine, for example, was a, 8 HP, 90-degree belt-driven OHV V-twin, with a intake seemingly from the washroom of a victorian era manor and a frame hand-assembled by Franklin himself.

Across the pond, men like Glenn Curtiss and Oscar Hedstrom dabbled with their own overbearing racing machines, but events in the States were becoming more structured and streamlined thanks to national organizations like the Federation of American Motorcyclists. The FAM worked to manicure both the machines and venues, which in-turn helped the sport grow immensely popular and propelled innovation among the brands who prioritized legal, mass-manufacturable improvements in their machines to then be sold to the hungry marketplace.

Franklin and his teammates imagined a race free from the mechanical mutants, unburdened by mainland roadway restrictions and speed limits, and one that would propel their own industry forward. Their idea was to be a true test of machine and rider endurance, a competition to drive innovation and refinement of their beloved machines further, but not beyond reasonable limits of production machines, and one set in their home of the United Kingdom. They found the venue on the old-world byways of the Isle of Man, where they birthed what would become the Isle of Man Tourist Trophy, perhaps the world’s most storied motorcycle race.

It didn’t take long for the Isle of Man TT to become an international theater, going year over year, with Franklin always lined up as a contender. In 1909, the first American machine to appear on the sandy roads of the Mountain Course arrived from Springfield, Massachusetts. Lee Evans rode his Indian twin to second place, revealing to the world that the Yanks came to win and capturing the attention of 28 year old Franklin who finished 3 places back in 5th on a Triumph, winning the Private Owners Prize.

*Franklin and his first Indian twin for the TT in 1910.*

Immediately, he knew that the Indian had what it took to win the TT and for the following year’s race acquired his own Indian Twin to enter as a privateer, running against Hedstrom’s own factory-backed team which was being managed by the UK’s new Indian distributor Billy Wells. The race was a disaster for Indian’s 1910 team as every rider of a crimson twin from Springfield was plagued with a bad batch of inner tubes, Franklin himself taking a nasty spill into a stone wall at Devil’s Elbow. Still, Franklin was convinced of the Indian’s superiority. He left his job, opened an Indian dealership out of his own home, and used his knack for tuning to ride to further bolster his reputation as the Irish Champion.

In 1911, Oscar Hedstrom came prepared with three factory mechanics, a stash of spares, some tested inner tubes, and a ringer by way of Jake DeRosier, America’s first professional motorcycle racer. Now a part of the factory effort, Franklin placed second behind Oliver Godfrey, and the Indian team claimed a historic victory as the first non-British machine to win the TT. Franklin, still a semi-privateer, had proven himself as had the Indians that clutched the top three spots at the TT that year.

*Indian’s team for the 1911 Isle of Man TT: Moorhouse, Alexander, Franklin, DeRosier, and Godfrey joined by Mr. and Mrs. Wells.*

His journey continued on the European theatre, running trails, grand prix’s, and maintaining his annual appearance on the Isle of Man, all the while never tiring of exploring new ideas to squeeze the most from his motors. Some have even attributed the famed “squish” principal, made famous by Harry Ricardo, to work that Franklin performed on the combustion chambers of one of his Indian F-heads leading up to competition in 1914.

In 1916, he was brought onboard in Indian’s engineering department, Initially, tinkering on the company’s latest platform, the Powerplus, a side-valve V-twin originally developed by Hedstrom’s replacement Charles Gustafson. A pioneer of the side-valve architecture in motorcycling, Gustafson’s Powerplus was unveiled in 1916 and proved its invaluable nature in endurance races, speed records, and military contracts during WWI. Franklin would take the Powerplus to new heights within a few short years, tuning the powerful platform to be ridden at victory after victory with Indian’s star riders Gene Walker, Baxter Potter, and Shrimp Burns in the saddle. Franklin’s first project, however began with the development of the Euopean-inspired oddball, the lightweight Model O in 1919, a nimble 15.7 CI intended to replace the failed featherweight two-stroke Model K bring motorcycling to a broader audience.

Racing icon and star of the Indian factory program Eugene Walker on his Franklin-tuned “Daytona” Powerplus in April, 1920 after having reclaimed 24 National and international speed records for Springfield.

Still, the American market wasn’t as receptive to the charms of lightweight alternatives as the brass at Indian and Harley-Davidson had hoped, and aside from his competition modified Powerplus racing machines, Franklin hadn’t yet made his mark in the US. That all changed in 1920, when Charles Franklin planted a flag in the soil of America’s fertile motorcycle industry where he a new cornerstone would lie with the introduction of the Indian Scout, a streamlined and elegant middleweight Flathead V-twin and one of the most pivotal and influential motorcycles in American history.

The 1920 Indian Scout marked the turning of a corner in the industry. It arrived with a compact 37 CI side-valve V-twin and a lightweight 315-pound chassis, eschewing the bulky, high-displacement touring machines that defined American motorcycling at the time. It was lower and leaner as if to impersonate the stance of the factory racing when compared to its production predecessors. With a shorter wheelbase and a clever engine-gearbox unit bolted together in a single case, a hallmark of Franklin’s engineering, the Scout embraced agility over sheer muscle. The Scout was a lithe prizefighter, proving that inspired design and rideability could outmaneuver size alone wether on the track or the salesroom floor.

The Scout was followed two years later by the Chief, a larger and more powerful Big Twin touring model based on the same proven architecture. And then—his magnum opus—the 101 Scout of 1928, considered by many to be one of the finest motorcycles ever built. With the Scout and Chief line, Franklin paved the way for a new generation of riders and racers, opening up new demographics to the enjoyment of riding motorcycles and ushering the motorcycle’s new identity as a recreational object. In a market flooded with increasingly affordable and significantly more practical automobiles, Franklin’s Scout acted as a bridge to the next chapter in American motorcycling as a stylish, fun, and affordable alternative to the lumbering Big Twins and intimidating 1,000cc factory racers.

*1920 Indian Scout from dealer catalog.*

Simply put, the Scout redefined motorcycling in America for the following 30 years. As a precursor to the beloved 45 CI displacement class, the Scout cast the mold for what would become a proliferation of fun and accessible middleweight motorcycle within a few short years. With the power, efficiency, and ease of maintenance that the side-valve engine offered, Indian and Harley-Davidson soon centered their production motorcycles, both Big Twins and 45s around the platform with tremendous success. Finally, as professionals racing evolved in the 1920s away from the cutting-edge Class A factory racers and was reborn into an age of the everyman racer with the advent of the AMA’s Class C, the Scout set the mold for a winning balance of power and agility.

Franklin’s work at Indian helped give the brand an identity that remains central to the company still over a century later. Moreover, the motorcycles he designed redefined American motorcycling for over three decades, influencing not just Indian’s lineup but the architecture of the entire industry. With the Scout, Chief, and 101 Scout platform, Franklin brought motorcycling to more people, at greater speeds, with more confidence and style than ever before.

Charles Bayly Franklin remained in Springfield for the remainder of his life, taking a leave of absence only just before his untimely death from cancer in 1932 at 47 years old. He was never the loudest, nor the flashiest of his era’s heroes. Still, the fingerprints of his contributions to the culture are everywhere. From the machines powering the golden age of American motorcycling to the legends crowned at Snaefell, Brooklands, and Daytona. In an age where American motorcycling was in need of a new beginning, a quiet Irishman with a passion for two-wheels gave it a new concept of power, form, and.

The Dubliner: Charles Bayly Franklin

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