ONCE-famous motorcycle marque Excelsior-Henderson is going under the hammer in January at Mecum’s Las Vegas sale.
According to the auctioneers: 'A unique offering will take place in Las Vegas on January 27, 2018. The iconic Excelsior-Henderson brand and all its intellectual property will be auctioned at the 27th annual Mecum Las Vegas Motorcycle Auction at the South Point Hotel and Casino. Included in this purchase are the ownership of the Excelsior-Henderson brand name, 10 federally registered trademarks, web domains, previous motorcycle frame and engine designs as well as 18 expired patents that can only be effectively exploited by the owner of Excelsior-Henderson.'
If you’re not familiar with Excelsior-Henderson, it’s one of those brands that, like Indian, was once a serious rival to Harley-Davidson. There’s been an attempt to revive it in the past, but unlike Indian, that attempt was a failure.
As the name suggests, Excelsion-Henderson started life as two separate firms; Excelsior and… go on, guess… Yep, Henderson. Both started building bikes shortly after Harley-Davidson in the 1900s, but by 1917 they were subsidiaries of bicycle maker Schwinn, which merged them into Excelsior-Henderson.
Making V-twins and in-line four-cylinder models, the firm was seen as one of the mainstays of the American motorcycle industry in the 1920s, but as a luxury manufacturer it was hit hard by the 1929 Wall Street crash and the Great Depression that followed. It ceased production in 1931.
The inevitable revival of the brand happened in the 1990s, when a British-designed V-twin engine revived the old ‘Super X’ name of the original E-H V-twins. Production of a new cruiser developed around the engine started in 1998, but despite a promising start the company folded within two years after only 2000 had been built.
There’s no estimate on the value of the Excelsior-Henderson name and intellectual property, but if could be an opportunity for someone to revive another famous brand from the past.
If that sounds like too much work, but you still want a slice of Excelsior-Henderson, the Mecum auction will also feature an unprecedented number of the bikes from the company’s brief revival No fewer than 14 examples of 1999 and 2000 model-year Excelsior-Hendersons (approaching 1% of the entire production run) are going under the hammer at the same sale.
