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Motorcycle Book Store > Motorcycle books beginning with S
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Standard Catalog of American Motorcycles 1898-1981: The Only Book to Fully Chronicle Every Bike Ever Built |
Author: Jerry Hatfield
Published: 2006-02-08 |
List price: $29.99
Our price: $26.99
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As of: August 30th, 2008 01:37:59 AM
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Customer comments on this selection.
 Wonderful, but flawed
To be brief: This is a wonderful book for those who love the really old and rare motorcycles of the pre-WW2 era. I don't know of anything else in print which even comes close to the scope and depth of this work. So buy a copy!
Unfortunately, the other, more critical reviewers are also correct: there are surprising gaps in this historical review - even where the author obviously intended to provide the missing material - and there are errors of fact. The publisher needs to hire some better editors, and the author really should produce a corrected, more genuinely comprehensive 2nd edition ASAP.
My greatest disappointment with this edition was the book's cheap paperback production: The content, mostly old ads and photos of really rare bikes, fully deserves glossy paper and the highest quality reproductions to preserve this information. I personally would be happy to pay twice as much for such a volume.
But all criticisms aside, what we have here is still invaluable. If you are a fan of old mototcycles, you will want this book - even in such a flawed edition.
 Standard Catalog of American Motorcycles 1898-1981
I just received this book as a Father's Day Gift and I spent a couple of hours going through it. If you are into older American bikes this is a treasure of info that any restoration guy would love. Lots of pictures, ads and old photos, sadly none in color, but that's my only snivel. This should be in every antique bike fans library as a excellant resource if only for the pictures alone.
 Short-Changed
I was excited when I saw this book at my local book store and after flipping throught it made an immediate decision to purchase. I wish now I had looked at it a little longer before buying. There are parts of this book that I just loved and parts that I hated... because they were not there. While I feel that this has the potential to be a wonderful reference overall, I feel short-changed because of the sections missing which dealt with some important bikes. This is in spite of the advertising on the back cover which clearly states that it contains information on every American motorcycle made in the relevent time frame. For example, this book divides the Excelsior chapter into two parts. It covers Excelsior from 1907 to 1924 and states on the bottom of page 105 that "The Super-X is treated as a seperate marque later in the book." Well, it's not there. The 15 page section they did on the big Excelsior is wonderful, but Excelsior's Super-X is nowhere to be found. I felt cheated. If they had done half as good covering the "Super-X" as they had done with the earlier Excelsiors, I would have been very happy. Also missing is the section covering the Yale motorcyle. Page 25 says "Yale data are contained within the Yale section." Well, once again there is no Yale section. Overall, an important work.... fatally flawed by omissions.
 Inaccurate research.
The book in general is full of inaccuracies. For example, the section on the Rokon Trail-breaker is mostly fiction. The author attributes the creation of the Trail-breaker to J.B. Nethercutt and his two sons. This is absolutely false. Charles Fehn of Thousand Oaks, California invented it not the Nethercutts. Nethercutt owned the company that was its first mass producer not its inventor.
 cover picture
I was very disappointed when I got my book and on the cover wasn't the 1937 Harley as it showed when I ordered it, but an Indian. What's with that?
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