Paul Cavallo and the gang at Spitfire Motorcycles have been hiding in the wings of Hellbound Steel Motorcycles and West Coast Choppers for a couple of decades. Like a bunch of sequestered pirates, they finally escaped the confines of the big money sorts to fly their own Jolly Roger flag.
Ya see, Paul designed, and with his crew, built most of the Hellbound Steel bikes until the bubble burst and the sales guys headed for the hills. He also manufactured products for lots of high dollar businesses, until they dried up and the true bikers remained standing at the helm of their pirate ships. If you stumbled into his Rancho Cucamonga, California shop, you’d know what I mean.
He still runs a massive machine and fabrication shop building an extensive line of Spitfire products, and he’s crafting one bike at a time now for devoted customers with low budgets.
“Bikers have always been compared to Pirates,” Paul said, “so we built this 1975 Ironhead custom in their honor. The French phrase, ‘jolie rouge,’ means beautiful red! Red was the color of the signal flag meaning attack.”
I was intrigued by his statement and researched the term. That red attack flag had a stronger significance according to Wikipedia.com. Check this: The name “Jolly Roger” goes back at least to Charles Johnson’s A General History of the Pyrates, published in Britain in 1724.
Johnson specifically cites two pirates as having named their flag “Jolly Roger”: Bartholomew Roberts in June, 1721 and Francis Spriggs in December 1723. While Spriggs and Roberts used the same name for their flags, their flag designs were quite different, suggesting that already “Jolly Roger” was a generic term for black pirate flags rather than a name for any single specific design. Neither Spriggs’ nor Roberts’ Jolly Roger consisted of a skull and crossbones.
Richard Hawkins, captured by pirates in 1724, reported that the pirates had a black flag bearing the figure of a skeleton stabbing a heart with a spear, which they named “Jolly Roger”.
Despite this tale, it is assumed by most that the name Jolly Roger comes from the French words jolie rouge, meaning “pretty red” and referring to a plain red flag which was flown to indicate that the ship would fight to the death, with no quarter given or expected.
“The phrase was overheard by English-speaking sailors who pronounced it Jolly Roger,” said Paul, “and the rest is history.”
Like the pirates of the Spanish Main, this bike has an eclectic street buccaneer personality, from the micro glide 35mm front end and narrow Spitfire Vader (his play on the original Invader mag wheels) wheel, to the 12-spoke Drag rear wheel and trials rear tire.
In fact, this became the first Spitfire product display bike built, and it won Best Paint at the Grand National Roadster Show in 2010. Like a bunch of crazed pirates, I’ve watched an unsuspecting brother roll a stock Honda 500 four-cylinder motorcycle into their vast metal cave, only to have it ripped to shreds, while Paul sketched out a frame design on a scrap of parchment. Before the day was done, the driveline was alive once more in a perfectly TIG welded custom, one-off rigid frame, coupled to the original stock front end, and wheels. As the sun set into the Pacific, the scruffy crew mounted a modified gas tank, rear fender, and manufactured a perfectly contoured oil bag, and the bike took on a new life as a tight bobber.
“Wait a minute!” Paul snapped at me as I was trying to peel out of his shop. “I don’t know anything about pirates. Paul Darayat, of Riffraff Kustom Leather came up with that.”
I looked at Paul wearing a stripped t-shirt and his demin cut, with a strange hat cocked over one eye, and my gaze drifted to the framed poster on the wall leaning slightly. The illustration depicted a smiling skull with the crossed rods and pistons, which may have been adorned with an old motorcycle helmet, but it took me back to something I found on Wikipedia:
During the Elizabethan era “Roger” was a slang term for beggars and vagrants who “pretended scholarship.” “Sea Beggars” had been a popular name for Dutch privateers since the 16th century. Another theory states that “Jolly Roger” is an English corruption of “Ali Raja,” supposedly a 17th century Tamil pirate. Yet another theory is that it was taken from a nickname for the devil, “Old Roger”. The “jolly” appellation may be derived from the apparent grin of a skull.
“Yeah right,” I said, staring at the blazing eyes in the grinning skull. I grabbed my notes, and cut a dusty trail for the Bikernet.com all-black hearse on the edge of Spitfire parking lot. I had to make the HORSE Back Street deadline.
Talk about pirates. I felt surrounded as I rolled back to the Port of Los Angeles.
–Bandit 
Fabrication: Spitfire Motorcycles
Year and make: 1975 Harley-Davidson
Model: Sportster
Assembly by: the Spitfire Gang
Time: 6 months
Engine:
Year: 1975
Model: XLH Sportster
Ignition: Electronic Dyna
Displacement: 1000 cc
Lower end: H-D
Pistons: Forged
Cases: H-D cast aluminum
Heads: Iron
Cams: Sifton minus, minus
Lifters: solids
Carb: 38mm Mikuni
Air Cleaner: Spitfire modified from Hot Rod
Pipes: Spitfire with Megaphones
Transmission
Year: 1975
Trans sprocket: 23-tooth
Wheel sprocket: 48-tooth Spitfire
Painting
Molding: Wayne Wreck
Painter: Sweet Baby Janes
Color: Red candy over gold base
Type: House of Kolors
Frame
Year: Spitfire
Builder: Spitfire Ironhead Bobber
Type: XL Sporty Rigid
Rake: 36 degrees
Stretch: 2 inches in the backbone
Accessories
Bars: Hand built by Spitfire
Risers: CCE
Fender: classic flat 5-inch trailer
Headlight: 4-inch spot
Taillight: West Eagle
Front pegs: Spitfire
Rear pegs: Spitfire
Gas Tanks: Dished Sacred Steel
Oil Tank: Spitfire
Seat: Riffraff Kustom Leather
Forks
Type: 1982 RM 250 Susuki
Extension: perfect stock 35mm micro glide
Builder: Spitfire shaved legs
Trees: Spitfire anodized black
Wheels
Front
Size: 21-inch Vader by Spitfire
Hub: Vader spool
Rim: Vader steel
Tire: Avon Speedmaster
Rear
Size: 18-inch 12-spoke Radir
Hub: cast aluminum modified by Spitfire
Rim: cast
Tires: Trail Michelisin
Brakes: Spitfire sprotor rear only
