I peeled over to Gard Hollinger’s new 20,000 square foot facility near the Los Angeles Airport recently. He has a motorcyclist partner, Keanu Reeves, who doesn’t own cars just rides. Together they collaborated on this bike for five years, and it just might become the prototype for the next, American motorcycle manufacturer. Over the next year you will stumble across numerous reports on their progress here on Bikernet, but let’s kick it off with the two-wheeled background.
Gard and Keanu hooked up over a Dyna Glide sissy bar five years ago when Bartels’ H-D called Bill Wall’s seat shop and Keith Oliver answered the phone. He suggested Gard and LA Choprods for custom manufacturing talents, but Gard wasn’t interested in making any sissy bars, even one for Keanu Reeves.
“He was still pitching for a two-up custom,” Gard said, “but finally gave in.”
Before I stumble any farther into the growth of this motorcycle, let’s take a look at Keanu’s history with motorcycles:
Reeves, 47, owns a variety of Norton Commandos and has been quietly enjoying motorcycles for more than 25 years. He enjoys the physicality of riding, rides daily, rain or shine, and has had long periods of time when he didn’t own a car and relied solely on two-wheels as his only mode of transportation. In fact, he’s only ever owned a couple of autos, a vintage Volvo and a contemporary Porsche.
His first ever ride was a Kawasaki 600 Enduro, which he purchased after taking his first ride ever in 1986 while working on a film in Germany. He got in the habit of purchasing a motorcycle whenever he was away from home on extended assignments. He would ride it while he was there and sell it when his work was done. He’s owned a Suzuki GS1100E, Suzuki GSX-R750, a Kawasaki 900, a 1984 Harley-Davidson Shovelhead, a Moto Guzzi, a Chopper, and a 2005 Harley-Davidson Dyna Wide Glide, which became the basis for this first bike.
He dropped out of school at 17 to pursue an acting career. Widely described as a private, low-key, regular guy who gets around on a motorcycle and does a movie now and then, he is best known for his leading roles in Speed and the Matrix trilogy. A new film project, Side by Side, is a documentary that examines the film medium and how the digital format is becoming more popular.
Gard and Keanu took a major step and flew to the Netherlands to meet with Mark “Duckman” Van Der Kwaak, a talented 3D CAD artist and the founder of www.dbbp.com. “We needed to discuss the tank and tail section face to face,” Gard said. The machining of this billet gas tank, made of limited pieces to ensure strength and resilience, took place in Pennsylvania. For five years, every time I wandered into LA Choprods I looked for progress on the Reeves project. It was obviously an amazing custom.
Gard is a builder’s builder. He builds for mechanical perfection, then style. Some of his bikes have a pure functioning alertness way over slick sheet metal and flashy paint. If you like a bike that looks like a tough-looking purposeful machine, Gard is your builder.
You know a builder is after perfection if he devotes five years to finish a project. “Progress came in waves,” Gard said. He decided on an Ohlins upside down super-moto front end, which he shortened, but it still has 6 inches of travel, or 2 inches of sag and 4 inches of actual rolling travel. The tail was also carefully Duckman CAD designed in the Netherlands and billet machined in Canada. “It’s exceedingly difficult and expensive to find a production machinist to billet machine a one-off part. Sometimes, one part would take months. In the future, we will be able to build anything in house.” Duckman and Gard are working on a carbon fiber front fender.
We enhanced our notes with a couple of paragraphs from Genevieve Schmitt’s article published in American Iron, Gen is the editor of WomenRidersNow.com:
The final masterpiece had them both dumbfounded. “We just kind of got carried away by what the bike did to us,” Keanu remembers. “We both were looking at the bike, and to me, well, I just loved looking at it. All the different lines and angles on it and the materials and the surfaces; it’s just aesthetically beautiful.”
Hoping the bike’s beauty was more than skin deep, Keanu put the custom through its paces. “Once I rode it—the way she sounds and the way she rides…” Keanu trails off as his mind wanders to the day he christened the bike in the canyons around Los Angeles. “It holds the lines, whether straight or in the corners, really well. And it’s nimble. The weight of it is so centralized it comes up and down and goes side to side extremely well.”
Keanu and Gard were so impressed, they took a major giant step toward turning this masterpiece into a production model, and kicked off a company named Arch Motorcycles. Gard classified it this way. “I think it is kind of unique. I guess the quickest way I could describe it is a lightweight, custom V-Rod or [Ducati] Diavel or something in that vein.”*
I’ll end this with a paragraph from Genevieve’s article. She hit the nail on the head: So, what began as a custom bike for Keanu is now a prototype that’s being tested and tweaked until roll-out day anticipated for 12 months from now. It will be proud moment for a guy who’s now ready to share his passion with others. “In a way, I was the first customer,” Keanu smiles. “And from that I can really represent my passion for the motorcycle. This is an investment, sure, but I’m also making a personal investment into it.”
