CSC Blog

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!   Wow, what a year this has been!  And that new development I promised?  Well, boys and girls, here it is…take a look at our motorcycle maestro on his latest creation!

The Master of All Things Mechanical...Steve on his latest CSC masterpiece!

Yep, our very own trike.  You can’t buy it yet, but come this Spring, you’ll be able to purchase the entire CSC trike kit and it will be a 100% “bolt on” package.  No welding, no cutting, no painting…just nuts and bolts.   Steve and the boys spent a lot of time on this one, and it’s a honey! 

The California Scooter Trike....available in Spring 2012 as a bolt-on accessory for your favorite motorcycle!

Steve told me about the plans for this unit, and it’s going to be great.   We won’t sell complete trikes…you’ll have to buy a CSC motorcycle and the accessory trike package, but it sure looks and feels cool!  Steve even let me fire it up and take it for a ride…and my smile is real!

Our engineering development prototype trike unit isn’t finished yet…it’s just the bare bones right now.   But it’s fully functional, and I’ll tell you what:  It works!  Steve wants to work on getting the gearing perfect, finishing a few minor engineering details, and developing a family of trike accessories. The accessories list sounds super cool…a pickup bed…a polished wood stake bed…a rear seat option…a service compartment…and the list goes on!  My guess is that a lot of folks will want to buy the bare bones trike kit, and design their own package for it.   Maybe we’ll even do one with a monster auxiliary gas tank and use it in the next Hell’s Loop Rally!

Yep, this is our 400th blog! 

It sure is fun doing this…

I’ve got a bunch of cool stuff to share with you over the next few days, and then I’ll be off on another secret mission to the other side of the world (so my entries may not be appearing as often as they sometimes do, depending on where I can get to the Internet).  But for now, well…take a look at these!

This first awesome photo is Carefree John Schwamm’s absolutely gorgeous yellow CSC motorcycle with a matching Grumman Widgeon…what a cool pair of machines these classics are!

Check out the hand-painted Mustang logo on John’s California Scooter…it sure looks good! 

The Widgeon is an airplane with an interesting history.  Originally intended to be a civilian airplane and manufactured from 1941 to 1955, it saw use by the US Navy, the US Army, the Civil Air Patrol, the US Coast Guard, and Britain’s Royal Navy.  During World War II, one of the Coast Guard’s Widgeons actually attacked a German submarine!  Grumman only built 276 of these beautiful airplanes, so what you see here is a pretty rare animal.  

John, thanks for sharing this dynamite photo with us…your California Scooter and its Mustang heritage look right at home with that classic airplane!

Let’s fast forward 60 years, and take a look at the latest in high performance police motorcycles.  Here are two more cool photos…these show the ST1300 motors used by the Titusville, Florida, boys in blue.   My good buddy Ken Streb sent these photos to us, and I gotta tell you, the bikes look good!

Ken, thank you for sending these in…they look great!

And hey, let’s roll the clock back again…in looking at that gorgeous Grumman Gosling above (“Gosling” was the Widgeon’s nickname), I remembered a photo I grabbed a year or so ago at the Chino Airport.  It’s one I posted a few hundred blogs ago (wow, it sounds cool saying that!) showing my Baja Blaster in front of another World War II seaplane…

And that one brought to mind two more photos of our California Scooters in front of World War II warhorses…these were in the blog maybe a hundred or so entries back…

That last one above, of course, shows the Boss with a couple of interesting Mustangs…one is our Greaser, and the other is a P51.   I grabbed another shot of Steve today on a very, very interesting new product…but I’m getting ahead of myself here…

Keep an eye on your favorite blog, folks…there’s more coming your way!

Hey, check these out!  Yep, it’s a polished solid stainless steel kickstand, it’s only $49.95, and if it takes you more than a couple of minutes to install it on your California Scooter you’re doing something wrong!

You can buy this direct from Steve and Lisa, our Arcadia Cushman buddies, and you can reach them at (317) 984-2874!

Wanna know what it was like riding in the Hell’s Loop Endurance Rally a couple of weeks ago?  Well, here you go…check out Alan Spears’ video, brought to you directly from the pilot’s seat!

If you sit in a freezer while you’re watching the above video, you’ll pretty much have it!

What in the world are those boys up to….???

Whoa, check this out!   Bling-a-mundo!

Between now and the end of the year, all CSC motorcycle accessories are 20% off of our retail price! That’s quite a deal!

Take a look at this quick collage we put together showing just a few of the dynamite accessories we offer…but please recognize our holiday sale is not limited to these items…it’s 20% off of every accessory in our catalog, and it’s good between now and the end of the year!

And one more thing, boys and girls…I don’t know if it’s the holiday spirit or if TK’s been breathing too many nitromethane fumes from the NHRA dragstrip across the street, but he’s cut some deals on new bikes in the last few days that have absolutely blown me away!  If you’re thinking about a new CSC motorcycle, now’s the time to give TK a call at 800 884 4173!

Yep, March is right around the corner, boys and girls.   Check out the fun MSILSF has in store for us this time!

Folks, these events are a lot of fun.   If you want to do something a bit different…well, okay…a lot different, you’ve got to check this out.  I had a blast at the last MSILSF endurance rally, and you can bet I’ll be at this one, too!

Will we see you there?

Go ahead…click on the link…make sure you’ve got a cup of coffee and some time.

http://www.go-faster.com/SS100.html

Gotta love it!

You may recall a blog entry we did a while back featuring the bike we built for Jim Claeyssen, the Village President of Cherry Valley, Illinois.  Jim’s bike is a real sharp yellow Classic with our signature whitewalls.   Check out this nice note TK received from Jim a few days ago…

Hi T.K.,

I checked out the BLOG (I read it pretty regularly) and the crazy ride you guys did on Saturday.  Who would think it would be that cold in Death Valley?  I was impressed too that you guys rode 400 miles in 40 degree weather!  And the guy who won it all, on a 49cc Kymco scooter!  Wow!  By the way, were you riding a 2012 bike?  It looked like that new gun-metal gray color I saw in the motel picture.  Tell Steve that the 2012 colors look really nice…

I had my scooter out last weekend and got to put another 45 miles on it; the more I ride it the more everything is “breaking in” really nice. I was up at the office (Village Hall) last week with my bike (see attached pictures).  My Police Chief says he wants a blue one and my Public Works Director says we wants a white one to add to their fleet of vehicles.  And I do feel like a “Rock Star” when people stop me and want to know all about my bike.  My California Scooter makes me feel like a kid again.

By the way…my new license plate came in; I hope you like it!

Regards,

Jim E Claeyssen
Village President
Cherry Valley, IL

Thanks for your kind words, Jim, and for those great photos.   I’ve experienced the same kind of break-in on my bike as you have as yours.  As these bikes get more miles on them, they run more smoothly and they perform better.   I have about 4000 miles on my Scooter now, and it is much quicker and smoother than it was when it was new.   My bike ran marvelously during the Death Valley Endurance Rally (it was one of the best rides ever).  I’ve found that running with the Mobil 1 4T synthetic oil (which we sell) also improves the bikes’ performance, smoothness, and shifting.

Eric, Steve, and Eric's brand new Greaser!

More good stuff, folks…lots of CSC motorcycles are headed to Australia.  Tony and his crew have been diligently working a big shipment for the Land Down Under, and they are due to leave La Verne shortly…

These bikes and more, including all the ones already crated in the background, are headed to the Land of Oz!

Selling bikes in the southern hemisphere is a good thing (that’s where Australia is), as their summer is our winter (and vice versa).  It takes the seasonality out of the motorcycle business, so we don’t experience the “driving off a cliff” sales drop that other manufacturers do as we approach our winter.   It’s a cool deal.

CSC in Death Valley, November 2011!

And even more good stuff…we’re now selling bikes in…wait for it…Japan!  You know what they say…you meet the nicest people on a CSC!   (You old timers out there, like me, will remember that advertising line…and how it rocked the motorcycling world in the 1960s…)

You know, I’m still thinking about that great Death Valley Hell’s Loop endurance rally we ran last weekend.  It sure was fun, and I’ve already forgotten about how cold it was.   All I remember is the great riding, and it sure had plenty of that.   There’s something special about our great Mojave Desert, and there’s something very special about Death Valley.   The scenes were vivid, as are the memories.   If you’re thinking about riding a California Scooter, you’re thinking in the right direction.  Take all the excuses and all the reasons why you haven’t joined our world yet, put them in a bag, and toss them.   This is a fun lifestyle and these are great motorcycles.   I’m really proud of our bikes…400 miles of running flat out through Death Valley, with the throttle pegged nearly the entire time, and we never missed a beat.   To borrow another old advertising slogan, our CSC motorcycle engines can take a licking and they’ll keep on ticking!

That’s it for now, folks.   More to follow in the next few days!