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Motorcycling History: The Ace Motorcycle

 

Israel’s Motorcycle Bandit

 

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Motorcycling History: The Ace Motorcycle

 

 

William G. Henderson

Ace Motor Corporation was a motorcycle manufacturer in continuous operation in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania between 1919 and 1924, and intermittently afterward until 1927.  Essentially only one model of the large luxury four-cylinder motorcycle, with slight variations, was made from first to last.

 

William G. Henderson, the driving force behind the company, had plenty of experience and lots of back history with the Henderson Motorcycle going into the founding of Ace Motor Corporation.

William G. Henderson

 William G. Henderson

 Henderson was born in Cleveland on November 29, 1882.  He became interested in motor design early in the history of the automotive industry.  He may have been influenced by the fact that his father was a vice president of the Winton Motor Car Company.  The young Henderson pursued educating himself and gained valuable experience as an engineer with a Cleveland-area machine shop.

William and his older brother Thomas, who was working as a sales manager at Winton Motor Car Co., formed the Henderson Motorcycle Company in 1911 in Detroit.  By 1917 the Henderson four-cylinder had become one of the premier motorcycles in the country and was being exported to foreign markets. 

That same year, they sold the company Ignaz Schwinn's company, Excelsior Motor Manufacturing & Supply Company.  Schwinn is best known, of course, for co-founding the Schwinn Bicycle Company, and eventually being sole owner.  Henderson stayed on for a time at Excelsior to help with the transition, but left in 1919. 

The founding of Ace Motor Corporation

Henderson, while working for Schwinn during the transition at Excelsior, had already begun designing a new motorcycle.  He couldn't do anything about production, however, because the terms of the sale of Henderson to Excelsior included a two year non-compete clause.  Also, Henderson was contractually no longer permitted to use his name on a motorcycle. 

In the fall of 1919, Henderson and Max Sladkin of Haverford Cycle Co. joined forces and formed the Ace Motor Corporation in Philadelphia.  Henderson was once again chief engineer for the new Ace Motorcycle and he again turned to the four-cylinder concept.  As a result of his agreement with Excelsior-Henderson, Henderson had to be careful to design a completely different machine from the Henderson.  When the Ace was introduced in 1920, it was met with favorable reviews, like the Henderson before it. 

Production of the machine was slow in the first year, but by 1922 the factory was going strong and Ace was on stable footing. 

Ace made quite a name for itself in the press by way of accomplishing some incredible feats.  In 1922 Erwin “Cannonball” Baker rode an Ace motorcycle 3,332 miles from Los Angeles to New York in just six days, 22 hours and 52 minutes, averaging 48 mpg.  In 1923, riding a custom built lightweight Ace XP-4, Red Wolverton made back-to-back timed runs on a section of Pennsylvania highway, averaging 129 mph.  Then they bolted on a sidecar, and he posted a sidecar record of 106 mph.

The beginning of the end 

Just as the company was starting to enjoy success, William G. Henderson was tragically killed in a motorcycle accident in December 1922, at age 39.

Following Henderson’s death, Arthur Lemon, who had succeeded Henderson as chief engineer at Excelsior-Henderson, came over from Henderson to take over Ace’s engineering duties. It seemed as if the company would sirvice with its new engineer, but another problem was looming over Ace.  An accounting error meant management had set the price for each bike at $335 less than cost, and the company was losing money on each sale.  By the time the accounting department figured this out, Ace was solidly in the red.  Despite efforts to correct the mistake, the company simply ran out of money.

Productioin at the original factory in Philadelphia came to a halt in late 1924.  The pieces were bought by a group of investors, who produced a few hundred bikes in Blossburg, Pennsylvania, before they realized that motorcycle productions was not the piece of cake they thought it would be.  The Blossburg group handed over production to a second group of investors incorporated under the name Michigan Motors, who moved the factory to Detroit.  The Michigan Motors groups didn't last long, with production coming to a standstill in late 1926.

Looking to expand its product line, the Indian Motorcycle Company bought the rights to Ace in the spring of 1927 and moved production to its Springfield, Massachusetts factory.  Indian was going after the police market, and to get that market they believed they needed to beef up the Ace accordingly.  The Ace became the Indian Ace, and then by mid-1928 the Indian Four.  Four-cylincer machines based on Henderson's Ace design continued in production under the Indian name until 1943.

 


1923 Ace Four Cylinder Sporting Solo, restored by Leif Jönson






1923 Ace Four Cylinder Sporting Solo, restored by Leif Jönson, sold in 2019 by Mecum Auctions in Las Vegas





1923 Ace Four Cylinder Sporting Solo, restored by Leif Jönson, sold in 2019 by Mecum Auctions in Las Vegas for $176,000

 

 



Erwin “Cannonball” Baker






Jay Leno with his 1924 Ace motorcycle




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Israel’s Motorcycle Bandit

 

In the late ’80s, Rony "Ofnobank" Leibowitz robbed 21 banks in the suburbs of Tel Aviv for more than $400,000.


He successfully evaded capture for two years, relying on a simple disguise and a clever strategy.  Local media crowned him “Ofnobank,” a combination of two Hebrew words for “motorcycle” and “bank,” and his exploits made him a national celebrity, even after he was identified and caught.

 

 

He served time in prison for his crimes, then used his unique fame to his advantage and to impart lessons of wisdom to disadvantaged children.  He has been a spokesman for motorsports brands and had his image featured on an Israeli postage stamp.

 

Story continues below


He had it all. Why did he do it?


Rony Leibovitz came from an uber-rich family. He had homes in Manhattan and in swanky Herzliya Pituach and more money than he knew what to do with. Also a pretty happy marriage, a son he adored, and a whole lot of friends.  In other words, Rony Leibovitz had it all when he went on a rampage, robbing 21 banks all over Israel in 1989 and 1990.

 

Dubbed the “Biker Bandit” – or “Ofnobank” in Hebrew – because he was said to escape the scene of the crime on his motorcycle – he quickly became the country’s most adulated outlaw, outwitting the banks and police without ever harming a soul. (He would threaten the teller with his pistol but never shot anyone, only once firing in the air.)

 

“Why did I do it?  It’s what everyone wants to know,” says  Leibovitz, who has spent much of his time since he got out of prison asking himself the same question and sharing his answer, and other parts of his ordeal, with eager audiences who pay to hear him speak.

 

“I didn’t do it for the money,” insists Leibovitz, who denies he was in debt. “I was in distress. Some people do drugs, others jump off a roof. This was my way of screaming out, of shocking the world, if you know what I mean.”

 

It had to do with his family, he explains, a wealthy clan of industrialists whom he likens to “J.R. Ewing and family – one always pitted against the other,” he says, referring to the oil magnate from the popular 1980s TV series “Dallas.”  At one point Leibovitz, the oldest of three sons, had a falling out with family members that eventually ended up in court.  But his “acting out” even if directed at his feuding family – or at the entire world – missed the mark, even as a call for attention.

 

“I was a putz,” he admits. “I mean here I was doing all this to yell, but no one could hear me, because no one knew it was me – I had to keep my whole life as a bank robber to myself.”

 

Not even his wife, Iris, knew. “One night while lying in bed, I felt I couldn’t keep it to myself any longer and I turned to her and said: ‘What would you say if I told you I was the Biker Bandit?’ After a minute of silence, she made a gesture of utter derision as though that was the most ridiculous thing she’d ever heard.  Perhaps the most bizarre part of the whole Biker Bandit story was that there was no bike.

 

His getaway vehicle?  There wasn’t one.


Leibovitz had – and still has – a motorcycle (a Honda Varadero 1000 cc), but never used it for heists. He would show up at the bank in his crash helmet just to hide his face. After the robbery, he’d walk out, hide his helmet and windbreaker in a nearby alleyway and then head straight back into the bank.

 

Leibovitz explains: “The second you commit a bank robbery, the police are already on their way.  I didn’t want to be caught, so I walked outside—where there was never a motorcycle—slowly, as not to draw attention to myself.  I took off my helmet and stuffed my windbreaker inside it, then placed them in an off-street alley where no one would find them.  What then?  Could I go home?  Hardly.  The police closed off the entire area.  And where is the one place they’d never look for me?  In the same bank that I had just robbed.  It was the hundreds of onlookers who started the rumors.  That’s when the stories began about me putting my motorcycle on a getaway truck.  Have you ever seen a truck?  How would I load a 190-kilogram motorcycle onto a truck?  I’d just slip into the crowd.  What did I do with the money I had robbed?  There was nowhere to really hide it, so I’d go back inside with everyone else and reload a portion of the stolen money into a number of accounts that I had there.”

 

Prison and starting over

 

Later, once the police had removed the roadblocks in the vicinity, he’d pick up his helmet and casually head home, some of the money tucked safely in his shirt.  In the course of 21 robberies, executed the same way, he stole about $400,000 and became a folk hero, portrayed as part Robin Hood, part sex symbol, before he was finally caught in October 1990 near his parents’ home in Ramat Gan, ironically outside a bank that he says he wasn't even planning to rob.  Within a few months of his arrest, Leibovitz lost his wife, friends, money, property and freedom.  He was sentenced to 20 years in prison and soon found himself sharing a 5-by-5 meter cell with 15 other prisoners.  At one point he had five murderers as roommates.  He appealed his sentence, which was reduced to 14 years, and eventually received a presidential pardon (one of a few hundred pardons granted that year).  In all, he served eight years in jail.


Since getting out of prison, Leibovitz has lived live to the fullest.  A former logistics officer in the IDF, Leibovitz runs a logistics business, which he says is the main source of his income.  And he tries to do some good “to make up for the past,” lecturing for free to youth and schools on why crime and drugs don’t pay.  Most of all, Leibovitz simply enjoys life in a way he never did before:  “Only someone who has lost his freedom can appreciate having it again.”

 

 



Rony Leibowitz, nicknamed Ofnobank (a combination of the words "motorcycle" and "bank" in Hebrew)
due to his reported theft methods
His story was featured in Episode 52 of the Canadian TV series Masterminds.  He has been approached by several filmmakers who want to turn his story into a movie, “…But no one has got the script quite right,” Leibovitz remarked.


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