In news so awesome, I’m tempted to believe it’s some kind of hoax, William Shatner, popular spoken word artist and America’s favorite drunken grandpa, has started a futuristic motorcycle company, and will be piloting a prototype of its first design across the United States.
Shatner will be pairing with custom bike shop American Wrench to form Rivet Motors, which will realize the octogenarian Star Trek alum’s vision of what they call “a machine as distinguished and iconic as the man himself.” (As if that was possible). To this end, Shatner wielded a strong hand in the cycle’s design, challenging his team (mere human craftsmen) to keep up with his revolutionary, fifth-dimensional ideas for “the cycle of the future.” In a promotional video on the American Wrench site, we get a glimpse into the inner workings of the collaboration, watching ol’ Captain K. blow some minds insisting that the Rivet seat two people and be covered with some kind of canopy. Ever tasteful, he demurs at the suggestion of flamethrowers.
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The three-wheeled, V8 “landjet” is a bullet, sleek and phallic and low to the ground. Nobody needed it—hell, I’ll bet no one particularly even wanted it—but this badass tricycle was an American inevitability. As soon as someone uttered the words “William Shatner should design a motorcycle,” the idea forcefully demanded its way into existence, clawing past Leonard Nimoy’s George-Foreman-Grill knockoff and Nichelle Nichols’ line of home archery sets to pierce the semi-permeable membrane that exists between reality and the world of cockamamie ideas. And yet, somehow, whether anybody needed another ultra-expensive toy or not, I’ll be damned if that crazy machine doesn’t look like an incredibly fun way to travel.
The Rivet will be available early this summer, and Shatner will personally drive the first model from Chicago, where American Wrench is headquartered, to Los Angeles. “I’ve been across this country on my thumb, in sports cars, in trucks, with a dog, with a family,” Shatner says in the promo clip. “But I’ve never been across the country in a motorcycle. I want to do that, and I’m going to do that on this new Rivet motorcycle. Why don’t you come along with me?”
