TENACITY
ON TWO WHEELS Dave Roper is a well-known motorcycle racer and a (“pretty much retired”) motorcycle mechanic. He has raced since 1972, never missing a year and in fact never going more than five months without racing. In 1984, Roper became the first American ever to win a race at the Isle of Man TT. In 2019, he was the subject of the documentary film Motorcycle Man. His racing schedule takes him all over the world, but he makes his home in Long Island and commutes (by motorcycle, naturally) to Team Obsolete, the Brooklyn-based classic motorcycle racing team for which he still works. Roper traces his interest in vintage bikes back to 1978, when he first met Rob Iannucci, the founder of Team Obsolete. It has only deepened since then. “It seems the older I get, the more I’m interested in earlier times,”
WORDS: NATALIE HARRINGTON | PHOTOS: DAVE ROPER
THIS COLLECTOR SPOTLIGHT EMBODIES THE CURRENT EXHIBIT
he says, observing that what qualifies as “vintage” is something of a moving target. It was European Motorcycle Day, the annual Lawn Event which draws motorcyclists and collectors from all over New England and beyond, which first brought Roper to the Larz Anderson Auto Museum many years ago. This year, he generously agreed to loan his 1946 Moto Guzzi Dondolino for the latest exhibit, “STREET RALLY RACE.” While the bike you will see on display was sold as a 1946 Dondolino, it was actually built as a 1939 Moto Guzzi Condor and upgraded post-war
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to Dondolino specs. Roper sought it out because it has what he refers to as “the sacred architecture” for a motorcycle: a horizontal engine with the cylinder running parallel to the ground, just like the 350 Aermacchi he first raced at the Isle of Man. “There’s something about that architecture that very much appeals to me,” he shares. Rarity and provenance notwithstanding, Roper’s Dondolino remains an active racing bike. He has a “what man once made man can make again” philosophy, preferring to honor these machines’ intended purpose rather than placing them on a pedestal for pure admiration. Though he doesn’t believe a vintage motorcycle can be too valuable to use, he clarifies that there are limits, and
