Lee Conn Talks Motus Motorcycles

NASHUA, NH – Whether planned or merely a coincidence, it was nonetheless fitting that the three demo motorcycles that Lee Conn brought to Nashua recently were colored red, white and blue. After all, the bikes were American-made, but not built by a company based in Milwaukee rather one that’s headquartered in Birmingham, AL.

“We’re patriots, and we’re manufacturing freaks, and we’re motorcycle guys and we’re hot rod nuts,” explained Conn, who is president and co-founder of Motus Motorcycles. Conn’s spent the past seven years building Motus as a brand devoted to high-performance, sport-touring machines.

If Harley-Davidson, which is based in Milwaukee, builds the best-selling bikes in the country, Motus crafts what may be the least-selling bikes in the world, at least for now, and for a good reason. “We hand build these one by one and there’s just incredible detail and focus on quality,” said Conn.

Conn was at Motus’ lone New England dealer, Rocket Moto Sport, hosting a two-day demo event when RIDE-CT caught up with him. Riders from throughout the region had converged to test the 165-horsepower MST and the 180-horsepower MSTR models. In an interview, he recalled the company’s creation.

“In 2008 when the world was on fire, we figured there was a sort of counterintuitive opportunity to get in the wood shed for a few years and, while the economy was coming back around, for us to really get down and build a really great American motorbike,” he said.

What inspired him was the automotive industry. Detroit was beginning to pump out new generation sports cars like the Corvette, Camaro and Mustang. “Those cars have come so far in terms of styling and performance, but the American bikes stopped in terms of performance and styling a few years ago,” said Conn.

 

“We live in Alabama. We ride to Tennessee and Georgia and North Carolina. We need to be on the Interstate for several hours but when we get off on the good stuff, we ride pretty hard. There really wasn’t anything there on the American scene that would do that for us. We like American cars, we like American motorcycles, and we figured where’s the two-wheeled  ’Vette? Italy’s got it. Germany’s got it. The Japanese have got it, but where’s the American sport bike?”

Conn said that what sets Motus’ models apart from other motorcycles is its V4 ‘Baby Block’ motor. “We started with a clean sheet of paper and we set out to design – for the kind of riding we do – the ultimate motorcycle motor. We’re street riders. We said from 20 to 90 (mph) that’s where we’re always at; from 20 to 90 let’s make something that just shreds. Can it go 170? Yeah, it can do that but at some point who really cares?  We wanted something that had tons of torque, and smooth, and had some character. That’s what’s missing from a lot of the modern bikes.”

What isn’t missing from Motus motorcycles are quality parts. All are built using Öhlins forks, Brembo brakes. They use either an Öhlins or Progressive mono-shock and all come with a Sargent seat. In briefing riders before leading them on a demo ride, Conn lamented, “We’re the only consumers in the world that will go out and spend good money on a machine (knowing) there were parts on that you were going to replace that day. As motorcyclists, we’ve been sort of conditioned to sort of say, ‘That’s cool or fun.’ It ain’t cool or fun. It’s a bunch of BS because we just paid good money for that bike. Why are we throwing the mufflers out? Motus has a different philosophy of let’s just build a bad-ass bike.”

The challenges now for Motus are to expand its dealer network and to raise its visibility among motorcyclists. Conn views these tasks as being simply part of the process of building the company.

“The engineering was a big process, the testing was a process, development was a process, setting up for manufacturing, certification – all of those were processes and this is a process,” he said. “We go out and throw people the keys and say, ‘Here’s the bike. Do you like it? Do you want one?’ It’s pretty simple.”

Here’s the full interview with Lee Conn:

(Originally published in “The Republican-American” on July 4, 12015.)