Offerings to the God of Speed

Enlarge Image Image Gallery Oscar-winner Anthony Hopkins (right) plays Kiwi speed freak Burt Munro. On set, preparing for timing with other members of the cast.

Kiwi motorcycle speed-demon Burt Munro’s amazing life comes to the screen in Roger Donaldson’s The World’s Fastest Indian.

After speaking with Donaldson, it comes as no surprise to learn the Aussie-born director was once an avid motorcyclist, and the owner of an Indian Scout.  “Back many years ago, in the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s, I rode often. But then I moved to Los Angeles, and L.A. and motorbikes just didn’t seem such a good mix. But now I think, oh God, I wish I had one,” Donaldson says, reflecting on his years in the saddle of a WWII-era Indian Scout, followed by a postwar Norton 500 single.

Donaldson’s movie is a tribute to New Zealander Burt Munro, a man obsessed with wringing the most he could out of the 600cc Indian Scout he bought new in 1920. And wring he did, landing in the history books when he took his by-then heavily modified Scout to an officially timed 183.586mph at the Bonneville Salt Flats in 1967. It’s a record that stands to this day — no Indian motorcycle has ever gone faster. More impressive yet, Munro was 68 years old when he flew through the timers during his record run.

Munro began modifying his Indian in 1926, and for the next 50 years he single-mindedly applied himself to shaping the bike into the world’s fastest Indian. In his quest for more power, Munro made his own overhead-valve cylinder head in place of the Scout’s original flathead — he even experimented with a double-overhead cam conversion. In time, Munro almost doubled his Scout’s engine displacement, taking it to just shy of 1,000cc.

A consummate, self-taught machinist, Munro was obsessed with his Indian. He made his own cylinder castings from salvaged cast iron pipe, made pistons from melted-down cast-offs from other engines, and literally carved out connecting rods from a Ford truck axle. The Indian was his life: Munro told a friend in a 1971 letter that, “In 1948 I decided to give up work and concentrate on getting a good run out of my old bike.” Donaldson first met Munro in 1971, when, as a fledgling documentary film maker, he and then-partner Mike Smith journeyed to Invercargill, New Zealand, after hearing about Munro’s exploits at Bonneville. “Mike had his Norton, and I had my Indian, and we had heard about this old boy in Invercargill. We wrote to him, and he invited us to visit him.”