FitzSimons may have an emotional attachment to these motorcycles, but he maintains a businessman’s attitude toward collecting. His involvement with the brand began 30 years ago when he first took an interest in British bikes. Guided by passion, but anchored by pragmatism, he urges would-be buyers to "collect the very best, and also the very best examples of the very best."

With their value at an all-time high, this moment in Brough Superior history is opportune because the enthusiasts who appreciate the quirky British motorcycles also happen to be wealthy enough to afford them. "When you have guys at my age at their peak earning power," Leno says, "they go back to the stuff that was hot when they were a kid. When I was a kid, the Brough Superior was a legendary motorcycle." He adds that in the 1960s, a Ford Model T was $8,000 to $10,000, a value that persists in 2005 because the people who felt attachments to them are now dead. "I think Brough Superiors will always be valuable," he says, "but I think they will be most valuable right now. I don’t know if guys in their 20s will be willing to spend $100,000 for one."

VALUE JUDGMENT: Known for both its rarity and beauty, the Brough Superior sits at the top of any motorcycle collector’s wish list. Manufactured between the world wars in Nottingham, England, by designer and racer George Brough, only 1,000 of the handmade bikes still exist, a fact that fuels a very competitive collector market.

Robert D. Arnott, a financial analyst in Pasadena, Calif., and a Brough collector, concurs with Leno. "It’s people of my generation wanting to recapture their youth," Arnott says. "I tend to like bikes that are the fastest and rarest of their era. [Brough Superiors] were the fastest production bikes of the 1920s and ’30s, and their long-legged elegance was appealing to me. There’s nothing rough-edged about them, and I decided they would be a natural addition to my collection."

Of course, this type of investment always involves an element of danger. "Any collectible is illiquid," FitzSimons warns, "because it is subject to the whims of the market. I don’t care if a guy’s worth $10 million, if economic signs are better and the stock market’s going up, he won’t be as aggressive about collecting." Other forces also come into play in the world of six-figure motorcycle collecting. Word-of-mouth usually precedes auction houses or dealers, and at that rarified level, sellers are at the whims of a very finicky group of buyers.

Care and Feeding
Collecting and riding Brough Superiors is also complicated by the fact that they sometimes require very creative maintenance. They are best serviced by a small cadre of technicians who are familiar with their design and have a knack for imaginative solutions to mechanical problems. Schoenewald, who takes pride in riding his 1930 SS100 frequently, experienced an engine seizure and immediately called his friend Allen Millyard, an engineer and mechanical guru in Great Britain who searched the parts market for a replacement. Millyard located a pair of pistons that cost $800 each and required a two-month waiting period for delivery. Because there is no official factory support for Brough Superiors, the custom pistons would not necessarily affect the value of the bike, nor would they offer an intrinsic mechanical advantage. Millyard instead improvised with two Kawasaki pistons, and machined the engine’s valves in order to fit the Japanese parts. "As long as the external appearance remains the same, it’s perfectly acceptable to modify the internal parts to gain a bit of reliability," Millyard explains. Because 1930s metallurgy does not compare to modern technology, the new pistons offered an efficient and cost-effective solution.

FINDING A BROUGH Because there are so few Brough Superiors in existence, would-be collectors may have a hard time finding one for sale. A good place to connect with other enthusiasts and learn more about the market for these motorcycles is at broughsuperiorclub.com, the website of Brough Superior Club, a group based in Nottingham, England. Brough Superiors and memorabilia occasionally turn up for auction at Bonhams & Butterfields, and even eBay. Finally, both the Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum in Birmingham, Ala., and the National Motorcycle Museum in Anamosa, Iowa, offer Brough exhibits and can provide sales information on various collector bikes.

The economics of restoring such an exotic motorcycle can be counterintuitively forgiving. "It costs just as much to restore a valuable bike as a not-valuable bike," Leno says. "You pick up a 650 Triumph and put 100 hours into it, and it’s not going to be worth as much as a Brough Superior you’ve put 100 hours into." Of course, there will always be self-proclaimed experts who snobbishly insist on giving the bikes a certain type of attention, but Leno’s attitude, like that of most Brough Superior owners, is refreshingly egalitarian. "Obviously, you want to use period fittings, but Brough never really built a motorcycle, he just used the best parts he could," Leno says. "It’s not like these guys that have Ferraris who only put Italian air into the tires."

A common denominator among most North American Brough enthusiasts is their insistence on riding their bikes regularly, a practice that essentially disregards the notion of the bikes as precious, horded commodities that collect dust for the sake of future return. Millyard says that he does not know any Britons who own one; most Brough Superiors in the United Kingdom, he says, are museum bikes. "You read about them in classic mags, and they get taken out on a very dry Sunday, ridden at 25 mph for three minutes. They’re seen as national heritage in England, so you couldn’t possibly ride it because you might crash it." In contrast, not only do most U.S. owners ride their Broughs regularly, several claim to enjoy near triple-digit speeds–despite their notoriously spotty brakes.

Basem Wasef is a freelance writer based in Los Angeles.

Photograph by Randy Cordero/Cordero Studios.