Japan Meets Britain

G-Man · Post by **G-Man** » Thu Apr 26, 2018 2:20 pm

Looks like a friendly bunch.....

G

Vince Lupo wrote:The final photo in this long and strange trip -- the SuperHawk amongst its new friends.

The SuperHawk and its New Friends by Vince Lupo, on Flickr

Many thanks for tagging along on this ride.

Phil-UK · Post by **Phil-UK** » Mon Apr 30, 2018 8:01 am

Looks like the new guy at school and possibly the smallest ... last video the bike sounded as sweet as a nut ( why a nut and not a toffee ? ). Hope it gets out on the tarmac as much as before,

Phil

Vince Lupo · Post by **Vince Lupo** » Tue Nov 20, 2018 10:44 am

Just when I thought the story of my bike was over.....

My friend Lee (who, as you may recall, has done a lot of the custom painting on my bike), just purchased this 1/16th scale MPC model of a SuperHawk. He sent me these photos last night of the kit and decal sheet -- hmm, something looks rather familiar!

SuperHawk Kit1 by Vince Lupo, on Flickr

SuperHawk Kit2 by Vince Lupo, on Flickr

SuperHawk Kit4 by Vince Lupo, on Flickr

SuperHawk Kit4a by Vince Lupo, on Flickr

I designed the crossed flags, and Lee hand-painted the red ribbon with the '1966' back in 2010. The curved white 'SuperHawk' lettering for my pedestrian slicer was done in at least 2007. So what the heck is going on????

I contacted the company, Round2 Corp (who owns MPC) this morning to find out how my custom-designed artwork ended up in their model. The licensing dept is currently (I hope!) researching how that happened. The fellow I spoke with told me that they normally submit a copy of the decals for a given model to the company (Honda in this case) for approval, so he was surprised that Honda would have approved these.

I'll be interested to see, what, if anything will happen. Clearly their designers did research online, saw my bike, thought those designs were cool and subsequently added them to the kit. What they didn't realize is that those were custom designs, bought and paid for by me. We'll see how it turns out!

Tim Allman · Post by **Tim Allman** » Tue Nov 20, 2018 3:01 pm

It's good to see you back!

You know what they say about imitation and flattery. That being said I think you have good reason to be grumpy given that they are making money from your designs without consent.

revlover · Post by **revlover** » Tue Nov 20, 2018 7:16 pm

Do any of those license plate numbers correspond with any of our members' bikes? I'd be willing to bet they got the speedometer decal and tank badge images from here too.

flathead · Post by **flathead** » Thu Nov 22, 2018 9:37 am

Hey Vince, the strangest things happen these days with the availability of info.
A couple of years ago when Scotty Moore , Elvis' Guitar Player, passed away, I went to his
website just browsing around. I see a link to Elvis' motorcycles. OK so I click on it and there is a picture taken in my basement of my 1955 Harley 165. http://scottymoore.net/elvisharley56kh.html

Yep, thats my bike in my basement

Where they got it , I don't have a clue.

Anyway, when I sold the bike on Ebay, I put the link in the description.

The bike sold VERY WELL and now sits in some Eastern European Collection.

Vince Lupo · Post by **Vince Lupo** » Mon Dec 03, 2018 4:14 pm

I finally have an update on the Honda model kit...

I spoke with Round 2 Corp's CEO, Craig Lundquist, and everything has been resolved. On their next reorder of the kit (which hopefully will in fact happen!), they'll include both my name and Lee's name in the kit. Of course I was hoping that it would also include Caribbean vacation homes for both of us, but this is a fair solution.

I did suggest to Craig that on the next reorder that he make the bike black instead of blue, include a pedestrian slicer (so that the SuperHawk decals could then be properly used), include three checkered stripe decals for the tank and fenders, and then they could rename it 'The Vince Lupo Japan Meets Britain SuperHawk'. I'm pretty sure they'd sell like hotcakes :)