Creator of the Godet Vincent, Partrick Godet, left us in 2018, but the story begins with Fritz Egli and the Vincent Black Shadow.
The Shadow’s original frame used boxed steel with all its components bolted on. Egli replaced that with a stiffer and stronger frame made of welded tubular steel. This frame could accommodate a wide variety of engines and Egli designed a few frames around Japanese engines in the 70s, but the most well-known is the Egli-Vincent, with the Black Shadow’s 55-hp 998cc V-twin.
The Egli-Vincents used older engines but the bikes were genuinely competitive racers. Egli entered his bike in the 1968 Swiss Hill Climb Championship, and won every single race, With this victory came a flood of orders for similar Egli-Vincent models. So much so, that Egli himself couldn’t keep up. Instead, he licensed the Egli-Vincent design to a number of other builders. One of those was Frenchman, Patrick Godet.
In the early 1990s, Godet had imported a batch of Vincents and a stock of spare parts from Argentina and opened a workshop dedicated to their restoration. His restoration of an Egli-Vincent finally brought him into contact with Fritz Egli, who was so impressed by Godet’s work that he gave his permission for the Godet machines to bear the Egli-Vincent name. Godet built Godet Egli-Vincents in Rouen, France. He also established the only French factory team to compete in veteran races using specially designed Vincent classics.
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