AGV Backmarker: Sniffing Out Roadog

Is there such a thing as “the most famous motorcycle?” If you’re sitting in a tavern anywhere in the American Midwest, looking at a poster on the wall through the bottom of beer mug … well, from that perspective the most famous motorcycle is probably Wild Bill Gelbke’s “Roadog.”

Wild Bill stopped for a couple of beers in the small town of Bascobel, in southern Wisconsin. The bartender called the local paper and told a reporter, “You’ve gotta see this.” The newspaper photo has since been reproduced countless times.

There’s an iconic image of Gelbke, a stocky little guy in his mid-30s, astride his first Roadog. The photo was shot in 1971 by a reporter for The Bascobel Dial, a Wisconsin newspaper. Gelbke’s wearing engineer boots, chaps, and a sawn-off jacket. There are signs visible in the background advertising Blatz and Hamm’s beer. According to the photo’s caption, he had stopped in Bascobel to quaff a couple. A ride across the state was nothing for him; they say that once, he decided he wanted a steak—and rode to Oklahoma.

That photo was reprinted as a poster that’s now ubiquitous in garages and bars, especially in Illinois and Wisconsin, where Gelbke is a homegrown myth. The photo has already outlived him, as he was killed in a shootout with police in ’78.

That behemoth of a motorcycle has outlived him, too. And although you couldn’t get further from the bikes I normally ride, I’ve always had a perverse fascination for Roadog. For a while, I was tormented by the fact that one of two Roadogs that Gelbke built had been bought by a San Diego-based financier, who planned to make the monstrosity the centerpiece of an automotive museum in his hometown of Winnemucca, Nevada. Every few months, I’d call his secretary, hoping to arrange to see, or better yet ride, Roadog. He never called back. That set up sort of a so-near-yet-so-far longing in me.

You wouldn’t know to look at him, but Gelbke was a trained engineer who briefly worked in the Southern California aerospace industry. Even back then, he was known as Wild Bill. He was someone you wanted as a friend, both because he was handy in a bar fight and because he had a poor tolerance for anyone who wasn’t a friend.

Wild Bill Gelbke. He was not above self-promotion. Note the embroidered Roadog patch.

He returned to his Midwest roots and opened Bill’s Auto & Cycle Clinic, on Cicero Avenue in Chicago. This was during Harley-Davidson’s AMF period, and the British industry was in freefall, too; he was frustrated that cars were far more reliable than motorcycles. That was the inspiration for Roadog, which was basically a motorcycle made out of car components. The motor and two-speed automatic transmission were pulled from a Chevy.

The resulting behemoth weighed about as much as a Chevy (minus a couple of wheels and bodywork). Gelbke could handle it, either because he knew it so well or because he was deceptively strong. He built Roadog II—a nearly identical machine—for one of his friends, but no one else was ever comfortable riding it.

Later, he called his shop the Gelbke Motorcycle Company and produced the Gelbke Auto-Four, which was sold with a 1275cc Leland four and Girling hydraulic disc brakes, “of the type used on 12 cylinder Jaguar race cars.” Despite the $6,750 base price—the equivalent of $35,000 in today’s money—Gelbke sold a handful of Auto-Fours. I’m sure they were a handful too. They might have seemed reasonable after Roadog, but they still weighed about 1,200 pounds with a full tank.

In response to a customer inquiry, Gelbke described it as  “a machine that fulfills every dream of the touring cyclist … A cycle that will put you in front and effortlessly keep you there; mile after trouble- and vibration-free mile.” The rest of the letter, which ran to five pages of single-spaced type, suggests obsessive-compulsive disorder, if not paranoia. But Gelbke was right about the durability of the Auto-Four; most of the units he made seem to have survived.

My friend Buzz Walneck is the publisher of Walneck’s Classic Cycle Trader. He ran an ad in his magazine, seeking information about the bike in that famous photo. He got a phone call from someone offering to sell him Roadog II. Buzz used it to generate publicity for his magazine at motorcycle events around the Midwest. Eventually he tired of dragging it around, and sold it. That was the bike that passed through Winnemucca. It’s now in a museum in Iowa, where they realized after acquiring it that it was far too big to display. Luckily, they found an abandoned Wal-Mart to serve as a new premises.

Bob Mondo, a Midwest attorney, has restored a couple of Auto-Fours. This was Gelbke’s smaller bike. A paltry 1,200 pounds...

“I rode it nine times,” Buzz told me. Note that each individual time he rode it was permanently etched in his memory. Buzz met many people who claimed to have known Wild Bill. Some of them probably had even met him. Most said that his shooting was a tragedy, if not murder.

Now, those barflies and bikers weren’t the type of people who’d naturally take the cops’ side. No one disputes the underlying facts of the shooting, which are that a neighbor called police, reporting gunshots from Gelbke’s rural property. There was an armed confrontation in which a cop was grazed by a bullet. Another cop then shot Wild Bill in the back. His supporters emphasized the “shot in the back” aspect of the story and downplay the “he shot a cop” part of the tale by saying that the cop was barely injured—as though maybe because Gelbke missed, he should be excused.

Next time I’m in the Midwest, I’ll find Roadog and at least look at it, though I don’t imagine they’ll let me take it for a spin. As for really learning who Wild Bill Gelbke was … tracking down his legend, interviewing those who knew him, reviewing the police reports; all that stuff is one of the great stories I’d love to write if I ever have the time or a client for it.

Until then, I just have to wonder whether he was a misunderstood genius or another nut job. Look at the pics and decide for yourself. Either way, his shooting perfectly suits an American myth. We have no problem lionizing our outlaws—especially ones that were shot in the back.

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