Featured In the March 2021 issue of Roadracing World:
Cayce Pollard’s Buzz Rickman MA-1 flight jacket is the culture-allergic cool hunter’s most prized piece of apparel. The fictional protagonist of award-winning William Gibson’s novel ‘Pattern Recognition,’ Pollard’s equally fictional nylon bomber jacket is a fanatical reproduction of the U.S. Air Force jacket first issued in 1957—except that it has no identifying features on the exterior and it is black.
In the real world, such a jacket did not exist. But due to the popularity of the novel, the author and the character, Buzz Rickman—a real-world company specializing in historic reproduction clothing—created and starting selling a Cayce Pollard replica. The price is an otherworldly $690.
Why would anyone pay that kind of money for such a garment? Authenticity. The jacket is based on the 1957 Lion Uniform Company MA-1 made for the U.S. Air Force, excepting the aforementioned lack of logos and color. The material is custom-manufactured to replicate the material used by the company in 1957. The lining is made to the military specs of that year. The leather pull tab is period-correct. The pocket linings are reproduced to 1957 Air Force specs.
In other words, this jacket is real, exactly the garment Pollard would treasure. For Gibson fans, that authentic homage to a fictional ideal has real-world value. BMW knows the lure and the value of authenticity, lineage, provenance…
—Real Steel BMW Heavy Metal Cruiser, by Editor-at-Large Michael Gougis
BMW is one of the few motorcycle companies that has the history and lineage that would allow it to build a heavy metal cruiser that is an homage to a history that actually exists. So it did. Read the story of BMW’s biggest cruiser— it’s in the latest issue of Roadracing World!
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