The Avengers franchise is over in the timeline as we know it. Thanos is gone. Thor has a beer gut. Iron Man has a daughter but sadly, killing Thanos killed him. Hawkeye has his family back, and Ant-Man came back to life from Thanos’ snapped-finger nothingness into a dumped van. The Black Panther came back to life, only for the world to lose Chadwick Boseman for real. 2020 has been a year even the Avengers could not live down. In the movie Avengers: Endgame, Black Widow made the ultimate sacrifice as well. But we digress, clearly, the MCU lies heavy on us.
When the world in MCU and for real was still all okay, like in the 2015 Avengers movie, Age of Ultron, where not only was the Black Widow alive and well but also clad in a black leather suit that fuelled many a fantasy; there was the Black Widow motorcycle. One that immediately caught the fancy of many fans, be it of motorcycles or Scarlett Johansson. For those who don’t know, it was a Harley-Davidson, the all-electric Live Wire… Of course, some of the actors of MCU do drive rather cool cars for real as well.
But the new motorcycle, the one featured in the upcoming MCU movie, Black Widow, is a real spitfire, so to speak. Here’s the low down on it.
Black Widow Rides A Spitfire
And now, we don’t just mean the spitfire as an adjective here, but as the actual name of the motorcycle, a scrambler by CCM known as the Spitfire.
CCM as in Clews Competition Machines is a British-based niche motorcycle brand that was founded in 1971 by Alan Crews. Crews were no motorcycle maker although he was a keen motorcyclist who would work through the week for a family-owned news agency line and compete in scramble race and trials during the weekend. When his dream to purchase a BSA scrambler was rejected, he built his own competition bike and decimated all contests, so much so that people now came to him and asked for their dream bikes to be built by him.
Thus CCM was born, with niche scramblers and bikes that have had plenty of success in motocross, trials, supermoto as well as flat-track and road racing competitions at all levels.
It was thus that the CCM Spitfire Scrambler caught the eyes of the producers at Marvel and they called the bike in for an audition to see if it would work for Scarlett Johansson, as in Black Widow. Apparently, the standard bike could handle all kinds of beating that the stunt riders could give to it and so the CCM Spitfire became Black Widow’s new ride.
CCM provided six motorcycles to the movie for shoots, stills, and otherwise ruinations through the elaborate stunts that are part of any MCU movie because their bike was so sturdy, there was no need for other alternatives for the stunts.
The Standard Spitfire
Only 250 Spitfire Scramblers have been made and on the CCM website, this motorcycle is listed as sold out.
The Spitfire name comes from the WWII fighter plane because both the motorcycle and the plane shared the same T45 steel as a frame. It even bears the logo of the Spitfire plane on the fuel lid. The 600cc motorcycle gave out 55 horses and a little more than 40 ft-lb torque, more than enough for its 300 pounds or so of dry weight.
Any more power and this nifty motorcycle could probably take to the sky.
Ride Like The Black Widow, If You Want To
Much like the earlier motorcycle favored by the Black Widow, as in the Harley-Davidson Live Wire that later became available for sale, fans can ride the Black Widow motorcycle too. While the Spitfire Scrambler is no longer available, CCM is launching a new commemorative edition to celebrate their motorcycle in a Marvel movie and have launched the Spitfire Blackout.
The insides of the motorcycle are still the same as the Spitfire, only now the frame is powder-coated in metallic black as is the tank and the carbon fiber front. There’s a grey side panel bearing red pinstripes, and the red can also be seen in the clamps, rear spring as well as the cam covers of the engine, a 630-cc single-cylinder mill taken from Husqvarna that now makes 60 horses. There’s a new stacked exhaust and this motorcycle is seven pounds lighter than the original spitfire for an added dose of energy.
Of course, this is not CCM’s first rodeo. While one of their bikes has now been immortalized as a Scarlett Johnasson or rather Black Widow’s steed; one of their others was ridden by Angelina Jolie, or should we say Lara Croft in the Tomb Raider as well. August company, right?
Sources: CCMMotorcycles, Motopinas, CycleWorld