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Ewan McGregor narrates an orderly and perhaps too polite profile of the engineer and inventor behind some of the world’s finest motorbikes Speed is expensive, as Ewan McGregor did not say in Trainspotting. The line was uttered by Philip Vincent, a Harrow-educated motorbike designer who made some of the world’s fastest – and priciest – motorbikes of the postwar era. This serviceable documentary narrated, a bit blandly, by McGregor tells Vincent’s story with contributions by fellow celebrity petrolheads Jay Leno and the Clash’s Paul Simonon.Vincent was clearly a man of extraordinary drive and determination. He went into business aged 19, after being booted out of Cambridge for spending more time tinkering than studying engineering. When he opened a factory in Stevenage, they’d test drive the motorbikes on local roads; an employee once got caught doing 110 mph on the motorway. This was in the 1930s, and when the case came to trial, the judge refused to believe a motorbike could reach such a speed, and dismissed the case, warning the police not to waste court time. Continue reading...