HB: Describe the Confederate clientele base for us, Matt.
MC: Some of our clients are hardcore riders. Maybe half. With this bike the number is up a bit. With the Fighter and the Wraith…their aesthetic is more of an art form but [the Hellcat 132] is more of a purpose-built motorcycle. The one thing I’ve noticed with our clients is that they’re all very confident people. They know who they are, what they want, they know what they like, and don’t care what people think. The one thing I love about this company is that the people that appreciate it are the kind of people that don’t look externally for what they think. Unfortunately I think we live in a world where too often people try to figure out the mood of the masses. If everyone’s buying a certain product, then hey…I want that too. Then we end up where folks don’t know themselves anymore. Therefore they’re not really doing what they were put here to do. Nobody is going to buy a motorcycle from us unless they know motorcycles, and they can tell a good motorcycle from one that’s not so good. The one thing I know about our clients is that they’re all very comfortable in their own skin: men that don’t care what other people think about them. They care about what they know about themselves, which is the highest source of pride for me to be able to serve those clients. We founded this company specifically for those guys. Part of the original idea was that we thought the world was made up of too many people that just sort of went along with everything. We wanted to stand up against that. As it turned out we create vehicles for like-minded individuals. There’s absolutely no doubt that Confederates stand out from the crowd. If you pull up to the gas station guys are going to congregate around it. It exudes a sense of principled individuality.
HB: Since most of the Confederates are limited production, how many X132’s will be out on the road?
MC: What we ended up landing on with the design of this exercise is that we’re going to build 151 of this Hellcat, in a café version and roadster version. We’ve sold 54 of them as of today [time of print 5/23/12] without any promotion and I think the goal is to get the 151 presold, built, and then delivered.
HB: What can we expect next from Confederate in the future?
MC: The unexpected. The next bike I want you to ride is going to be the roadster version of the Hellcat. It’ll appeal to a different audience for sure. The next bike, which you’ll see next spring, is very different from what we’re doing. And 24 months from today [May 23, 2012] you’re going to see something you’ve never seen before. HB