Top Gun Time Machine

By Jeff Pamer

A few years ago, I wrote a piece for Bike-urious about my love of the movie Top Gun and argued that it recruited me into motorcycles at an early age. You can still find it at posted here. It’s a good read if I do say so, and really nails down my opinion of Top Gun, its main character, and the motorcycle that I fell in love with. I wrote it after I saw the trailer for the new Top Gun movie that finally came out this past May.

Years later, the article came up again in a “did we just become best friends” moment.

I had been coming to Two Wheeled Tuesdays at Eleven 10 Motorcycle Garage in Downtown Pheonix for a few months at this point. One night as people were leaving, I asked my friend Chris Elliot, a founding member of the motorcycle co op, and all-around stand-up guy,

“What’s the plan with the Top Gun bike over there?”

“Making a replica of Maverick’s bike”, he said.

“Seriously?”, I gulped.

We then chatted about Top Gun, and I sent him the article I wrote when I got home that night.  We decided that I would do a write up about the project.  

Enough About Me

Chris Elliot messaged me about a picture of my Radian that I posted on Instagram from the Eleven 10 Moto Garage account. He had fixed one up for someone and thought they were cool bikes. I had been following Eleven10 wondering if I’d ever get a chance to meet anyone down there for a few months at this point. Once we had messaged back a fourth for a bit, I told him I’d come and visit the shop. Chris was one of the first of many meaningful friendships that have come into my life from that back and forth about Yamaha Radians. 

Chris loved Top Gun since the first time he watched it as a kid. Like me, he was entranced by the GPZ900r. Unlike me though, years later in 2015, Chris started to look for a GPZ to make his very own version of Maverick’s bike. He was looking everywhere he could online but came up with nothing worth picking up. Finally, in July of 2017, he saw a post on Craigslist for 4 GPZ parts bikes out in California. Even though the post had no pictures, he and a friend drove out with a trailer to take a look. What was found was as advertised: 4 GPZ900r’s in different states of disrepair. He paid $800 for the lot of them and trailered them home. I imagine the ride home was full of exciting thoughts about building Mavericks iconic bike. 

Then they sat, because, as we all know, life has a way to pull us from our projects. Chris at that point was working out of Tempe, running a small motorcycle repair and custom shop called Aspire Cycle. In February of 2018 though, Chris got the one GPZ that was the closest to complete running. It just needed a batterie, new oil, and the carbs cleaned out. Fired right up. He rode it a bit, but was still far from completely road worthy, and even farther away from looking much like Maverick’s bike.  

Around the time that I wrote my article about Top Gun, Chris started to think about his project again, and decided to get the bike together and done for the release of Top Gun: Maverick. 

The Bike 

Kawasaki wanted nothing to do with the Top Gun production. “Oh, you have the guy from Legend, cool, hard pass”. Paramount ended up having to buy a few of the bikes out of California showrooms. Often though, the things that feel like the biggest constrictions end up paying off in ways that we didn’t expect later on. This certainly was the case for Paramount and this bike. More on that later.  

By 1984, when the GPZ900r hit showroom floors there had already been bikes that changed everything. The most recent tectonic shift in motorcycles was in 1969 with the release of the Honda CB750. This caused the entire industry to start to chase after the quality, value, and style that it offered throughout the 1970s. A couple of major effects this had was all but killing off the British motorcycle industry, and the push back from Kawasaki with the release of the Z1 in 1972. In fact, the Z1 was originally going to be released as a 750cc bike, but when Honda unveiled their bike, Kawi decided to push up the displacement.

In an effort to outdo the Z1, 12 years later Kawasaki would break free of the UJM mold and create another sector of motorcycling with the release of the GPZ900r. The bike set the tone for a style and power war that would be the modern sport bike. 

You have to understand before this bike there was nothing like it. There were fast bikes, yes, but none that broke the 150-mph speed barrier. The GPZ did that and added another 1 mph to its top speed to make sure everyone was listening. It achieved this remarkable speed with a first-of-its-kind liquid-cooled, 16 valve inline 4 cylinder engine that would put out an unheard of for the time 115hp and 63 ft-lb of torque. The engine was also thinner than other inline 4’s and was mounted lower in the frame. It wasn’t only the performance that set this bike apart from the pack. There had never been a bike that looked like this before either. With its aerodynamic fairings, it looked like a fighter jet, which is why it was chosen to be Maverick’s bike. The character would only want to be racing and shaking his fist at planes on a bike that looked and moved like one. 

Once paramount had the bikes, they had to deal with the fact that Kawasaki wanted nothing to do with the movie. So, the bikes were sent off to paint. All the badging needed to be taken off, and any signature paint schemes with it. This ended up being something of a hidden gift for Paramount. The resulting paint job and signature stickers that were added to the bike have made it not just a Kawasaki, but Maverick’s bike. It’s iconic. It’s transcended the brand, and for what it’s worth, motorcycling as well.  

Recreating Iconic

Chris had given himself his marching orders and had a deadline to hit. He sent the fairings off, that were red, Elevens’ Paint and Fiber here in Phoenix to get them sprayed the signature black and red. They came back looking perfect, but the job was far from over.

He painstakingly added the white pinstriping to all the fairings. He then detailed the bike to showroom condition before adding the fairings back on the bike during re-assembly. Finally, he used a ton of pictures to pinpoint all the placement of the stickers that Maverick added to his bike. The first time I saw the replica done, I was kind of speechless.

I know this isn’t the bike that Tom Cruise rode in 1986, but I don’t care. This is almost better. It’s a work of love and affection from someone that this movie and character spoke to. For me, it was the start of a lifelong passion. Chris’s bike brings home a piece of the past. If you can’t meet Tommy C, this might be the next best thing. The Ninja won’t try to teach you about the benifits of being a member of the church of Scientology either.  

We’re Just Getting Started

Chris has some great plans to use the bike now and into the next few years. For now, it has been on display at Kelly’s Kawasaki, which is of course ironic seeing how Top Gun was not something that Kawasaki’s orginial feelings about the movie. Another amazing partnership that Chris set up is with the Pima Air and Space Museum just south of Tucson. The bike was displayed in front of their F-14 Tomcat. The same plane that Maverick flew in the movie.  

In the near future, there are also plans to get the bike out to California. There Chris wants to ride the bike around to different locations from the movie, and to do some picture and video work. Locations include; Charlie’s House, Miramar Airbase, some volleyball courts, and I’m going to be pushing hard for a trip to Liberty Station. Hopefully someone can try to talk to me, while I rev up the GPZ and let them know, in no uncertain terms, that I cannot, in fact, hear them.