The vintage motorcycles

You would be more likely to see these motorcycles in a museum than on the streets of Daytona Beach during Bike Week.

There's a Munch Mammut of 1970, part of a rare line of motorcycles built with a car engine which reputedly made it the fastest bike of its era.

A 1929 Indian 45ci Hill Climber, still bearing its original paint, is on display. There's a 1950 replica of the Harley-Davidson that Norman Rockwell painted for a Saturday Evening Post cover. And there's the main showpiece, a rare 1929 Harley-Davidson JDH once owned by the Hollywood stuntman for actor Steve McQueen.

The vintage motorcycles are among the 200 to be auctioned off in DeLand at the 23rd annual Daytona Antique and Classic Bike Show and Swap Meet, at Stetson University — a sideshow to the Daytona Beach street party.

"Where else can you see an accumulation of such rare motorcycles in one spot?" said Glenn Bator, the southern California motorcycle restorer running the four-day show at Stetson's Edmunds Center. "This is the history of motorcycles."

It's not like other Bike Week shows, which usually feature flashy new Road Kings or choppers with elaborate paint schemes.

These bikes hail from European manufacturers, hard-to-find production lines or long-lost brands coveted by history buffs and high-end memorabilia collectors.

The auction was originally founded in 1987 by Jerry Wood of Crystal River, well before the business of vintage motorcycles became lucrative. The market for classic bikes boomed in the mid-1990s, as motorcycles became more mainstream and as baby boomer riders sought out the motorcycles of their youth. Wood's auction outgrew its original Daytona location and was moved to DeLand, as city officials there became more interested in drawing Bike Week crowds.

Last year, Wood announced he would fold his long-running show, but Bator stepped in to take it over. This year's events include a trade show and swap meet, a vintage motorcycle show Friday, with the American Historic Racing Motorcycle Association and Saturday's auction.

Bator's own career in motorcycles started with one such collector, the late Otis Chandler, publisher of the Los Angeles Times newspaper.

About 1980, Chandler attended a vintage car-racing event in Palm Springs, Calif., where Bator was selling a 1957 Harley Sportster that he had personally restored.