Milestone: First Windshield Fabricated in Skovde, Sweden.

A generational business started over a smart-butt comment, "Oh I'll make you one". Leif Gustafsson (age 20) and his friends were unloading a crated motorcycle with one of the first "road race fairings" on it. The windshield was packaged separately on it. The friend who ordered this bike joked, "what happens if I break this windshield?".

Leif quickly commented, "Oh! I'll make you one! (yea right!)". And guess what happened? Leif had to figure out how to make his first windshield.

He first started making them in his grandfather's basement, in a small town, Vamb, near Skovde, Sweden. They had built an "oven" and a blowing table to blow acrylic bubbles. From there, he used his grandfather's bandsaw (at his carpentry shop) to trim the bubbles to fit.

Fun Fact: This is the same band-saw we use today! In it's carpentry shop, it was driven from a leather belt connected to the main shop's crankshaft. Where all the tools were connected!

They eventually made a deal with the carpentry shop to take the band-saw home, and actually put it in the basement!

Work Hard, Play Hard: Elit Motor's First "Shop Build"

Leif started his business, first named "Elit Motor", by working at a bakery in the morning. Like, early morning! His shift started at 3AM and he would make bread and then deliver it locally. He would be home by 10am! A quick nap and then onto his next project...

As motorcycles with fairings became more popular, the niche was solidified for Leif as a "local" windshield supplier. He made a deal with his grandfather to build a garage on their property so he could fabricate windshields for customers.

His customers included local motorycle club members, along with racers (some overlap in those circles). He loved meeting his customers. So he went to them!

At that time, there were only a handful of models, and mostly just CLEAR as a windshield tint choice. With options limited, he would make a large batch of windshields, load up his van, and drive throughout Europe to different tracks to meet his customers where they needed the parts. Assen was a popular track in Denmark that we have footage from.

"Elit Motor" was re-branded to "Fairing Screen Gustafsson"

If Leif was still around, he could give us a monthly breakdown of what challenges he faced during his lifetime as a windshield fabricator and businessman. Unfortunately, Leif passed away October 24th, 2019. And boy did he take a lot of stories with him.

If you had the pleasure of meeting him, you would know he always had something to say. But let's not get sidetracked!

Overall, the trajectory and idea remained the same. Provide a quality product to customers and they will tell their friends. The trend of road racing fairings quickly becamse popular with all the manufacturers. Fairing manufacturers themselves first got going in the 1970's. Rickman(UK), Vetter(USA), Avon(UK), Dunstall(UK), Krauser(Germany), and Bates(USA), among many others.

Fairing Screen Gustafsson moved overseas to St. Augustine, Florida

This actually started with a girl, surprisingly... Leif's best friend Clas, moved to St Augustine after visiting and marrying a Floridian. Leif decided Florida would be a great place to move the business and he loved the small town of St Augustine. With everything packed in a container, he shipped the business overseas.

It took him a while to find some land, but eventually he found an acre of land with a 400 square foot garage which would be the new home of Fairing Screen Gustafsson for the next 20 years.

Daytona - One of the benefits of St Augustine was the proximity to Daytona, Florida. A central hub for motorcycle racing back in the day which continues today. Leif would do the same, load up the van full of bubbles, and head to the track to sell to racers in need.

Fairing Screen Gustafsson and Beasley Fiberglass had garages side-by-side at the end of pit-row. Leif eventually brought tools and would make the windshields on the spot.

Going big time with the Daytona era...

Each year, for 20 years straight, Leif and his current crew of the season would make their way to Daytona in March. They did about 3 months worth of volume in one week!

They fabricated windshields for individual racers along with big time manufacturer teams. Kawasaki, Suzuki, Honda, Yamaha, Harley Davidson, etc, etc.

Leif was well known for his optically clear and slippery race windshields. Helping the factory teams help put his name on the map. At this time, he was shipping windshields all over the country and even internationally. Mostly through an extensive dealer and distributor network.

It was during this era that businesses would advertise in magazines, and include a "Catalog Request" clipping that potential customers would mail to us with a check for $1.25 so we could ship out a catalog to them. The $1.25 covered postage and the catalog costs!

Airtech was born!

Kent Riches was a great visionary and product designer. Starting out in a small shop in California with some friends, Airtech Streamlining and Moto Design Group was started.

Details are fuzzy on the exact beginnings, but it was the start of the largest collection of motorcycle bodywork in the world!

Airtech + Fairing Screen Gustafsson = Winning

Factory race teams along with smaller (sometimes more well funded) teams relied on Airtech bodywork and Gustafsson windscreens. Beyond horsepower and having the right tuner, the aerodynamics played a big part. Especially on the big turns of Daytona.

And then enters Buell... Fairing Screen Gustafsson was the proud supplier of Buell windshields during the first big production runs. This made Leif swear to never do business with an OEM again. He loved making parts. Negotiating, contracting, and then trying to get paid from Buell left a sore spot.

8x more space!

This is one we kind of wish we didn't have to write about. For lot's of reasons, the property north of St Augustine was sold. The 400 sq/ft building just wasn't enough. And there were not enough resources to build on the property (enter gov't bureaucracies and requirements to develop land to meet code adjacent to highways, blah blah blah)

Regardless of woulda-coulda-shoulda, the business re-located to PLENTIFUL space of 3,000 sq/ft warehouse. Wow! So much space for molds! All the machines and equipment in one place. AND within an industrial park with better amenities.

The "Blowing Machine"

Despite not finishing middle school, Leif was great at engineering solutions to complex problems. And he wasn't afraid to stay committed to making quality products. Return on Investment? Ehh, it will come around!

With more space to make new toys, Leif was tired of blowing bubbles using an old blowing table that had more "band-aids" then original bones. So he drew up a "blowing machine" and started buying parts.

This machine worked great! You'd heat up the material in a small oven, and take your hot acrylic to the machine, lower the cage, and magic! (air pressure, oval profiles, clamping rings, and some pneumatic pistons)

This blew the bubbles like a champ. The bones of this machine are still used today although we've re-designed most of it.

The "New Machine"

Let's make another investment, so how can we make "the old machine" even better? Let's add heaters, and a vacuum chamber, and make it a little smaller! Hmm...

Material suppliers started shrinking their standard sheet size. Which made it harder to use the "old machine". This made "the old machine" harder to use because it was setup for larger blank sizes.

Maybe it was a little too much to chew. Each component of the new machine sounded awesome, but it didn't all jive together that well. At least with the resources that were available. The machine was really good at heating, but it couldn't quite make bubbles the same. And a smaller blank size meant thinner bubbles. So the "new machine" eventually turned into super fancy radiant heaters that were used to vacuum nose cones and headlight covers.

Pro-Fit Windscreens. Pre-drilled for easy install.

By this time, Zach (myself) had been working at the shop every summer and even most day's after school. My favorite part was shipping windshields, actually! It's very satisfying to clean parts and (at that time) custom make boxes to fit these windshields in.

By now, touring windshields were really getting popular. My big push was pre-drilling windshields to make it as easy as possible for customers to install.

Leif was a little more old school, if a customer couldn't drill their own windshield then they didn't need one! "The Snap-on Generation" HAHA Eventually, Leif came around. The Victory Cross Country was our first big "pre-drilled" windshield which was super popular among riders.

Under New Management After 49 Years in Business!

Zach (Leif's son if you haven't figured that out yet) officially took over the business while Leif battled colon cancer. Leif still came in the shop most days unless he had tough treatments. Keeping the business moving while spending time with family was the main focus for these years.

We had relied on word of mouth marketing for so long that we knew we had to step up the customer service to keep that marketing strategy effective.

Making custom parts, immediately, was part of that customer service. Reorganizing and streamlining processes were essential. While also focusing on new products that had some volume. It's real nice keeping all the old molds but they can't sustain the business.

The Passing of a Wizard

This could be a whole page of it's own. But the world lost a Father, Founder, and Friend. And heaven gained an angel.

We still have a lot of customers call us up and talk about how "cool" Leif was. And they are right!

The only way Leif was leaving the business was if he passed away. Of course, his memorial party was held at the shop. But we called it his "Retirement Party".

More Machines

Leif always dreamed of a CNC machine. Eventually we had enough saved up to make the plunge. No, it's not a fancy fully enclosed $200,000 machine but it enabled us to make consistently awesome parts.

It also enabled us to "scan" 4,000 wood patterns that had been made over the past few decades. Each of these were digitized and the wood patterns were kept as "backups" as Leif would always require a "backup".

"Don't throw the molds away, Kent! And stop telling people you already did!"

The other thing Leif always dreamed of, was having Airtech right next door. "Can you imagine if they were right here next to us?"

This story could also be a whole page on it's own... But basically, a customer called us up and told us Airtech was throwing away all their molds. We had known Kent for a long time, from a distance. He worked with Leif since he started and I had also talked to him many, many times over the years.

After a few phone conversations, he told us that he was going to throw away all the molds because no one would buy the business that he had been "trying to sell for 6 months".

I called up other fairing manufacturers and no one had interest in the 7,000 old molds that took up 10,000 square feet. Especially when you let them know they had 3 weeks to move everything before the landlord took possession of the building.

So, we made the call to go out there and check it out. Yes, it was a scramble and yes it was expensive doing everything last minute. No, there wasn't a "business" to sell. He had stopped taking orders for 5 months and had already told people he took everything to the dump.

3 weeks later and all (99.5%) of the mold were packed up and headed back to Florida in 3 x 40' containers!! Woo!!

GP Cycleworks = Largest collection of Motorcycle Bodywork + Windshields.

Airtech is finally, next door, Leif! After scrambling to find production facilities, and space to keep all these molds, everything was starting to get sorted out. We eventually re-modeled our current shop and threw away 4 dumpsters of junk (old windshield molds) that we didn't really need.

Are we an organization company? Or a fabrication shop? Now, the fiberglass production is right next to the acrylic production. With 4,000+ windshield molds and 4,000+ fiberglass molds.

Being able to offer customers these parts that are used together is a huge benefit. It also enables us to make better fitting, higher quality parts. By having a fiberglass production shop, we are able to make better windshields, also! Even if we aren't making the bodywork with them.

From here, the plan is simple, yet sometimes difficult. Keep the old parts alive and continue to make quality parts that riders need. This includes continual development on older parts while also engineering solutions to aero problems on modern bikes.