Press
Bienville Studios has caught the attention of some of the world’s biggest media outlets from NPR to the New York Times. Click on the articles below to read more!
Roads & Rides – January 13, 2014
“JT Nesbitt is an artist and a craftsman. The kind of person that dreams up something tangible and spends the next six years figuring out all the details before he sets out building it. He isn’t afraid of something he doesn’t know how to do. He just spends time learning with the goal of getting an obstacle out of his path. He is the kind of guy that never leaves the house without his sketchbook. Ideas are always flowing and sometimes take years to materialize. Nesbitt deems himself an environmentalist and has a deep connection to the city he lives in. Nesbitt didn’t flee New Orleans after Katrina, in fact he dug in deeper and helped out his neighbors as much as he could. He started up his own business in the French Quarter called Bienville Studios.”
Read More on the Roads & Rides website >>
Odd Bike – November 25, 2013
“Bienville Legacy – The American Superbike”
“Motorcycle design is a field that has many pretenders but few true practitioners. There are plenty of motorcycle stylists, men and women who draw forms on paper and then outsource the headaches of realization to a team of engineers and technicians. But people who can craft a machine from start to finish, from notepad to road, are virtually nonexistent. These are true designers who can conceive, sketch, fabricate and build a motorcycle from start to finish. J.T. Nesbitt is one of these few true designers. The Bienville Legacy is the much-anticipated follow up to Nesbitt’s seminal Confederate Wraith.”
Read More on the Odd Bike website >>
Hell For Leather Article – September 24, 2012
“JT Nesbitt returns to motorcycle design with Bienville Legacy project”
“First there was the Wraith, then the CNG-powered Magnolia Special roadster. Now there’s this Bienville Legacy project, the culmination of everything JT Nesbitt knows about motorcycle design and a complete re-think of suspension, man/machine interaction and the American superbike. It uses a single, centrally-mounted carbon fiber leaf spring for both the front and rear suspension.”
Read More on the Hell For Leather website >>
The Kneeslider Article – September 23, 2012
“The Bienville Legacy Project by JT Nesbitt Commissioned by ADMCi”
“ADMCi has commissioned JT Nesbitt, a name everyone here is familiar with, to build three prototypes of the motorcycle he has been thinking about for over seven years. During that time, JT has been off doing some other things, but he’s long had ideas of an American four cylinder super bike, taking the idea of bikes built in the USA in decades long past, but brought up to the present with concepts and materials only now available.”
Read More on The Kneeslider website >>
New York Times Article – November 10, 2011
“Running on Natural Gas, Magnolia Special Roadster Completes Cross-Country Drive”
“No computers were harmed during the construction of this car,” said J.T. Nesbitt, the creator of the Magnolia Special, a back-to-basics and entirely hand-built sports car powered by compressed natural gas.
Read More on the New York Times website >>
Jay Leno’s Garage – November 7, 2011
New Orleans designer J.T. Nesbitt took Jay’s question (Why isn’t natural gas sexier?) as a challenge, and answered it by creating this gorgeous CNG. Inspired by ’30s grand prix racers, the Magnolia Special made it from New York to Los Angeles in 89 hours!
See the video at Jay Leno’s Garage >>
WIRED – September 2011
“Magnolia Roadster’s Vintage Styling Goes Green”
Solutions to modern problems sometimes can be found in a distinctly classical place. The Magnolia Special was built to recapture the grace and romance of 1930s European roadsters — internal combustion and all — yet it emits 40 percent less CO2 than an equally powerful gas-burning automobile. And it does this using technology as old as internal combustion itself.
NPR – October 7, 2008
“Can A Water-Logged Lincoln Hit 200MPH?”
New Orleans is often referred to as one of the last remaining bohemias in America. But what does that mean?
“The definition of a ‘bohemia’ is that you do your work so you can eat, and then you have your secret life where you soar,” explains bartender J.T. Nesbitt, whose very existence embodies this definition.
Read the article and listen to the story at NPR.com >>
