Mike Corbin’s journey from electrician to motorcycle industry icon

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In one of the factory areas of Corbin Motorcycle Seats and Accessories in Hollister, owner Mike Corbin checked the work being done on his personal research car, one of 300 electric, one-man Sparrows he made starting in 1998. Though production stopped in 2003 because the company was unable to make it profitable, Corbin is not done with this car yet. At the age of 81, his passion for innovation remains strong.

“We expect it to have a 100-mile range at 70 miles per hour,” he said. “It costs about three cents a mile; you can’t even see it on your electric bill. You see, I have to know how good a Sparrow can be. I just can’t not know.”

The Sparrow is getting its third refurbishing—this time adding lithium-ion batteries and AC motors to replace the lead-acid cell batteries and DC motors. The car is eight feet long, weighs 800 pounds, and three of them can fit in a conventional parking place. Holding more than 80 patents, much of what Corbin has done, including the Sparrow, has been far ahead of its time. 

Working with electric cars comes naturally to Corbin. He picked it up as a trade after joining the Navy. When his tour of duty ended in 1964, he began working as an electrician in Connecticut. 

In his spare time, he customized his 1964 Norton Atlas motorcycle and designed his first seat, which he sold in 1965 while attending a motorcycle rally in Grafton, New Hampshire. It was the seat he had ridden in on. Still, $40 is $40.

“Well, how am I going to get home?” Corbin said as he considered selling the seat. “The guy who bought it told me, ‘Fold your jacket up and sit on that.’ The ride was hot and muggy, and when I got home, I started making another seat.”

Soon, Corbin had regular visitors clamoring for seats and by 1968, he had to choose between making seats and being an electrician, saying that making seats “looked a lot better than getting raccoons out from underneath people’s houses.” 

Opening a workshop in East Hartford, Connecticut, in 1968, Corbin Manufacturing was born. 

“In the ’60s,” he said, “there were about 60,000 bikes registered in the U.S. every year. In the ’70s, it reached a million and a half a year. I grabbed that tiger by the tail and within a few years I had 50 guys working on the seats.”

By 1974, Corbin was working out of a 225,000-square-foot factory and began developing electric motorcycles—one of them set a land speed record of 165.387 mph on the Bonneville Salt Flats. He also began designing and manufacturing bodybuilding equipment, earning endorsements from the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger. 

A further expansion in 1989 brought Corbin to Castroville and then, in 1998, to Hollister, a move that inextricably linked his company to the town’s motorcycle traditions. 

It was the closing of a circle that began when he was 11 and snuck into a showing of “The Wild One” with his younger brother. 

“My father used to tell us,” Corbin said, “‘Here’s three things you can’t do: you can’t smoke cigarettes, you can’t drink beer, and you can’t go to the Wild One movie.’ So we got a quart of Schaefer beer, and saw it on a Saturday, coughing on a cigarette.” 

The move to Hollister was a natural one. Corbin had been pushing for a motorcycle rally in Hollister starting in 1995, attending city council meetings as an advocate. The first rally, held in 1997, took place on Corbin’s property. 

“We spent nearly a million dollars of Corbin money to get the first rally going,” he said. “But it was a big, big shot in the arm for Hollister.”

Corbin has held a Fourth of July celebration every year since then, and will again this year as the city gears up for the return of its long-running event.

Today, Corbin employs 80 workers who make about 35,000 seats per year. At its peak, the factory can produce 120 seats a day, drawing from a catalog of 3,500 products and seat molds for motorcycles that date back to the 1965 Harley-Davidson Sportster.

Manufacturer-installed seats, Corbin said, are designed by people who do not ride and are geared more for the motorcycle’s look and flow rather than comfort. 

“They make a big floppy soft seat so different-sized people can go in a showroom and sit on it,” he said. “They see themselves in a plate glass window and say, ‘I look cool,’ and the seat’s soft, so you’re all happy.”

All of the design work on Corbin seats is done by two full-time engineers at the factory, with little or no help from motorcycle manufacturers. Which is precisely how Corbin wants it.

“I used to make parts for those guys,” he said. “But now, I stay away from them. They start beating you up for money, and they just eat you up and take your ideas. But they don’t have the commitment to quality.”

Corbin said the company borrows (and occasionally buys) new bikes, which are used to create prototype seats. This process starts with a base plate that fits any existing brackets, key locks, or appendages. Once the new plate is installed on the bike, foam is added and sculpted to fit. 

“We look for the sweet spot on the bike,” Corbin said. “Ergonomics is very important; where we put you.” We have to put you in a better position than the stock seat did, making the seating platform more supportive of your biomechanics.” 

The finished model is then cast as a two-part metal mold and filled using liquid foam. Once set, it’s cleaned up, a cover material is selected, and then it is individually embroidered with the Corbin name and sewn onto the form. The seats can also be fitted with a variety of custom backrest options as well as a heating and cooling system.

The goal, Corbin said, is to be sure each seat is better than “anything we’ve done before.”

“You have to be able to walk up to the bike with the seat,” Corbin said, “and it just clicks on like a magic wand came down and put it right on the bike for you. That is exactly what I’m hoping for.” 

At the factory, its drive-up service can produce a custom seat for a rider in around four hours. And to accommodate hungry customers, Corbin runs The Wizard’s Cafe, specializing in American diner food and “the best onion rings in town, next to the check-in area,, 

Longtime customer Harry Bostard said his Harley-Davidson Softail has more than 200,000 miles on it, and it has had a Corbin seat its whole life.

“Mike’s always taken good care of me and all the other people in the industry,” he said, “When I bought that bike, the first thing he said was, ‘Let’s get you a seat.’ That first one lasted about 134,000 miles.”

Bostard is known for his long rides, having once ridden from San Diego to Butte, Montana, in a single day. He said if a seat is not comfortable, it is impossible to put those kinds of miles on it.

“You spend that amount of time on the seat,” he said, “You don’t want it to be soft or you end up with saddle sores everywhere. A Corbin seat forms to you as you ride. I’ve knocked down miles on that bike, and the seat has a lot to do with it.”

The key to this comfort, Corbin said, is that his seats are concave rather than the stock convex design, which allows the weight of your body to be centered, spreading the pressure. With more than 1.5 million seats sold, that design concept has clearly found its customer base. 

“I’ll go down the road,” he said, “and see a guy riding a bike with my seat on it. I’ll think, ‘I did that.’ If you’re a designer or an engineer, there’s nothing better than seeing your product in use, even on a small scale. There’s a great sense of pride in all that.”

Corbin Motorcycle Seats and Accessories at 2360 Technology Parkway, Hollister, will be hosting 16 vendors and have drive-in service for seats during the Hollister Independence Rally on Fourth of July weekend. Regular ride-in service, available Tuesday through Saturday, can be scheduled by calling 800-538-7035.

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