Report From Japan
REPORT FROM JAPAN
W. B. SWIM
JAPANESE MANUFACTURERS are looking forward to another roaring export season in 1966, with sights aimed dead at the United States. Hopes are to saturate the East Coast and the rest of the nation as thoroughly as California and the West Coast have been in past years. The expectations are for more and more new models from Japan’s makers designed specifically for the American rider.
Honda, with four 90cc models and three different engines, has decided to power all four models with the same engine. This will reduce production costs and also bring the parts supply problem down to manageable proportions. The engine will be an overhead camshaft model producing 7.5 horsepower. It goes into the S-90, C-200, CM-90 and CT-200 models, and the new model designations are the S-91, C-201, CM-91 and CT-201. The first has had 8 hp, middle two 6.5 hp and last one 6 hp up to now, with the last three being ohv engines. With this change Honda’s only motorcycle without an overhead camshaft engine is the popular “nifty fifty,” and the firm already has an ohc-engined 50cc sports machine in production. If this engine is slipped into the nifty frame, as it just may be, Honda’s full line from 50cc up to 450cc would be ohc.
Rumors that Yamaha will market a 350cc twin two-stroke this year continue to fly about. The research department has one or more it has been playing with for months, but no firm word of a decision to put it into production has been forthcoming as yet. If it is made, it will be aimed primarily at the U.S. market. With Yamaha’s factories still running overtime trying to fulfill current orders, the company may hold off on this new model for another year. At present they are concentrating a lot of effort in pushing the new lOOcc twin, which looks like a winner.
Eyes are popping in industry circles at the tremendous showing Bridgestone made in the American market during 1965. This was the firm’s first full year of concentrated efforts on exports, and reports are that Bridgestone sales ranked around third or fourth in the U.S., although final figures have not yet reached Japan.
Honda has a policy of selling a new model first in Japan and letting it run long enough to get any bugs worked out before shoving it to the export pipeline. It’s an excellent policy in a number of ways, catching any troubles close to home so they can be repaired economically under the company’s two-year or 50,000 kilometer warranty, preserving the brand’s reputation abroad and particularly in getting any faulty machines back into the research department’s hands so they can go through them with a fine-toothed comb. The policy paid off on the Honda 450 Super Sports, as some of the first off the line ran into trouble. Your correspondent’s machine started getting oil into one barrel and the dealer sent it back to the factory. A week later it came back with a complete new upper end, pistons, rings, cylinders, cylinder heads and overhead cams. By catching troubles like this in Japan before exports begin, Honda avoids similar troubles overseas.
Japan’s Grand Prix road race, held annually for the last three years on Hondabuilt Suzuka Circuit, could be in trouble unless the makers iron out their differences before fall. Following the 1965 Japan GP, four members of the Motorcycling Federation of Japan (MFJ), which runs the GP and is supported by donations from the manufacturers, proposed dropping the expensive Grand Prix race this year. The race does not pay for itself and the expenses of the MFJ, so each of the five maker members are hit hard each year for substantial donations. Yamaha, Suzuki, Bridgestone and Kawasaki argue that GP wins no longer have sufficient publicity value in Japan to cover the amount of the donations, but Honda wants to keep the Suzuka Circuit event alive. Suzuka is the only circuit in Japan which has been okayed by the FIM. Although the makers were still divided 4 to 1 at the time of this writing, there are many months before the GP and my bet is that the manufacturers will manage to come to an agreement.
With perennial 500cc World Champion Mike Hailwood On its payroll for this season, the biggest guessing game in racing circles now is what kind of a 500cc racer Honda will produce for him. It is almost certain Honda will contest the 500cc class this season, for the first time, particularly as the Honda 450cc is on sale. You can be sure the Research and Development Institute has more than one egg in the basket, and which one they will hatch certainly isn’t known yet. Latest hot rumor is of an eight-cylinder machine, dohe, 8 carbs, and very high revs which produces more horses than the MV Agusta Four. The V-8 has four barrels pointing forward and four sitting up straight, and the engine is as narrow as the 250cc Six. Another school of thought is that Honda will begin the season, at least, with a 350cc Six overbored to about 355cc or 360cc and only produce a new machine if that one can’t beat the MV.
Kawasaki, which entered the 125cc class at the 1965 Japan Grand Prix for the first time, is considering getting their water-cooled twin two-stroke some racing and development exposure in European non-GP events this year, with expectations of contesting the GP world title in the 1967 season. If they do go to Europe, they will probably concentrate on English short circuit tracks and use a foreign rider. Budget considerations are the roadblock to finding a good European rider at present.
Bridgestone, which also made its debut at the 1965 Japan GP, might contest the famed Isle of Man TT this year with a team of perhaps three foreign riders, but that decision has not yet been made either. Their water-cooled 50cc twin racers won’t see the full GP circuit until 1967 at the earliest.
Japan’s big sports organization, the Motorcycle Club Federation of All Japan (MCFAJ), has scheduled seven national races this year and sanctioned another 19 district events. In addition, the MCFAJ race calendar includes 41 local races. There are only two Sundays all year without an event scheduled, and these are likely to be filled by the time this reaches the reader. National races, or All-Japan events as they are called, include three moto-cross, two clubman road races, one one-day trial and a two-day trial with rules based on the famous International Six Days Trial. Sanctioned events include moto-cross, flattrack, trials, TT-scrambles and speed scrambles. The TMA district, made up of six clubs of American servicemen stationed in Japan, has scheduled 34 events this year, three with MCFAJ sanctions, including scrambles, TT-scrambles, flattrack, drags and TT-scramble enduros.
The winner and second place man were only about 40 seconds apart at the end of four hours at the 2nd Annual Interservice 4-Hour TT-Scrambles Endurance Race sponsored by the TMA. Both bikes had covered 180 laps of the one-mile course. Rules were that two riders took turns on a machine, changing at least once an hour. Winner of the Over-125cc class was a Honda 250cc ridden by Cecil Robison and Henry Spomer of the Tokyo All Stars club.
Winner of the Under125cc class was a Suzuki 80cc piloted by Kazuo Sakauchi and Curtis Peck of the Sagami Motorcycle Club, who covered 159 laps.
The last big race of the winter season was the 7th Speed Scrambles, which drew 207 entries. Yamaha won five of the nine races, leaving two each for Bridgestone and Honda. Yamaha riders won the Open, both senior and novice 250cc races and both 125cc events. Bridgestone won both 90cc and Honda both 50cc races. The only double winner was Yamaha’s Tadao Suzuki, who took the senior 250cc and Open.
The elder brother of Japan’s “Mr. MotoCross,” Kazuo Kubo, won the 4th 48Hour Trial, dropping only 8 marks which averaged out to one per observed section. He rode a 125cc Suzuki model S-10, and competed in the 30 age group. The 48Hour trials are limited to riders 30 years of age or older. Tied for second with a loss of 10 marks were Shinichi Tamada (Bridgestone 90) and J. E. Stonerock (Yamaha 90 Twin). Yours truly racked up 24 marks for a 7th.
Forty age group winner was Yamaha 75cc rider Masanori Ito, who dropped 22 marks, and 50 age class was won by MCFAJ Chairman Hirotake Arai, who had 42 bad marks riding a Kawasaki 125cc. All eight sections were cleaned by at least one rider, but none were cleaned by all riders, which is as it should be.
The TMA district’s 2nd Sagami TT Scrambles, sanctioned by the MCFAJ, drew 158 entries, including 36 American riders. This event also included the first sidecar scrambles race ever held in Japan. It was won by a Nihon Sidecar Club rider with a Zundapp 600cc. Although the American clubs were sponsoring the race on their own track, no American rider managed to win an event. Only novice class races were run. Yamaha won three of the six races on the program, and Honda, Bridgestone and Tohatsu took one each.
The last race of 1965, held the day after Christmas in the midst of a hoard of morning-afters, was also hosted by the TMA district, and this time plenty of Americans took home trophies. Only 69 entries showed up on the frozen Yokota Scrambles course on this cloudy, ice-cold day, but 42 of them were from the U.S. contingent. Two of them proved winners, Del Carroll (TAS club, Yamaha) in the 260cc race and David Bettisworth (KMC, Honda) in the 261cc and Over event. The other four races went to Japanese riders, but Americans saw the trophy circle twenty-two times.
