Roundup
ROUNDUP
JOE PARKHURST
UR ENERGY crisis (translated into everyday terms, that means gasoline is hard to get), still appears to many to be a situation contrived by the government and the oil industry. Whether there is indeed a genuine shortage of fuel or not is hard to pinpoint. If one listens to the comments com ing out of Washington, it soon becomes obvious that everyone quoted has a differ ent story. You would think that a true crisis would at least be a problem that a lot of people in high places knew a great deal about; and that they would be able to predict its end with at least some degree of confidence and accuracy.
One story I heard says that the oil industry, which must produce various forms of fuel by government order, is so overstocked with fuel that it is coming out of their ears. So now they can get back to producing gasoline. Nice story, if true.
While sitting in line for gas in my van the other day, a guy on a bike was in the line ahead of me. He complained to the station attendant that since the bike holds so little gas he must buy fuel far more often than cars. Even though bikes get much better mileage than cars, the small tank restricts their total range.
My Honda 350XL is all tricked up for Baja and enduros. It has a 35mm Mikuni carburetor, Basani exhaust system, Malcolm Smith aluminum bars, Don Vesco 3.5-gal. plastic tank, Chen Shing tires, Koni shocks with S&W springs, Honda Elsinore throttle and a bunch of other goodies. It’s a pretty weirdlooking dirt bike. I ride it to work on occasion, and on the streets it gets almost 60 mpg. It will go less than 210 miles on a tank of gas. If it had the stock tank, it would only have a range of about 150 miles. This compares favorably to the average range of large cars, but pretty poorly to a large number of smaller cars.
On the subject of mileage, I received some figures from the Automobile Competition Committee of the United States. They are the rough equivalent of the AMA, in that they are affiliated with an international association. The figures represent the number of gallons used by spectators driving to and from various sporting events, and by people for recreational use. Motorcycling is not included, but it is easy to imagine that it lies somewhere between auto racing and rodeos.
E LOANED the use of some CYCLE WORLD photography to a publishing firm recently. They just sent me a sample of the way in which they used it. The com pany, Educational Activities, in Freeport, New York, pub lished a book for "high-inter est, low-vocabulary" readers in junior and senior high schools. The title is Mo to ross Racing. Most of the photography is by long-time CW contributor, Larry Wil lett. If you know of anyone who might be able to put it to use, write to Educational Activities at 1937 Grand Ave., Baldwin, NY 11510.
■ EED INFORMATION or answers to questions about motorcycles and the environment? Kawasaki Motors has a neat little service that you can turn to. It’s called the Factline. Just give them a call at (714) 979-5552. They can give you
the dope on stuff like bikes and the energy crisis, motorcycling personalities, trends, history, etc. Just about anything you might have been curious about.
ARLEY-DAVIDSON’S facility, on the shores of beautiful Lake Varese, has started production on a series of water-cooled two-stroke racers. They will build 100 250s and 100 393s (to race in the 500cc class). They ran at Daytona. They all use disc brakes and buzz up to 10,000 rpm. Harley is also developing real racing versions of their new SX 175 and 250 scramblers.
OTING THAT trafficrelated deaths are off by about 23 percent nationally, prompts me to believe that we will be faced with the 55-mph speed limit for a long, long time. I have never found anything as maddening> as the boredom that I must confront driving at just-offidle speed.
Freeway driving never was any fun. I always just got it over with as quickly as possible. 1 would venture to guess that one hidden reason why deaths are down is that a lot of people are avoiding making trips of much length. They must be afraid, as I am, that they will fall asleep.
THE WEEKLY motorcycle newspapers in England, much like those in this country, are not always known for their thoroughness. After all, when the entire editorial task must be completed in just a few days every week, there is hardly enough time to be very thorough, or to research the subject properly. I bring this up because of the reports appearing in the British motorcycle weeklies concerning the situation with Norton Villiers Triumph.
Because I like to keep abreast of what’s going on, I contacted my old friend Dennis Poore, chairman of Norton Villiers Triumph Ltd. Mr. Poore feels strongly that the left-wing unions in England are leading the workers at the Triumph factory in Meriden around by their noses. He also feels strongly that a company run entirely by the labor force could not possibly survive. He likens it to what things would be like at Christian Dior if the seamstresses took over.
As of this writing, the final settlement on the workerorganized take-over purchase of the plant has not been made. Poore also fears that so much time and money is being spent on discussing the subject that there will be none left to make bikes when the thing is settled.
Good will toward Triumph is suffering even worse in England than it is here. If things are not fully organized soon, Poore feels, the task of reviving the British motorcycle industry will be harder than it has ever been. Poore has had to tell the workers at Meriden that the government cannot provide more money and that Norton Villiers is also unable to help financially.
The workers’ plan to buy the Meriden plant from Norton Villiers Triumph was a last ditch effort to save their jobs after NVT decided to close down the Meriden plant and switch manufacturing of Triumphs over to the old BSA factory in Birmingham. They offered to pool their money, obtain more from the government, and buy the place out. Nice idea, but they haven’t come up with the nearly $20 million necessary yet.
In the meantime, England has gone on a three-day work week due to the shortage of fuel. In the middle of that, the coal miners went on a national strike. If that does^^ finish off the British industi^ I will be very surprised.
TWELVE YEARS AGO
E HAD THREE BMW features in the June, 1962 issue. A road test of the R-69S was one, a history of the firm was another. The best was titled “A Nurburgring Lap.” It was written by a very sexy German girl named Anke-Eve Goldmann. The photo of her in skin-tight, black racing leathers was a stone gas.
We “re-tested” the Triumph Bonneville that we had originally tested in the first issue of CYCLE WORLD in January of that year. It only went 108 mph, and the people at Johnson Motors, distributors of Triumph in those days, were so mad they could spit. Since we were kinda new at the game, we agreed to re-test it. It ran 115 mph the second time. Don Brown at Johnson Motors was even madder. It was supposed to go a lot faster than that... according to their advertising.
Actually, part of the problem was that a Honda 305cc Super Hawk had gone 105 mph in a test in the previous issue. Not nearly as hard a problem was the one coming up in that very June issue, when the tiny Bultaco 125cc TSS went 102 mph!
“963 Mile Trial” was the title of a story on the Honda Baja record-setting trip. Dave Ekins and Bill Robertson rode a pair of Honda CL-72 Twins from Tijuana to La Paz, setting the first record and starting what has become one of the most popular series of events of all time.
John McLaughlin and I flew as observers and reporters and to furnish additional fuel and supplies for the attempt. Bill’s father, Bill Rob-
ertson Sr., flew his own little bird to take care of the riders. Since that day, John and I have flown almost 200 hours over Baja. We’ve covered every 500 and 1000 since the first in 1967. It made a Baja freak out of me.
Dave and Bill’s record stood for years, driving the dune buggy and four-wheel drive nuts right out of their skulls. It took a $25,000 race car to break the record. Dave and Bill made the trip in 39 hours and 56 minutes, and they were lost for almost 12 of those hours!
The great Carroll Resweber won the 130-mile
AMA Bossier City, Louisiana National. He beat guys like Dick Mann, Ralph White, Roger Reiman, Bart Markel, George Roeder and Dick Hammer (my old swimming pool digger). All of the AMA riders in those days raced with giant, wide cow-horn bars, putting their feet down in the corners. It took years to convince them that the European style was faster. Now look at things.
Another damn mini-bike was tested. It was made by Go-Kart; remember them?
We were counseling our readers on how to handle restrictive motorcycle legislation in those days too. Just the smoke before the fires we are seeing today...but we were worried about it.
Carol Sims covered the opening of the 1962 Ascot half-mile season. Sammy “the flying flea” Tanner won it, just beating out Jack O’Brien. Both were on Triumphs. It was Triumph, BSA and Harley all the way.
We had ads from Pointer— who could ever forget the Pointer Lassie?—and from Yamaha and Berliner Motors. Another lost make was tl^fe Motobi. Motobis, with fa^^ ings and clip-ons, were winning USMC road races all over the place. Very European and all that, but it was such clubs as the USMC and the American Federation of Motorcyclists that were developing the top future road racers of the day.
Cushman advertised the Eagle scooter, and Dick Mann was in the Hap Jones NGK ad. The Yamaha Omaha Trail 50 was a new product, as was the fantastic Ducati 250.
Palmini Engineering was trying to make a suitable dynamometer for motorcycles; we had one and were going to dyno road test bikes with it. But it never work<^^ It would have been yet another first for CW.
Norm Reeves, Jack White, Ed Kretz and a lot of the other good old guys in motorcycling were advertising.
Mike Hailwood was the top European in our personalities feature. And Eve White furnished her first “Late News From Canada,” a feature that we ran for years.
