Round·up

ROUND·UP

JOE PARKHURST

WIN A BIKE! You may have noticed the mention on the cover of this issue of what sounds like a contest. It is. Readers can win any one of six bikes that we will be giving away over the next six months, one bike each month.

We will be giving away off-road, road and dual-pur-pose bikes. All you have to do is fill out the entry blank and send it in to the address on the blank, not to us here at CW.

The final bike will be given away in the January 1975 issue. Readers will get their choice of one of two super-bikes. One will be a super motocrosser, the other a super road bike. No strings, no Pfmmicks, just send in the blank and keep your fingers crossed.

THE LATEST news from Italy is that the technical director for Harley-David-son, William Soncini, has left to take a similar job at Hiro Motors. Hiro is a small proprietary engine maker, owned by ex-dirt rider Andrea Mosconi.

Present production is based on a 125 two-stroke, six-speed engine, shown at the ISDT last year. A 250 was seen at the recent Milan motorcycle show also. Soncini, designer of the H-D 250 and 350 water-cooled Twins, is now working on a 175 and the 250 Hiro engines.

MV Agusta has solved the problem of a suitable rider to team with Phil Read. They have chosen Gianfranco Bonera, formerly with Harley-Davidson in Italy. He has ridden the Suzuki 500 Titan and Triumph 750 in competition also.

Bonera fought hard with Read at Misano near the end of the 1973 season and the Italians greeted him as the new superchampion. This is a bit ironic, as the Italian race fans are booing their hero for years, Giacomo Agostini, since he left MV to ride for the Yamaha factory. Very nationalistic these people.

Ago’s European debut on the Yamaha, now sporting the monoshock rear suspension, was at Modena. Nearly 40,000 people came to the autodrome that accommodates only 15,000. Near riot broke out when the police wanted to cancel the meet. Ago’s poor reception was not aided by his equally-poor performance on the race track. He won the 500 event, but at a lower average speed than the 250 and 350 races.

Alejandro de Tomaso, designer and builder of the Benelli 750 Six, has given the go-ahead for development of a 125cc four-cylinder, fourstroke roadster!

IF YOU READ the test of the JD570-A road grader used by the Pepperell motocross course in CYCLE WORLD (May), you will know what I am sitting on in the accompanying photograph.

Bruce Fever, Saddleback’s manager, is showing me how to run their JD570-A. It really is an incredible machine, and a ball to drive. They don’t trust me enough to turn me loose in the park with it yet, but I can’t say Jhat I blame them when I Piink of what I did to one of their parking lots.

I HEARD RECENTLY about a new motorcycle park—this one in Killeen, Texas. Motorcycle parks are not new, of course. Saddle-back Park was the first, and is now almost seven years old.

The city of Killeen was being plagued by the usual noise and annoyance (to some) of bikes being ridden in vacant lots, etc., so the city built the Mid-Town Motorcycle Park, a municipal project all the way.

They erected a municipal recreation building with showers, rest rooms and other facilities for the riders. The Killeen Motorcycle Association was authorized to sponsor motocross races once a month to assist in the financing of the park. Strict dust control and noise restrictions are enforced, and things are looking good.

The park is located right in the middle of town, hence the name. This alone makes it well worthy of mention. Joe Buenneke of Yamaha, Killeen, is putting on the races with the genuine blessings of the Killeen City Fathers. Other towns...take note.

FOR MANY YEARS in Europe there seems to have been a tendency on the part of motorcycle racers to think that contracts were written to benefit and be broken by them only. Big money was probably the main reason for wanting to change things, and in the past this was usually a prerogative reserved for road racers. Then motocross became the big spender, but those iron men usually waited until the end of the season before changing horses.

Now big money has become the lot of a chosen few in the trials world. The prospect of more money led Malcolm Rathmell, 2nd-place finisher in the January CYCLE WORLD International, to seek a loophole in his contract with Bultaco, and to sign for their Spanish rival— the Ossa factory.

It all led to an English High Court action in London, with Bultaco being granted an injunction preventing Rathmell from riding any other machine than Bultaco in the Hurst Cup trial. So Rathmell rode Bultaco and the following week appealed the decision of the court. The appeal failed, and so it seems that he will ride for Bultaco until the end of 1974. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the thing are, it has left a nasty smell hanging around.

Until now, trials, the classic gentlemens amateur sport, has been pretty friendly. As of this writing, Rathmell leads the World Points list after three events. He is leading Mick Andrews (Yamaha), who, after failing in the first round (the CW trials), came back with a bang on a brand new Yamaha cantilever model. Rob Edwards (Montesa) won the Hurst Cup; Andrews was 2nd.

Andrews won the Belgian round and Rathmell finished behind reigning champion Martin Lampkin. Alan Lampkin, winner of the CW trials, has lost his touch and is running far back. Surprise of the series is Finnish rider, Yrjo Vesterinen (Bultaco), who has been riding consistently well and is running third presently.

Yamaha’s patented rear suspension has produced a rash of European riders trying to keep up with the trend. Most seen are following the Maico trend of merely altering the rear shock mounting points.

At Lummen in Belgium, the first big International meeting, Yamaha’s Jaak van Velthoven was the overall winner; followed by Husqvarna’s Heikki Mikkola. Both Jim Pomeroy and Brad Lackey rode, but neither did well. Pomeroy was still healing from an ankle wound, so his poor showing was no surprise.

Two British riders are hitting the motocross sidecar scene with a new BMW-powered Hughenden rig. Terry Good and passenger Jess Rixon ride the 900-powered monster.

▲ N OLD FRIEND to motorcycling, E.W. “Pete” Colman, has taken an early retirement from BSA/ Triumph (now Norton/Triumph). Pete joined Johnson Motors in Pasadena, Calif, in 1948. “Jomo” was the Triumph distributor at the time.

Pete was president of the Motorcycle Industry Council twice, Chairman of the Technical Standards Committee, and head of the EPA task force for the industry. He was an old racer, too, having ridden speedway in the ’30s in England, Australia and New Zealand, as well as in this country. We didn’t always see eye-to-eye with Pete. Bi^ who does?

THE SPORT of motorcycling is still hamstrung in England by the fuel crisis. A big national trials has been among the casualties. Promoters are making do with ‘‘pocket handkerchief” courses on private land to beat the regulations that forbid the use of any part of the highways. Curbs on motor sports are really ridiculous when every other spectator sport continues unabated, thus encouraging people to drive automobiles to them.

Restrictions and the gas shortage have cut down activities in England, but they^ haven’t stopped the factorieJ^r from going around signing up riders for the 1974 season.