Cw 25 Years Ago October, 1964
CW 25 YEARS AGO October, 1964
ROUNDUP
TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO, Cycle World's cover was a spin-off of the then-popular theme, "You meet the nicest people on a Honda.” The cover photo portrayed a nice-looking man and woman, dressed in sweaters, casual pants and white tennis shoes—no helmets—riding a small Honda on a sandy beach with waves breaking behind them.
Two road-test bikes, a Hodaka Ace 90 and a beautiful BSA Cyclone 500 scrambler, were put through Cycle Worlds rigorous tests, including dragstrip runs, something the other magazines of the era weren’t yet doing. The BSA scrambler featured high-mounted, open pipes, twin carburetors and a camshaft that gave “rather racy valve timing—it has to be ‘up on the cam’ before it begins to run clean and make any power,” cautioned the editors. The BSA was estimated to belch out an awesome 36-38 horsepower—about the same as a modern Kawasaki Ninja 250—once it blubbered its way
onto the cam.
A race report from Turin, Italy, described the latest round of the world scrambles championship, also known as motocross. Even then, the old guard was giving way to the new, as the story noted that 250cc four-strokes were no longer competitive against the lighter, more-
powerful, two-stroke Greeves,
CZs and Husqvarnas. In the Open class, the four-stroke Singles still proved better than the large twostrokes, which had yet to solve seizure problems, and Briton Jeff Smith—who would go to become 1964 and 1965 world championwon the Italian meeting on a radically lightened 420cc BSA.
—Ron Griewe
