Cw 25 Years Ago November, 1964

CW 25 YEARS AGO November, 1964

ROUNDUP

FOR HOW LONG HAVE THE wishful thinkers at Cycle World been trying to go faster? For at least 25 years. The cover story of the November, 1964, issue was CW's “assault” on the Bonneville Salt Flats with a pair of Triumph 650s, Class A and Class C in specification. What was the difference? Don’t ask. How’d we do? The phrase “humbled by circumstances” occurs in the story and the story’s subtitle spells it out: “Just wait ’til next year,” it read. Our Class C Triumph was clocked at 136 miles per hour, 1 mile per hour slower than the 137-mph record we’d set the year previous. Hey, the salt was wet. And it was rutted. And we didn’t get the trick, 12:1 pistons we needed until 72 hours before we left for Utah—in short, the usual, time-honored litany of racers’ excuses.

But to make up for that failed record attempt, there was plenty of other good stuff in the issue, including a road test of a Matchless G-15 CSR, powered by a 60-horsepower, 750cc Norton engine (the result of some creative engineering by Associated Motor Cycles, which owned Norton«, Matchless and AJS) so torque-heavy that it made “using the transmission a rider option.” The bike’s price? You’ll weep: $ 1189.

Also tested in the November issue was the best bike I never owned, a gorgeous little 250cc Ducati Diana street racer, which listed at $719, turned 16.1-second quarter-miles and delivered a 94-mph top speed. We hrumphed, “Strictly on its merits as a touring bike, it does not score too well.”

Well, hey, how were we to know we were testing a future classic?

—Jon F. Thompson