March, 1966

March, 1966

WAS THEREA FORD IN OUR FU-

ture? Joe Parkhurst, Cycle

World's first publisher,

apparently thought so, for he wrote in the March, 1966,

Roundup section about a persistent rumor dealing with Ford Motor Company’s purchase of a small, West German motorcycle manufacturer. He attributed this rumor to what he called “a reliable source of information.” Not reliable enough, apparently, for Ford has stuck with more mundane and common sorts of transportation.

Not at all mundane and common was BSA Bantam-mounted Ned Brown, an Australian who Parkhurst, in this same Roundup, mentions as the World’s Oldest Rider. Brown was 90 in 1966 and still actively riding, though it seems

unlikely that he’s still tootling along

today on his little stroken Bet the bike’s still around, though.

But maybe best of all in this issue was Gordon Jennings' Technicalities column, which examined an SAE paper titled “Small HighSpeed, High-Performance Gasoline Engines,” written by Yoshio Nakamura, from Honda Research and Development. Read today, Jennings’ column makes it clear that even before 1966, Honda already had charted its course towards more cylinders, more valves, more complexity and, yes, more horsepower. Accompanying the column is a small diagram of a Honda RC162 four-cylinder, 250cc race motor, just to illustrate how serious Honda was about the whole thing. Which, as we now know, was very serious indeed.

—Jon F. Thompson