Cw 25 Years Ago May, 1967

CW 25 YEARS AGO

ROUNDUP

May, 1967

" There were hotshoes before Ken Maely, just as there were mousetraps before the Real Thing came along."

-from “Ken Maely, The Hot Shoe Man”

WHERE WOULD DIRT-TRACK RACing be without steel shoes? Where would it be without Ken Maely, the man who, in an interview in the May, 1967, issue of Cycle World, was identified as “the inventor of the shoe worth five seconds a lap?” Maely, 41 at the time, still lives on his Corona, California, ranch, and still hammers out hotshoes when he’s not absorbed in his current project-developing a cyclomotor that will bring power to China’s legions of bicycles. Shouldn’t be a problem for Maely; he’s already built his own speedway motor.

In his column, The Scene, Editor Ivan Wagar gave details of another project based behind what used to be The Iron Curtain. The Czechoslovakian company, Jawa, had just un-

veiled its new production roadracer. Built around the company’s “banana” motocross frame, the bike was not in-

tended for grand prix racing, but for the club racer who could not afford an Italian or Japanese machine. The 250cc, two-stroke racebike produced 31 horsepower, weighed just 227 pounds and was said to be good for a top speed of 115 mph-pretty good for its day.

The coverbike, a 200cc Suzuki X-5 Invader, was also a two-stroke, though its performance was nowhere near that of the Jawa, or that of its bigger brother, the 250cc X-6 Hustler. The X-5 recorded a top speed of 88 mph.

Best of all in this issue, though, was Cycle World's new feature: Slipstream, now a monthly institution.

Brian Catterson