25 Years Ago February, 1974
25 YEARS AGO FEBRUARY, 1974
ROUNDUP
Submitted for your approval, a dog-eared, yellow-tinted edition of Cycle World magazine. Turning the pages reveals a breach in the space-time continuum, as foresight and hindsight collide to yield remarkably similar views. File these under the heading, “Timeless.” Clean-burning two-strokes: Decades before Bimota’s Vdue dalliance, France’s Motobecane showed a direct-injected Triple. Goals were said to be fuel economy and clean exhaust.
Kenny Roberts as underdog: Not yet a Grand Prix sensation, let alone a struggling team owner, the then21-year-old was celebrating his first AMA Grand National Championship. A Yamaha ad played up the fact that Roberts had beaten many 750s on a smaller TZ350.
Bartels’ Harleys: Willie G. had yet to pen the XLCR, but two California enthusiasts had already built a Sportster-based cafe-racer. One of the pair, a service manager named Bill Bartels, now owns one of the world’s most successful Harley shops.
Different strokes: Yamaha stole headlines in 1998 with its YZ400F Thumper-crosser, but in ’74, Honda went the other way, introducing a pair of two-stroke motocrossers dubbed CRs.
Minis in Mexico: Who in his right mind would race a mini-bike in the Baja 500? Well, no one, obviously, but 25 years before CIVs own Jimmy Lewis completed the Mexican desert classic aboard a Honda XR80, the Watkins brothers did so on an SL70. History may repeat itself, but seldom has it been this stupid.
-Brian Catterson
