25 Years Ago June, 1982

25 YEARS AGO JUNE, 1982

Yamaha's "Power-Packed" Seca 650 Turbo blasted past photographer Ron Hussey's camera on the cover of this month's issue. Resplendent in muted silver with complementary red striping, the faired 653cc four-banger produced a claimed 85 horsepower and 54 foot-pounds of torque, its output boosted greatly above 5000 rpm by a tiny, fast-spinning Mitsubishi turbocharger.

• Wedged between road tests of the Seca 650 and a Laverda Jota 1000 were evaluations of a pair of ring-ding dirtbikes: the $1979 Kawasaki KDX25O off -roader and the $2179 Yamaha YZ25OJ motocrosser. Of the latter, editors noted, `All the right pieces are here but so is the weight."

• Speaking of Kawasaki's popular KDX enduro model, Charley Morey took a 175cc model to "Mohave Tech-the Larry Roeseler/Scot Harden Desert Racing School. Their racing years may now be behind them, but those two still know how to have a good time on motorcycles.

• Racing was in full swing at Daytona, and coverage was all encompassing. "Nobody rides harder than Freddie Spencer, and nobody spends money like Honda," read the caption to Executive Editor John Ulrich's coverage of the Bell 100 Superbike Race. Graeme Crosby won the Daytona 200, while Rich Schlachter topped the 250 race. I met Schlachter for the first time last fall at the MotoGP series finale in Valencia, Spain. Introduced to me by his former tuner, CWlechnical Editor Kevin Cameron, he was all smiles, agog over how far GP racing has come since he'd been on the grid.

Matthew Miles