Yamaha Tz750 Miler

YAMAHA TZ750 MILER

WORLD'S COOLEST BIKES

Once more with gusto for those of us who missed the show the first time around

MATTHEW MILES

IN SHARP CONTRAST TO MANY AMERican race fans, I wasn't raised on dirt-track as a matter of course. When I first met Kenny Roberts in 1988, at Laguna Seca, he was a threetime 500cc Grand Prix world champion. A roadracer. I had pictures of Roberts’ GP riders, Eddie Lawson, Wayne Rainey and John Kocinski, taped to my college dorm-room wall. But I knew next to nothing about Roberts’ historic victory at the 1975 Indianapolis Mile or his winning Yamaha TZ750—actually, I knew less than next to nothing.

I now know how much Roberts needed that win back in ’75. Yamaha needed it, too. The Harley XR-750s had stretched both Roberts and the XS650based parallel-Twin to their limits. The liquid-cooled, four-cylinder TZ750 roadrace engine was powerful and available. Champion’s Doug Schwerma was contracted to build frames for Roberts, Skip Aksland, Steve Baker, Randy Cleek, Rick Hocking and Don Vesco.

Former racer Warren Willing, who would later engineer Roberts’ oldest son, Kenny Jr., to his world title with Suzuki, was at Kel Carruthers’ shop in San Diego for the last-minute build of Roberts’ original TZ. “We finished the bike, took it off the bench, started it up and put it straight in the back of the Dodge van—I think Bud Aksland was driving—and we got the call after he won the race,” remembered Willing. “At the time, Kenny said the bike was a handful. But with hindsight, he now says it wasn’t too bad; he just needed some tires.”

Roberts—sixth-quickest in qualifying, fifth in his heat race, transferring to the main via a win in the first of two semis—rolled to the starting line on a hand-cut Goodyear roadracing slick that “never once hooked up.”

Tires then weren’t what they are today. At the time, Goodyear, Roberts’ rubber sponsor, didn’t make dirt-trackspecific tires; Carlisle, Dunlop and Pirelli were the popular choices. Had he at least been able to choose from Goodyear’s “drawers of compounds” during the week leading up to Indy, Roberts says the circumstances of the race would have been much different: “Them guys wouldn’t have seen which way I went.”

Given that very different scenario, would Roberts’ late-race, high-line heroics have then been unnecessary? And what about his post-race proclamation—“They don’t pay me enough to ride that thing!”—belted over the public address for all in attendance to recall years later?

Doesn’t matter. So great was the potential destabilizing effect of Roberts’ Yamaha on dirt-track that the AMA soon banned all Multis from dirt-track. The rule affected not only the TZ, but also the two-stroke Kawasaki and Suzuki Triples, as well as the sohc, four-cylinder 750cc Honda—any threequarter-liter engine with more than two cylinders—effectively leaving HarleyDavidson and the XR-750 to dominate the sport for decades.

All this explains why the replica TZ750 that Roberts rode last August at Indianapolis gets my vote for World’s Coolest Bike. I know it’s not the original. But I never laid eyes on the original; after all, I was only 8 years old in 1975.1 did, however, see Kenny Roberts ride this particular bike at Indianapolis in 2009, and I was impressed with his evergreen riding skills and the awesome power and speed and sound of the bike itself.

I may have come late to the party, but the guest of honor sure put on a great show. Thanks for the memories, Kenny.