Fifty Years of Cycle World
FIFTY YEARS OF CYCLE WORLD
GOOD THING IT’S RAINING TODAY AND I CAN’T BE OUT on the tractor, which lets me keep my promise to Mr. Editor Hoyer and skim through early copies of Cycle World. My word, here’s 1974 with Roundup as Joe Parkhurst’s column, the Yamaha ad features a skinny, 21-year-old Kenny Roberts and Honda has Pops Yoshimura himself...
Stop right there. We have 50 years of CW, Eve been involved for 40 of those years, and there’s no way I can report on all the ups and downs. Instead, a form of evolution, a look at who we were and what we started and why, stuff you might have wondered about:
A glance at the family album
ALLAN GIRDLER
Joe Parkhurst
Joe was a gearhead a sportsman, a musician, an artist and a taker of risks. He’d worked at Road & Track. When pal Vic Wilson wondered why there wasn’t a motorcycle magazine like R&T. Joe liked the notion and pitched the idea to the publisher of a magazine named Karting World, who put up the money for the start.
Joe was editor and publisher, wife Betty Jean was business and circulation manager, and by another stroke of luck, the technical editor was Gordon Jennings, best described as the Kevin Cameron of his day.
The backer lost interest in weeks, so Joe and BJ sold everything they could sell and hocked the rest and borrowed from friends, betting on themselves.
They won. In Cycle World for March, 1962, in just the magazine’s third issue, Joe wrote a progress report: They had 4000 subscribers, were putting 50,000 copies on the newsstands and all the reader letters confirmed “that motorcycle enthusiasts wanted a magazine truly designed for them.”
What was Joe like? Two stories.
One: In 1976, Joe and I went to visit Honda, the company, the headquarters and the man himself. The Honda engineers were young and referred to men
in their forties as the old guys. We went to the test track. Joe suited up and hit the track on one of the team’s endurance racers. He was 52 years old and was clocked at 145 mph, and the team and crew went wild.
Two: Remember the boss in A Christmas Carol, Mr. Fezziwig? In 1971, I think, when I was a hanger-on, a contributor but not yet on staff, Joe invited me to the office Christmas party at his house. It was a catered affair, and to the astonishment of me and all the guests, out came a roast pig, on a platter, with an apple in its mouth—a legend made true. There’s no better test of character than how a person treats you when you can't do a thing for him, and if anyone passed that test, it was Joe Parkhurst.
Covers
The first covers were done, at the backer’s request, to exploit the newsstand power of Karting World, little joke there. So, it said CYCLE in big letters, world in small, with the slogan “The New Motorcycle Enthusiasts’ Magazine.”
The logo, as we say, quickly became much neater, later reversed out of black with the slogan on top and a second slogan, “America’s Largest Selling Motorcycle Magazine” at the bottom of the cover.
We’re talking learning curve here. In the 1960s, the greatest number of copies of most magazines was sold at the stands, so covers were vital. The test was to get the readers’ attention. Soon as the art guys realized that the copies are displayed with only the tops visible, the logo became high contrast and the
“There’s no better test of character than how a person treats you when you can’t do a thing for him, and if anyone passed that test, it was Joe Parkhurst.”
blurbs, telling what’s inside, went above the logo and to the left.
The Font
In 1977, we had a gifted art director, Roger Morrison. We began working on a redesign, something constant readers will recall several times, and as part of that project, Roger designed a complete alphabet just for Cycle World.
Art directors are always eccentric. Roger and helpers would disappear for weeks then arrive on deadline and put in at least two all-nighters, making shipping day by minutes. On that basis, we named the CW font “Midnight Morrison,” and it’s in use to this day.
The Labels
One of the earlier art directors, I don’t remember who, did the labels for the tests. They were boxes, with Cycle World road test, sometimes reverse/out, sometimes not, and sometimes a dirtbike would have the road-test label.
Plus, 1 majored in English in college and became pedantic, as English majors do. When someone asked just how were we testing roads, snicker, Roger came
up with the grip and the hand and the simple statement Cycle World Test and, again, it’s still there.
The others—as in Roundup, Race Watch, Slipstream, Service and so forth—have been changed, revised, improved and discarded too many times to list. They’re always in fashion, though.
The Contents...
...Vary with the times, which, as the song says, are always changing.
In the beginning, Cycle World was to some degree the only game in town. We ran lengthy reports on the world and national races because there was no other place for the racing fan to know what had happened—no newspapers, no TV programs. Now, the news comes the same day, so our coverage is more commentary, the how and why.
Before there were shop manuals, we did long articles on carburetor rebuilding and such, even six pages on building a Harley KR racing engine. But again, there are better sources now, so we concentrate on troubleshooting.
Our constant all these 50 years has been tests of new models. And CW is still the enthusiasts’ friend, with sport, touring, vintage, dirt and so forth, one of the reasons, I believe, we are still here and still A umero Uno.
The Help
When and if David Edwards and 1 are called up for judgment, we plan to confess our petty crimes and misdemeanors, and then I will say “I hired Peter Egan” (above, left) and David will say “I pulled Kevin Cameron [above] into our lifeboat when Cycle went under,” and we will both walk free. But anyone reading this issue will know that. Way back, though, we had Gordon Jennings, as mentioned, and Dan Hunt, who kept Joe Parkhurst on track but never got a fancy title.
Speaking of backstory, when CBS bought out the Parkhursts and the Bonds in the early 1970s, CBS founder William Paley realized his corporation, in the form of the sales and accounting departments, was laying brown thumbs on his little green magazines. He hired the former editor of Esquire, Harold Hayes, and all us editors reported to him, not to the salesmen, and the magazines blossomed.
Counting Joe when he wore all the hats, CW has had only seven editors: Joe Parkhurst, Ivan Wagar, Bob Atkinson, Allan Girdler, Paul Dean, David Edwards and the incumbent Mark Hoyer.
What we each did, through the ups and downs, was ask ourselves, “What would Joe do?” Then, we did it—to our best, anyway—and that’s why we’re still the magazine designed for the motorcycle enthusiast, and why we’re still here. □
“CW is still the enthusiasts’ friend, with sport, touring, vintage, dirt and so forth, one of the reasons, I believe, we are still here and still Numero Uno.”
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