Motorcycle Classics

More than just a bike show, The Quail Motorcycle Gathering is something special. An ever-changing lineup of bikes in a beautiful setting on the greens of the Quail Lodge & Golf Club in Carmel, California, The Quail is the highlight of many a motorcyclists’ event calendar. This year the event takes place on Saturday, May 6. One day earlier, on Friday, May 5, things kick off with The Quail Ride, a 100-mile jaunt from the Quail Lodge through the gorgeous scenic back roads of the Monterey Peninsula. It includes laps around WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca, followed by lunch mid-day, and ends with an included evening dinner. The ride is open to antique, vintage and modern motorcycles, and is limited to just 100 participants. Applications to participate can be found on…

Another Big Bear Talk about serendipity! Right after I finished proofreading Requiem for a Big Bear (March-April 2023), a random ad popped up on the "Yamaha Two Stokes 1955-1979" Facebook group. It was for this 1965 Yamaha YDS3-C (aka Big Bear Scrambler), a complete, original-paint bike like that which had carried me up the West Coast 38 years ago. The seller was Dave Kolbo, founder of KDI Reproductions (kdirepros.com), a manufacturer of repro parts for early Yamaha Enduros. He’d acquired the scrambler in a lot of NOS parts and bikes purchased from the family of a collector and had no use for it. But I did! Eerily like in 1985, this Big Bear needed a battery, fuel-system cleaning and fresh oil to run. The first ride was spellbinding. The powerband…

It was a trip to Europe by Soichiro Honda and company finance director Takeo Fujisawa that led to the development of the Super Cub. While Honda-san was more interested in European race bike technology, Fujisawa was looking for a killer product that would sell in vast numbers. He would have noted the success of Vespa, NSU and Kreidler: between 1953 and 1958, NSU sold more than a million of its 50cc Quickly mopeds, while in 1959, a third of all German motorcycles were Kreidlers, principally the 50cc Florett. 15 million Vespas were reported to have been built between 1946 and 1964. Fujisawa saw an opportunity and the company grabbed it. Honda designed a step-through motorcycle around a hybrid frame combining steel pressings and a single downtube. The engine sat low…

December 1958: “This new product from Japan will have, no doubt, a great appeal among the medium-weight motorcycle devotees of America.” So began Cycle magazine’s Road Test No. 99 featuring a new Honda motorcycle that the report described as “one of the first Honda Dream 300cc OHC to be imported to the States.” In a subsequent issue, the editors acknowledged that the Dream 300 (Honda referred to the model as a 300, although actual engine displacement was 305cc, which in turn, was based on a 247cc twin) tested was “the very first Honda to land on the West Coast from its country of origin, Japan.” No other model designation was given throughout that three-page magazine article, although the bike was probably an early C76, which, according to some sources today,…

The 1913 Thor Model U gracing these pages resides at the Franklin Automobile Museum in Tucson, Arizona (see this issue’s Destinations, Page 70). It is an original motorcycle with a fascinating history. During its 110-year life it has been a running motorcycle, a bicycle, a barn bike, a resurrection project, and now, a museum display piece. Over the last century (plus one decade), this Thor has had only three owners. The story begins with Arthur O’Leary, a Butte, Montana jewelry store owner, aviator, and combat veteran (a man who survived being gassed in World War I). O’Leary purchased the Model U new and in 1913 Montana, that must have made quite an impression (any ride in those days would have been an adventure ride). Ken Mulholland, a Montana high school…

So quiet is the Mojave at dawn, that it could be a deprivation chamber instead of a desert. The cool air is hauntingly still, and smells and tastes blissfully pure. Benevolent streaks of sunlight dart over the barren horizon, kissing your cheeks softly with the promise of a long, pleasant day. The earth beneath is solid and secure, a bedrock of stability and assurance. And there is zero sound, truly none. At least, for the moment. Because, on just such a morning some 50 years ago, this welcoming, tranquil, Zen-like atmosphere was merely the calm before a loud and chaotic storm. September 10, 1972. Just a year after seeing the wild desert-race start in On Any Sunday, entering the California Racing Club (CRC) European Scrambles in Adelanto, Califorinia, seemed like…