Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
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CN III ARCHIVES BY LARRY LAWRENCE W hen motorcycle road race fans think of BMW and Reg Pridmore, the first thing that comes to mind is the impeccable Butler & Smith BMW R90S Prid- more raced to the inaugural AMA Superbike Championship in 1976. Lesser known is the Butler & Smith R75/5-based machine Pridmore campaigned for four seasons in the old AMA Formula 750 National Road Race class beginning in 1972. With- out the knowledge gained by way of development of the R75/5 (and later /6 engine) Formula 750 machine, the championship R90S Superbike would have never been possible. BMWs had been road raced in AMA Grand National Road Race competition from the beginning. Riders like Joe Tomas, Stan My- ers and Ed Labelle earned solid top-10 finishes at nationals held in Daytona, Laconia and Watkins Glen, but by the early 1960s the BMW marque was gone from AMA national competition. When it first appeared at an AMA Road Race National in 1972, the But- ler & Smith BMW F-750 drew a lot of attention. People know today that BMW can build excellent sport bikes, but understand that in America in the early 1970s BMWs were considered an old man's touring bike. Reliable, solid and steady to be sure, but fast and nimble? No way! Butler & Smith's boss, Dr. Peter Adams, was looking to shake BMW's stodgy image as an old man's touring machine. In 1969, Adams authorized a small group within Butler & Smith P100 THE BAVARIAN UNDERDOG A Look At The BMW R75/5 Formula 750 Race Bike Japanese two-stroke GP bikes. The racing Beemer had engines original- ly designed to spin at 6000 rpm, yet Gietl made them reliable at 10,500. The BMW factory in Germany was al- ready building BMW F750 racers to compete in the 1972 Imola 200 and the newly formed FIM F-750 class with riders Helmut Dahne, Dave Pot- ter, and Hans-Otto Butenuth (Dahne finished 13th). After initially using a modified production frame in the endurance iteration of the 750cc project, Gietl said it was the BMW factory frames that were used to develop the AMA Formula 750 racers. Kurt Liebmann and John Pot- ter began racing the BMW F-750 machine in 1972 in club events and select AMA National Road Races in the Junior class. In August of '72, Liebmann won the Junior class at Pocono, giving the machine its big- gest win ever. to begin working on building racing motorcycles. Working part time on the project was an ex-Bultaco-backed motocross racer named Udo Gietl, who would later come to fame for leading both BMW and Honda's suc- cessful AMA Superbike programs. Gietl, along with Helmut Kern and Miles Rossteucher, built BMW /5 Series Boxers that were fielded successfully on the club level by Kurt Liebmann and Justus Taylor on the East Coast and Reg Pridmore out West. That year a pair of Butler & Smith BMWs went first and second in an endurance event in Danville, Virginia, at what is now Virginia International Raceway. Development continued and BMW had excellent success in the low-key world of American and Canadian endurance racing. That spurred BMW on to de- velop a short-lived AMA Formula 750 (later called Formula One) machine to compete against the powerful Gary Fisher on the B&S BMW F-750 in 1975.