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VOL. 56 ISSUE 15 APRIL 16, 2019 P127 hind us and pitched in to help build our double-engine bike." Harley-Davidson drag bikes dominated at the time, so Chris- tenson said he knew if they were going to win, they'd have to beat a lot of Harley's along the way, and that's how he came up with the name Hogslayer. So many in the community helped that a huge entourage would often go with the guys to the races. The team had black Sunset Motors/Hogslayer t-shirts made up, and dozens wore them at the races. "That made people feel like they were a part of our team," Gregory said. The guys laugh that the following sometimes got out of hand. "One time we went down to Bowling Green, Kentucky, and we basically rented out an entire hotel," Chris- tenson recalled. "It was a real party scene. We had one room that was loaded from floor to ceiling with beer and alcohol, and one guy's job was to stand at the door and guard the room!" While they partied hardy, when it came to racing, the team was all business. The popularity of Hogslayer soared when the team took the bike to run the invitation-only NHRA World Finals in Ontario, California, in 1972. The event was featured on ABC's Wide World of Sports, and Christenson and the Hogslayer were among the stars. Christenson dominated the competition, winning the final with a world record 8.52. Suddenly Hogslayer was featured in motorcycle magazines across the globe. Christenson and Gregory became drag-bike celebrities. Hogslayer went on to win count- less titles and records, yet for all the successes the one thing that really disappointed the boys was barely missing the opportunity to be the first motorcycle to get into the seven-second bracket. They were on the verge of setting that milestone at the 1973 U.S. Nation- als in Indianapolis when a small oil leak thwarted them. "We'd run an 8.02 in the previ- ous run," Christenson recalls. "I could tell the bike was running so good, and with a bit of a clutch adjustment we were going to do it." On the line, Gregory saw the leak and was going to tie a rag on when the lineman noticed the leak and stepped in and told them to shut off the bike. They argued, but it was no use, officials quickly converged on the bike. "They stopped me from strap- ping that rag over the leak," Gregory said, "and told me to shut it off. That was a sad deal." Later that year they had another opportunity to get into the sevens in the World Finals in Ontario, California, but when they rolled up to the line, they saw Russ Collins staged ahead of them with his new triple-engine Honda. "I thought, oh no, how did he get staged in front of us," Chris- tenson remembers. "Of course, he gets up there and runs a 7.90. The first seven-second run. What a heartbreaker. I went out and ran a 7.90-something. That was the run I should have had at Indy." By the late 1970s, the super- charged single-engine Japanese bikes began surpassing the twin and triple-engine motorcycles of the early-to-mid-'70s era. The most significant blow to Christenson's racing career was when Norton ceased production in 1975. The sales of Nortons in the dealership subsidized, and it was a tremen- dous expense of keeping Hogslayer running when that source dried up. Christenson's racing career began to wind down. By the early 1980s, he was only making limited exhibi- tion and reunion runs with the bike. The British National Motorcycle Museum in England now houses Hogslayer. It was one of the fea- tured motorcycles in the grand re- opening of the museum. Christen- son is happy the bike has a place at such a prestigious venue. Gregory has mixed emotions. "It's in a big national museum where people from all over the world can come and look at it," he said with voice cracking from emotion. "But I used to come to the shop just to look at it. It's like some- body in my family died and aren't here no more. Not that I don't think it belongs there, but I can't touch it anymore, can't say high to it." Today you can watch an excellent documentary on Hogslayer avail- able on Amazon Prime Video. It's a fitting tribute to one of the most important bikes in all of drag racing and the dynamic duo who made it possible. CN Subscribe to nearly 50 years of Cycle News Archive issues: www.CycleNews.com/Archives