Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/1227783
CN III ARCHIVES BY LARRY LAWRENCE F loyd Clymer was one of the biggest gamblers in all of mo- torcycling. Like any gambler the colorful Clymer won some and lost some. He won big when he sold Cycle Magazine to Ziff-Davis in 1966 for a walloping profit. But good old Floyd couldn't settle on the windfall. In his last years he gambled on trying to revive the grand old Indian Motorcycle name only to die trying. The son of a country doctor, Clymer was born in Indianapolis in 1895, and grew up in Berthoud, Colorado. He was a hustler from an early age. Clymer became nationally famous when a news service wrote about the world's youngest Ford salesman. Clymer was just 13 and was selling Model T's in Greeley. Naturally, Clymer did very well selling the newly mass-produced Fords at $850 a pop. It seems everyone wanted to buy a car from the country's youngest auto agent. With finances well beyond what most teenagers could even dream, Clymer looked to have a little fun with his money, and nothing looked more entertaining to him than motorcycles. Clymer started riding and liked the sport so much he opened a dealership in Greeley selling Harley-Davidson and Excel- sior, all of this before he turned 19. Clymer began racing about the same time. He raced at the height of the board-track era and became the top rider in his region P90 THE GAMBLER valve Harley, Clymer sped into the lead on the second lap and battled with teammate Janke for the lead. Along the way Clymer broke a new 100-mile record by over 2 minutes and earned a $100 bonus (the equivalent of over $1800 today). Unfortunately, Janke's premonition that the new Harley might not go the distance proved to be spot on. On lap 110 (220-mile mark) a valve broke on Clymer's bike, leaving Janke clear to take the victory on the older design Harley-Davidson. A little over a month after his Dodge City disappointment, Clymer won the motorcycle division in the inaugural running of the Pikes Peak Hillclimb. Prevailing opinion at the time (primarily among the automo- bile racers) was that a motorcycle would not make it above the timber- line, much less to the 14,000-foot of the country. Harley- Davidson made Clymer one of its earliest factory riders. The biggest race in America in 1916 was the Dodge City 300. A crowd of 20,000 filled the grandstands at the dusty, banked, two-mile dirt track built smack-dab in the middle of the Kansas prairie. Magazine accounts pointed out that American flags were flying everywhere at the track that day. One reason was that it was July 4, but another was the looming involvement of the country in World War I. Clymer was new to the Harley- Davidson team and was not slated to get one of Harley's new eight- valve racing machines. That was reserved for the team's veteran riders. Just before the race Irving Janke started feeling nervous about racing the unproven 8-valver in the 300-mile race. He elected at the last minute to go with the proven pocket-valve racer. Harley- Davidson racing manager Bill Ottaway went ahead and assigned one of the new bikes to Clymer. "I climbed on," Clymer said in a magazine interview, "and what a bunch of dynamite I had under me." At 11:00 the Great Plains roared to life with the sound of racing motors. The crowd came to its feet for the start and Indian's Don Johns took the lead on the first lap. Using the power of the eight- This is Floyd Clymer demonstrating one of his Indian-badged imports to the press in the late 1960s.