Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1970's

October 16, 1973 Page 32 VIVA ESPANA! UP FROM THE STONE AGE What building racers is all about: competition. Left. Pomeroy on his Bultaco. Right. Vehkonen on his Montesa. Being.a brief investigation into an industry that is' a Jparadox By John Huetter The most curious thing abo:ut the Spanish motorcycle industry is that there should be one at 'all. Spain, and its Iberian cohabitant Portugal. q/lalify as probably the last pre-industrial countries in Western Europe. The economy of Spain qualifies it by 20th century measures as an underdeveloped area (which parts of it indeed are), yet the country comfortably contains three fairly prosperous motorcycle manufacturers, specializing in high performance competition machinery. Spain. with an annual per capita income of around $300 exports over 30.000 competition machines a year. By contrast, the US with a per capita income of about $3,000 lten times as much per person if your math is a little slow) produces. not for export, bu t to qualify for AMA competition, about 200 competition machines a year: Harley-Davidson XR-750s. The second most ,remarkable thing about Spain and its bikes is that it is the only country with an, industry that seems' to be successfully defying the Japanese monopoly of the American motorcycle market. Not merely in sales, which are significan t in competi tion bikes bu t dwarfed by the overall nu~ber of bikes the Japanese giants send out the door each year, but in terms of design and especially technical innovation. No other country. besides Japan,. boasts as many high quality international exporters of competition motorcycles. Period! The third, and hardest' to comprehend, fact about the Spanish companies: Bultaco, Montesa, and Ossa, is that they really don't seem to be in it only for the money. This is something you have to live with to understand, bu t 111 try to explain, by examples, later. The Factories One notoriously uninfor~ed Am e rican motorcycling writer dramati~aIIy cdr .. d tbe Montesa motocross madliatie' partially on the basis of the fact" Montesa, the first of the Spanish' ufacturers, had a "stone age •• wIlat could you expect? Of course, the reviewer in q ~ lIad never been to Barcelona or _ lIny of the Spanish motorcycle factories when he made this slur, nor has he of this writing. In fact, none of the factories are gleaming giants. A bike shop where hundreds of workers are putting together frames, engines, and running . gear just isn't going to look like a "Coca-Cola" bottling plant. The subject of the criticism, though, the Montesa factory, is ironically one of the most modern on the continent, bein'g housed in modular preconstructed units built in 1962. The Bultaco and Ossa factories are in sligh t1y older, buildings bu t in Europe, especially in Spain, it is a very ordinary thing to use old buildings to house manufacturing proces.ses. The American urge towards newness for the sake of change hasn'-1 penetrated that far. Yes, much of the wor.k. like c.arving the ports and actually assembling the engines is done by hand. Would you want it any other way? Is it possible to do it any other way in building a racing engine of 250cc that gives 30 HP ormore ou t of the crate? There are two vjews you, or anyone else, can take of all this: inefficient piece item production (to use a business management term) or meticulous old world craftsmanship. The lattet, in actuality, seems to apply better. Most workers, who chec k the tolerances, assemble the engine.s, bolt it all together and test the finished motorcycle out the factory door are long timers. Eight to ten years with one of the companies is not unusual. They generally know what they're doing on the wrench and screw driver level, and generally do it with considerable pride of workmanship. Plus, the hourly wage earners in the Mon tesa, Ossa, and Bultaco factories are well paid and well cared for by the. standards of European industry. Of the alternatives available to a man without a university degree (and that is most everybody) building racing motorcycles is a pretty damn attractive one - with a relative wage to match. Turnover is draIIlatically low ia the work f_ce. Workers are pretty happy. Where did it all start? With Montesa in 1945. In the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, which pretty well devastated the resources of the country, there was a crying need for transportation. There are few forms of rapid personal transport as 'cheap to produce and econom..i,cal to operate as a motorcycle. Hence, was born an industry. Montesa incorporated in 1947 wi th Marcelino Permanyer and Francisco Bulto the main shakers and movers in the nascent .organization based on a I25cc street bike. Ossa emerged about the same time, producing cheap road transport under the direc tion of Eduardo Giro. To arrive at the next and present configuration of the factories and their co-existence about the hub of downtown Barcelona, d.e matter of personalities enters in. I t's probably hard to argue that the Senores Mon-!,ermanyer and Bulto are at the well-spring of Spanish motorcycling and its position in the world. The I25cc Montesa road· racer is testimony to their managerial, technical and competitive abilities as sportsmen-entrepreneurs, which they had by then become - rising above the subsistence. transportation market to go into world competition. Senor Giro has been a lesser voice historically but these three have shaped the present configuration of Spanish motorcycling and, most important, the Bultaco, Montesa or Ossa you buy in the U.S. 'Now in 1958, there was a terminal split between Francisco Bulto, one of the more powerful of Montesa's Board of Directors: effectively co-director with Senor Permany.er, and Montesa. When you hear the story of the split, which was truly earth-shaking in Europe, the story tends to reflect credit and noble in ten tions on the side curren t1y relating it. Probably only the principals, Bulto and Permanyer, really know or understand what happened and they don't encourage discussion of the subject. Very basically, the Board of Directors of Montesa, by then one of the major economic influences in Spain, voted to. withdraw factory entries from international motorcycle competition. Senor Bulto was in the minority and .quit the company. Bultaco version: "He was sick at heart." Montesa version: "Only looked on it as a game and not serious business." Both are probably true. Overriding all this is the fact that neither of these very strong personalities: Mon-Permanyer or Bulto much like anything going against their will. Both are rich, powerful mea. A number of department heads and racing engineers quit Montesa at the same time as Senor Bulto and a year later, the first Bultaco was built by former Montesa employees. By 1959, all three factories that export to the U.S. were established in something close to their presen t form. The result has been a continuous rivalry that has proved surprisingly healthy to the benefit of motorcyclists the world over. The competition was first in road racing, then in trials which is still the most important to the Spanish manufacture~s and finally, with the maturing of the sport, in motocross. The res\llting trials machinery, for instance, has no equal. The Machines It would be a mistake to think of the Spanish marques only in terms of dirt riding and competition, though that is where the overwhelming bulk of the export market now lies. Road racing was a big thing wi h Bultaco in the early years: the big thing as a matter of fact and they won the 250 class at the Isle-of Man TT, in part to improve th.e breed; in part, you can't help but think, to show Montesa that their third overall wasn't all that wonderful. All the factorles developed street-oriented engines with max horsepower coming at max revs which were up around the~· IO,OOtl RPM range. Now, aside from some privately-run 250's in production races, there are few Spanish-built bikes in road racing. The factories now pu t ou t a significant pavemen t effort only for the ann'!aI 24 hours of Montjuich. And that 24 hQur marathon attack on The Record, usually set by the "other" marque, is about all the factory road racing that Bultaco, Montesa and Ossa officially indulge in these years. - But it is the policy of the Spanish fae tories, which seems to be mu tually self-enforcing, to sell what you race unlike their major competitors, the Japanese. They have reaped both the losses and the rewards of this policy. Only now after five years of 9000 RPM - 35 HP break-once-a-moto jokes about all their 250 dirt racers do the benefits of such a trying policy firmly emerge. Bultaco sell~ the same bike in the U.S. they used to gain the Spanish National Motocross Championship, wi th all its virtues and vices. Montesa followed with a Vehkonen Replica, a great step forward in bringing G P bikes to the public, even if it doesn't fit everybody. Next year's Ossa 250 motocrosser will be another radical step forward in performance and design having been proved out by some well French and Belgian racers. Bl&!Itaco will probably retaliate with a light, powerful Pomeroy Replica 250 with a uown

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