PHOTOS BY REXREESE
Harley's new,
Orange MXer:
t American Motocrosser
ay, or is this just another
plate of spaghetti?
By Rex Reese
After perhaps too long of a wait for fans anticipating America's answer to the Great Foreign
Moto-Invasion , Harley-Davidson is going to
finally release a motocrosser for the popular
m asses. Bu t don 't get your hopes up
too high , the re are a few catches. First.
it will be abou t four weeks before the
pum pkin -orange machines hit the
showroom floors. Second , H a rley is
importing only ' 1.000 u nits for
distribution to the few luck y dealers
who have already ordered them .
Third, did you read "import?" Sure
did. The Great American Motocrosser
is being manufactured and assembled
by
Harley's
Italian
subsidary,
Amerecci , and it will be fitted with
Japanese suspension components as
well. Sigh.
However, Harley's rnotocrosser will
be priced "com pe titivel y" with the
Japanese rice rockets according to H -D
sources. which means that it will cost
less than other European bikes. It's
intended in pricing and engineering
that the H-D 250 MX will bear the
best traits of both worlds. We can only
hope,
Ove r the years that Harley has spent
in developing their bike, many
to
interesting configurations have been
tried, with the earl iest models spo rt ing
rear fork suspension . The rea r fork has
since been dropped for
more
conventional shock absorbers , which
proved to be the hot set ·up after all.
T he Harley MX development effort
has been faced with suspension a nd
handling problems, broken frames ,
broken engines and the myriad other
screw-ups
that
tend
to
make
mechanics and riders go berserk - in
other words, the usual problems that
are encountered in the development of
a new machine. The pre· production
bikes p ictured here at Saddleback
Pa rk are the culmination of all those
years of hard work and lea rning from
mistakes, leaving the bad out and
integrating the refinements and
positive elements into one clean
package that looks as if it just might do
the job. The new Harley does look
clean, and was good enough for Marty
Tripes' fourth at the Hangtown
National MX
