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Harley's 360 proto-3
type motocrosser ]
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The Milwaukee approach to Japanese
Trans-AMA Series supremacy
By Jim Gianatsis
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I was in the Harley-Davidson team pits at th~
Dallas T rans-AMA talking wi th Harley~
Davidson's moto cross team manager Clyde
Denzer. Their latest 360 prototype bike being
-
used in the Trans-AMA Series
was about to become the next
subject in Cycle News' continuing
series of reports on the exotic
- 28
factory machinery campaigned in the
1977 Trans-AMA. Before dealing with
the bike itself, it seemed important to
find out the philosophy of H-D 's
involvement
in
national
and
international motocross comperition.
Presently Harley-Davidson only sells
one motocross bike , their 250 MX,
and supplies of the 250cc bike are
barely large enough to support a fullfledged racing effort composed of
riders Marty Tripes, Rex Staten, Rich
Eierstedt and their mechanics .
Additionally, Harley has had an Open
class prototype for two seasons now,
and there seem to be no immediate
plans to market an Open class
production bike -a nytime in the near
future . The first q uestion I asked of
Clyde was, "Why is Harley so seriously
into supporting a factory motocross
team?"
"Part of the idea behind the Harley
motocross team is to let people know
that we sell motorcycles other than big
four-stroke street bikes. We have a line
of lightweight street and dirt bikes that
has been somewhat hidden by our big
bike image," he said.
"T he Open class 360 we're using in
the Trans-AMA Series now is at least 11
year away from production if the time
it took for us to develop the 250 MX is
any indication. We may never get
around to selling motocross bikes in a
large enough volume to justify the size
of our team, but we feel the image
we're setting should help us in the
overall sales picture."
The most interesting thing about
the Harley motocross effort is that it is
tied in directly with development of
the bikes. To a degree this is ho~
many of the other top motocross bike
manufacturers work , but not to such
extremes as Harley. Most J a p anese
manufacturers develop works bikes
thro ugh
their
engineering
departments where most original
designs are conceived. From there the
bikes go to the test track where riders
test the new designs to see how they
work. Usually the top contracted
factory riders, such as Roger DeCoster
for Suzuki or Pierre Karsmakers for
Yamaha, are called in to test the bikes
and offer any opinions of their own.
