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VOLUME 57 ISSUE 10 MARCH 9, 2021 P113 have the better memory. After all, the AMA doesn't even credit his 1974 title to the right brand. Jones won that title aboard a Can-Am in a year that the former Bombardier-owned motorcycle marque swept the top- three positions in the 250cc class. "I actually won it twice for Ya- maha, but that first year [1971] they didn't call it a National series. Then they did, and then they didn't, so I don't know what to say on that one. I say four, and everybody else says four, but the AMA says three, so I don't know what to tell you. That's the AMA." But that's getting ahead in the story, because after two great years for Yamaha in 1971 and 1972, Jones switched to Honda. "Honda offered us more money," he says. "They gave me about $50,000—more money than I even dreamed about, plus expenses, when the average wage was about $15,000 per year. They flew me to the races and had mechanics taking care of my bikes. We didn't have to do any of that anymore. It gave me so much confidence that I just felt like nobody could beat me." Nobody did. Jones repeated as AMA 250cc Champion for 1973. Even so, things quickly went sour at Honda after the manufacturer balked on getting Jones Open- class bikes for the Trans-Am Series at the end of the year. "They screwed up on the con- tract," Jones says. "They gave me one open bike to run the U.S. GP on, but they took that back. I wanted to race the open class in the Trans- Am, but they said, 'No, no. Just ride the support class.' I was National Champion. I wasn't going to 'just ride the support class.' My contract read like Nicky Hayden's, where if Honda didn't make and sell a bike for me to race, I could ride some- thing else. So, I went and bought my own Maico and rode it for one race with Honda clothes to keep up my end of the deal. Honda was so hot about it that they bought out the rest of my contract so that they could get rid of me. I put together a deal with Maico for the rest of the year, which was okay with me." Then Can-Am doubled up the Honda money for 1974, and the Canadian firm bought itself a champion. Jones, once again, held up his end of the deal, win- ning the title as mentioned above. "It was a two-year deal," Jones says. "At first I had so many prob- lems with stuff breaking, and we had problems with some of Can- Am's upper management. I won't mention any names—Jeff Smith—but they wouldn't let us do the things that we needed to do. They would say, 'Oh no, the bicycle works fine.' Finally, we just changed the stuff on our own and didn't tell them. That got me through to the end. We had hired Marty Tripes, who was starv- ing on a Husky, and Jimmy Ellis for that year, too. We went one-two- three. I don't know of any manufac- turer who has done that since." As Daytona '75 came into view, it would seem that there was just no stopping Jones. Armed with a much-improved factory Can-Am, he was optimistic that he could retain his 250cc title once more. But in a split second, it all came to a crashing end. "I ran into Peter Lamppu—God rest his soul," Jones remembers. "He was riding a CZ, and he crashed in front of me in practice, and his bike flipped up and hit me, and my foot went right in his wheel. It broke my leg so badly that I was out for a year and a half after that. That was it. I was done. Modern medicine wasn't what it is today. I was only 22." There's so much more to tell about Gary Jones, from the dev- astating loss of a personal fortune after his own motorcycle company imploded due to forces beyond his control, to his rebounding as a key player in the organizations of Noleen Racing and White Brothers. Those are stories for another day. Suffice it to say that from 1971- 1975, Gary Jones was as good as they come. CN Jones was inducted into the AMA Motorcycle Hall of Fame in 2000. In 2010, the Gary Jones Cup was cre- ated to honor the top 250cc team in the AMA Pro Motocross Champion- ship. Jones is still an active motor- cycle racer, as well as a side-by-side racer. When he's not competing, he helps organize side-by-side racing at Glen Helen Raceway. This Archives edition is reprinted from issue #16, April 28, 2004. CN has hundreds of past Archives editions in our files, too many destined to be archives themselves. So, to prevent that from happening, in the future, we will be revisiting past Archives articles while still planning to keep fresh ones coming down the road. -Editor Subscribe to nearly 50 years of Cycle News Archive issues: www.CycleNews.com/Archives