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/1469337
I was barely in double digits when the dirt bike boom hit. It seemed like dirt-bike technol- ogy was making huge strides weekly, so it was a great time to be a dirt bike junky like me. The bike I remembered that really got the techno ball rolling was the model-year 1974 Honda CR125M Elsinore, which arrived on show- room floors in early 1973 with a $749 price tag. Cycle News al- ready had a full ride review of the '74 Elsinore in the July 10, 1973, issue. And I remember as a kid reading that test word for word, but what I really recalled was the cover of that issue, which had photo of the lucky person who got to test the bike, holding the CR125 Elsinore up in the air, well above the ground, with just his two bare arms, demonstrating just how light the bike really was. And he did it without showing a hint of strain on his face. You know, Scott Summers-like. The CR125M Elsinore wasn't the first Honda CR ever, that was the CR250M Elsinore (named after the race made famous in the movie On Any Sunday) which came out a few months earlier, but it was the ultra-light- weight CR125M Elsinore, which was modeled after the 250, that really got the MX geeks like me drooling. At that time, 125s were very popular, probably more so than the bigger bikes, and I've heard the CR125M was pro- duced in greater numbers than any motocrosser ever built, even to this day. I don't know how ac- curate that is, but it wouldn't sur- prise me if that were indeed true. The Elsinore, as it turned out, was so good that it gave Honda a reason to get into racing moto- cross at the factory level and has been going strong ever since. I always find it interesting to read original reviews of long- standing motorcycles, espe- CN III ARCHIVES P140 BY KIT PALMER 1974 HONDA CR125M TESTS NEVER DIE (Above) The cover of Cycle News that featured our test on the 1974 Honda CR125M motocrosser.