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/1476967
"So I get up to the line, and I'm still mad. I revved the bike so high in the burnout box that Mo told me later that he thought I was going to float the valves out of the thing. I did the run and got such a bad case of tire shake that I couldn't see where I was going. When I stuck it in second, everything cleared up, and when I crossed the line, I knew I had a pretty good run. "I looked up, and I could see Jack [O'Malley] riding right past Jon [Baugh] on the return road and heading towards me. I thought, 'This is about to get serious. We're going to have it out right now.' He rolls up on his minibike and sticks his hand out and says, 'congratulations, you just did the first-ever seven- second pass.'" Kizer had turned a 7.92 to become the first seven-second bike on gas. "I found out later we were the first seven-second pass by any gas-powered machine, bikes, or cars." Ironically by 1986, Kizer was racing for Jack O'Malley on the famous Orient Express drag bikes. The opportunity came at the right time since Parson's was building a house and no longer had the time to put into build- ing drag bikes. He would race with O'Malley through the early 1990s. With the new pairing, more records and champion- ships were won. Kizer once unloaded on an Orient Express Funny Bike at over 150 mph. The bike was so destroyed it was put in a dump- ster. "When I got home, Mo had me back racing a turbo bike the next weekend, so I could shake it off and get the crash out of my mind," Kizer said. At one point in 1988, on O'Malley's Funny Bike, Kizer was the quickest motorcycle in all of drag racing. Terry also took over the well- known Mr. Turbo and, through that company, built successful drag bikes and even contributed to Land Speed Record efforts along the way. Famously a Mr. Turbo Kawasaki ZX11 became the first street-legal motorcycle to crack the 200-mph barrier in Sport Bike magazine's famous "Superbikes from Hell" series in 1992. They also won the an- nual Horsepower Shootout at Daytona with 498 horsepower! "And that was spinning the rear wheel so bad that the Dyno was reading 130 mph, and with the gearing we had, the rear wheel was actually turning at 180 mph. So you can figure we easily had over 500 horses." With such a career of suc- cesses, we asked Kizer what year or championship stood out for him, and without hesitation, he said the 1988 season. They were dealing with issues on a new bike with full bodywork. After a big crash, Sandy Kosman had built an entirely new chassis, and Kizer won the Memphis National on the brand-new machine still in primer paint. After celebrat- ing and settling in for the night at a hotel, a late-night phone call came in. Terry's wife hysterically told him their house had burned to the ground. She barely made it out with their nine-month-old daughter. Not long after, Kizer came to the last race and needed to set a record and win the race to win the championship. The team did it, and it was pretty emotional at the awards banquet. "It was quite a celebration that night," Terry remembers. Kizer never officially retired. He was recently involved in the building of a new Top Fuel bike with the intention of making a comeback. After all, several of his contemporaries, most nota- bly Larry "Spiderman" McBride, are still racing, but the pandemic and economy have kept Terry's latest project on the sidelines. So, it's possible the final chapter of Kizer's drag racing story is yet to be written. CN CN III ARCHIVES P128 Subscribe to nearly 50 years of Cycle News Archive issues: www.CycleNews.com/Archives Kizer once unloaded on an Orient Express Funny Bike at over 150 mph. The bike was so destroyed it was put in a dumpster.