Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

IVES Twice The Fun, Thrice n the outside, Larry Coleman might seem like your average motorcycle-industry- type guy. A self-employed motorcycle- industry marketing man and manufactur- er's rep, his clients include BUB Exhaust Systems, Barnett Clutches and Terry Componens. But talk about his racinS accomplishments, and things arguably get a little weird. Coleman is a three-time AMA National Sidecar Champion. Yeah, sideca6. You know, those motorcycles that have three wheels instead of two and require two riders instead of one? Scoffed at and out of vogue for nearly two decades, sidecars are mostly treated by mainstream motorc/clists with about the same affection as ATVS or your average curbside rubbish can- Coleman says it's a bad rap, but he does so from a pragmatic viewpoint. Sidecars have the potential to be incredibly interestinS, not unlike Coleman's personal motorcycle saga, which started on two wheels just like everyone else. "My lirst two-wheeled vehicle was a Cushman when I wa: about 15 years old, which would have been around 1960," Coleman, now 60, says. "l graduated up to a Honda 50, and then ny first big bike was a 1963 TR6 Triumph.'' While touring Europe as a serviceman in the '60s, Coleman sap his interest tumed toward Bl'4Ws and then sidecais. "l shned going to a lot of the races there and got interested in sidecar racing," Coleman says. "l put a side- car on my street bike, and then I met a guy by the name of Bob Harrold, who was an ex.G.l., who had 8often into sidecar racing as a passenger. This was about 1968, and they had done an article on him in Ove.seos WeeU),, which was a weekly magazine that went out to G.l.s. So, I gave Bob a call because his information was in there, and we got together. One thing led to another, and I just started going to the races with a set of leathers and a hel- met, and iust kind of had had my thumb out. ln about 1969 I was at Hockenheim at an amateur race, and someboq/ needed a passenger, and I hopped aboard. So, that was my first race." Coleman sals that he eventually learned that the pas- senger seat wasn't necessarily for him. "l rode as a passenger for about a year and a half, and after getting pitched off a couple times and almost stuffed under guardrails a couple times, I decided that I'd rather be in charge of the deal. I bought my own outfit, a pushrod BMW with l6-in€h wheels, which was state of the art for an arnateur at the time." Coleman continued to race in Europe until he retumed to the U,S. in 1973. He moved to Chico, California, where has lived ever since, and soon found an ally with whom he could continue to Iuel his Browing sidecar passion. "There was a guy in town named Ozzie Auer [the father of multhime AHRI4A vintage road-racing champi- on Ralph Auerl, and he had an H- | lGwasaki in an English chassis," Coleman remembers- "l rode passenger with him one time, and then he got into a car accident, and he turned it over to Wendell Andrews and I, and that part- nership went on for several years." Coleman's sidecar career progressed. He imported oao MGF chassis from England that were built to his specs, which included right-handed sidecars. Coleman says he also got the idea that the two-stroke Suzuki GT750 triple might make a more effective powerplant than the four-stroke inline fours that were widely used on the American scene. "Everybody was putting Z-l Kawasakis in them at the time, and I decided that they were too heavy," Coleman recalls. "l had wanted a Yamaha T2750 because they were brand-new then and that's what a lot of guys were starting to use in Europe already, but there was no way I could afford one. I had read that there was some success with the GT750 Water Buffalo. Ron Grant had his shop in San Francisco, so Iwent down to Ron's home and knocked on his door one night, and he said, 'Great idea. I'll build you a motor."' Coleman says that Pat Hennen, the man des- tined to be.ome the first American to win a World Road Race Grand Prix, was working for Grant at the time and that Hennen actually did the headwork. With Coleman's new creation, he hit the AMA National Championship circuit and enjoyed a great degree of success. "We won two titles with that one, in 1976 and 1977," Coleman says, adding that the Al'1A was actually very supportive of the sidecar scene back then. The sanction- ing body saw fit to include the sidecars at some of its marquee National Road Racing Championship venues. The team of Coleman and Andrews missed out on a couple AMA races during the 1978 series in order to attend the Marlboro Series in New Zealand, where they flnished second. "Randy Mamola was just a little kid, and he went down there, and Pat went down there," Coleman remembers. "That was also the first time that I ener saw Graeme Crosby ride a motorcycle." The decision would prevent them from repeating as National Champions, but in '79 Coleman returned with an all-new rig - the one that he had dreamed of building three years eadier, "That's the bike that's on the cover of Cycle News, and that was a revolutionan/ motorcycle," Coleman says. "Mark Beyans was my passenger on that, and Mark actu- ally owned the motorcycle. Mark and a friend built that bike, and it was revolutionary because it was a single- sided swingarm - front and rear. We were one of the first [American] teams to have a T2750. ln fact, Kenny Clark from Yamaha gave us that motor." Perhaps the tearn's finest hour carne at the race in which they appeared on the cover afthe March 25, l98l edition of Cycle News, Billed as the Easwvest Sidecar Series, the event pifted six tearns from each side of the U.S. and C3nada. The race was a l2Japper held in con- junction with the LonE Beach Grand Prix during the event's Formula One era- According to Cycre News edi- tor Dale Brown, who wrote the stoo/ for the race, the sidecars played to a packed house and, "Put on a good show they did, with the top 5-6 rigs changing positions from corner to corner, lap to lap." And this when the Brown also said, "Some concern had been raised before the race about the fact that the LSGP circuit is bordered mostly by bare concrete. Said Coleman in response to question about thau You're not supposed to race with the idea ofgoing off the cource."' Coleman and Bevars stayed on course, coming from behind to pass the lead rig of Bill Davidson and Pat Dunn in turn five and go on to victory. lnterestingly, for- mer AMA Superbike Champion Reg Pridmore piloted the second-place rig. "That was really the heyday," Coleman says. "From '76 to'83, those were the heydays. We quit in'81. We rolled that thing up into a little ball at Sears Point but, knock on wood, I was very fonunate neyer to get hurt." Coleman has a simple theory as to why the sport declined. "One of the reasons is because Bob Bakker was man- aging the side€ars, and he kind of got burned out with the politics and decided that he was going to do some other things. Right after that, the business ride of thints was left up to the racers, and it went downhill from there. That's like leaving the rooster in charge ofthe hen house. lt iust doesn't work. Racerc in general have a much more inflated opinion of their value than what is real world- lnterestingly enough, what happened in the United States - on a little different scale - is the rame set of issues overseas as well. Back when I was racing, sids. cars overseas were an integral part of the MotoGP Series, but the same thing happened." Coleman hasn't completely given up on sidecar racing himself, although he no longer races on the asphah but rather on the salt. He currently holds several sidecar land-speed records at Bonneville. And as far as circuit racang goes, Coleman safs that he holds out a liftle hope that sidecar racinS might someday be able to regain much of its lost momentum. "There is a srong sidecar racing organization still in the United States, but they are their own sanctioning body. ln 2005, they staged 23 state-of-the-art sidecars as a feature to the NASCAR race at lnrineon Raceway [Sea6 Point, Califomia]. They were received extremely well. I think that there is an opportunity in today's mar- keting world, there is a place for sidecar racing, but it needs to be marketed properly. lt is exciting racing to watch, and they make a hell of a billboard." For more information on sidecar racing, check out www.superside-america.comonthelnternet. Cll 82 FEBRUARY22,2N6 . CYCLE NEWS BY Scor[ Roussrau il il g each! L 1 J - L-/ i hot at Houstgn s Talla-dega i) Not ,til Vou s69 win n ers

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