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VOL. 50 ISSUE 34 AUGUST 27, 2013 (third to the Honda factory pair of Freddie Spencer and Mike Spencer) in only his second pro event. "I sort of lucked into that podium," Wolff says modestly, explaining that some of the factory riders had problems. "But that was a huge breakthrough for me and Matsu. After that the parts bin from Suzuki was wide open. But I will say that Matsu, God rest his soul, he and I put every penny we made into road racing. We had some parts help from Suzuki and Yoshimura, but Matsu spent every dime he had to keep the team racing." Interestingly, it was engines built by Matsuzawa that helped Mat Mladin win his first AMA Superbike Championship. "Matsu died one race before Mat won that title," Wolff adds. The 1982 season was the zenith of Wolff's racing career. He ended that year ranked fourth in the AMA National road race standings and the first non-factory rider behind factory pilots Mike Baldwin, Steve Wise and Wes Cooley. He also scored a result he's probably most proud of in all his racing and that was a podium at the Loudon Superbike race in 1982, where he passed Cooley late in the race to take the final podium spot. "Wes came up and congratulated me afterwards," Wolff said. "But you could tell he wasn't too happy about being beat by the guy on the [satellite] Suzuki Superbike team." Wolff ended '82 not only with his excellent fourth in AMA F1, but he was sixth as well in Superbike. That earned him an invitation to race in the famous ABC Wide World of Sports Superbikers race. In the 1983 Daytona 200 he was running fourth late in the race, behind only the factory Yamahas of Kenny Roberts and Eddie Lawson and the factory Honda of Roberto Pietri, when the motor let go on his GS1000powered Suzuki F1 bike. Wolff was at the top of his game and looked poised to seriously challenge the factory riders that year when a terrible crash at Road America basically ended his professional racing career. Fortunately for Wolff he healed from his injuries and his advertising career really took off. A photo shoot with Honda photographer Dave Hawkins got Wolff in the door at Honda. P153 "Honda called me and basically wanted me to be a full-time advertising rider for them," Wolff said. "They took care of my screen actors guild card and I appeared on most of their TV commercials and that led to a career doing riding for various manufacturers throughout the years." His first photo shoot with Honda should have been disastrous, but instead it might have endeared him to Honda execs. "They were doing a big shoot for the new Honda CB1100F with all the Honda brass there and two days before I was running up and down my street tuning my RD350 street bike in sandals and shorts on a hot day and a dog ran out in front of me and took the front end right out." Wolff had so much road rash that he bled through his clothes on the flight up to San Francisco to do the shoot. "The Honda execs took one look at me and asked what was going on," Wolff laughed. "I told them not to worry about it, but man was it hard to put on those leathers. Once they were on I was fine. I think they [Honda brass] saw I had some determination." Wolff continued in lower key races, primarily in vintage events and in 2010 he made history when he became the first rider of an electric motorcycle to win a sanctioned road race against gasoline-powered machines. It was in the 350GP race at the Barber Vintage event in October of 2010. Then in June of this year Wolff established a cross-country record on an electric bike. Today Thad continues to do photo shoots for the manufacturers. He works on restoring and racing vintage bikes and is married to his childhood friend, Jody. The couple have a daughter, Kelly. "I've been blessed to have gotten into motorcycles and be able to manage to make a living at it all these years," Wolff said. "And I've got to meet so many great people, I just pinch myself sometimes and wonder 'Why me? Why am I the guy who got to live this great life in motorcycling?'" CN Subscribe to nearly 50 years of Cycle News Archive issues: www.CycleNews.com/Archives

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