VOL. 51 ISSUE 20 MAY 20, 2014 P25
raced on a local strip, Highland
Dragway, near his home.
In 1969 Collins first saw the
bike that would change his life.
"When Honda came out with
its four-cylinder (CB750) it just
blew my mind," said Collins,
who, in 1969 when the CB750
was introduced, was (in addition
to building motorcycle racing en-
gines at night in his garage) work-
ing as a sales manager at Honda
of Torrance (California). "I had
a partner who was a parts man-
ager, he bought the motorcycle,
I did all the mechanical work on
it and we went out and set the
first ever drag-strip record with a
Honda. That was I believe in No-
vember of '69."
His garage tinkering led to a
four-into-one exhaust design for
the Honda that a lot of riders
wanted. So popular was his per-
formance pipe, that he quit his
job and formally opened RC En-
gineering. "It was on April Fool's
Day of all days," Collins said with
a laugh. "April 1st, 1970, is when I
started RC Engineering."
In 1973, Collins built the revo-
lutionary, three-engine, Honda-
based drag bike he dubbed Atchi-
son, Topeka & Santa Fe – named
in honor of the famous railroad
line of the late 1800s. The mon-
strous three-engine Honda was
featured in numerous motorcycle
and drag racing publications and
was perhaps the most famous
drag bike of the 1970s. The Atchi-
son, Topeka & Santa Fe set nu-
merous records and Collins rode
it to the first seven-second quar-
ter-mile turned on a motorcycle
in Ontario, California, in 1973. It
even became the first motorcycle
to win NHRA's coveted "Best
Engineered Car" award at the
Springnationals in 1973. The bike
was so powerful and heavy that it
proved to be very hard to control
and in 1976 the Atchison, Topeka
& Santa Fe was destroyed in a
horrendous accident in Akron,
Ohio. The crash put Collins in the
hospital, and while recuperating
he dreamed up his next monster
creation – The Sorcerer.
Collins ran a record-setting
7.30-second/199.55-mph run on
the Sorcerer. That record stood
for an astonishing 11 years.
Collins also happened to find
some of the most talented builders
and riders to work for his compa-
ny. Terry Vance and Byron Hines
both worked and raced under the
RC Engineering banner before
branching out and forming their
own company, Vance & Hines.
Larry Lawrence
FIRST PERSON: SINGLE-TRACK WOES
H
aving been intimately in-
volved in post-2005 Forest
Service Travel Management Rule
(TMR) Subpart B planning efforts
in California and other Western
States for the last nine years, I
am concerned about the loss of
many, if not most, of our historic
single-track motorcycle trails.
In 2007, Bill Kresnick, com-
piled an article for the AMA en-
titled: Vanishing Trails. Kresnick
chronicled how the rigid timeline
and/or lack of agency staff for
TMR resulted in most legal and
well-established (many had offi-
cial FS markers or were on agen-
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