Cycle News

CN III ARCHIVES BY LARRY LAWRENCE M oto Parilla was a short-lived Italian motor- cycle manufacturer whose owner, being Ital- ian, was naturally passionate about racing. The life of the company in the U.S. was even shorter, but one rider named Norris Rancourt, combined with one tuner named Orrin Hall made one very special Parilla, nicknamed "Gadget", the bike to beat in West Coast 250 road races in the early 1960s. Rancourt and Hall only ventured back East once and that was to run in the rapidly ris- ing AMA Lightweight Road Race class at Day- tona International Speedway against the factory Harleys and Yamahas. Rancourt ran against the best of the AMA Lightweight class regulars just that one time and proved that the legend of Rancourt and Hall's little Parilla were not just hype, but a true national-class two-man team that very nearly turned in what would have been the upset of the 1964 racing season. Rancourt was an unlikely racing hero. He was born in Maine, but moved to California when he was 12. His father passed away and his mom's family all lived in Sac- ramento. Like many kids in post-World War II America, Rancourt was interested in cars as a high school boy, but somewhere along the line that fascination turned to motorcycles. The only problem was that his mother wouldn't sign off on letting her teenage son get his mo- torcycle license, so he had to wait until he was 18 to buy his first bike, a Norton ES2. California was a hotbed of British motorcycles, but being a Norton rider in those days was sort of like be- ing odd-man out, being overshadowed by the more popular Triumph and BSA machines. But being a small underdog clique actually might not have been a bad thing. Norris hung out at the Norton dealership and be- came one of the boys in that small fraternity. The Nor- ton group was, well… let's just say slightly left of cen- ter. One of the things they did for fun was to gather on their motorcycles in the middle of a big field, at night, and chase jack rabbits with their headlights. It seems it didn't take much to amuse the Nortoners in those days. When chasing hares got old the Norton boys turned to racing. Field meets were the thing in the 1950s. There were no formal race tracks, riders just gathered at a pre-determined piece of land and made a track to race on. That's where Rancourt got his start in racing. It was low-key and a perfect, no pressure way to get used to banging handlebars. Soon Rancourt was doing well enough at club field meets that he was asked by the local BSA dealer if he'd like to race flat track on a BSA 500cc Twin. "I was doing pretty well on our little local tracks," Ran- court said. "But I think the reason the BSA guys want- ed to put me on their bike was because of my small stature." So Rancourt started racing a weekly flat track pro- gram at Belmont Speedway, the same track that pro- duced motorcycle racing legends like Larry Headrick, Kenny Eggers and Joe Leonard. Rancourt did well as a novice, but just as his flat track career was starting to take off the Norton began selling Parilla motorcy- cles, at about that same time road racing on the West Coast with the AFM was really beginning to take off. So Orrin Hall took one of the Parilla 250s and built it into a road racer and asked Rancourt if he wanted to race it. "I read the motorcycle magazines of the time and Geoff Duke was my hero," Rancourt said. "He'd just won the Isle of Man and I thought 'Oh boy, that (road THE PRINCE OF PARILLA P112

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