Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
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VOL. 53 ISSUE 34 AUGUST 30, 2016 P117 Stone rode together in his street rig to spectate the AMA National Road Race at Laguna Seca. On a whim Bingham asked Stone and she was game, so they entered the sidecar race with Bingham's street rig in a grid full of racing rigs. Amazingly they finished 10th out of 25 entries! "I remember him doing that," said Larry Cole- man, three-time AMA National Sidecar Champion. "And yeah, there were probably some people pissed off about it, but I'm sure Doug thought, 'Hey, I can pass tech inspection and who are you to tell me I can't race?' And you know he was talented enough of a rider he probably went faster on that street outfit than some of the teams did on their racing outfits." Through racing Bingham became friends with off-road legend Bud Ekins. Ekins was doing work in the movies and he asked Bingham to help him mount some sidecars to carry movie cameras. From there Bingham made a prototype sidecar from one of Ekins' old Jawa-Velorex sidehack molds and that's how his business got started. Movie and television work continued and that led to Bingham building a special electric sidecar rig for filming the 1984 Olympics. Perhaps the best movie scene Bingham had a big part in was the sidecar chase scene with Har- rison Ford and Sean Connery in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Bingham not only secured the World War II vin- tage sidehack for the scene, but he rode a Honda Goldwing-based sidecar carrying Steven Spiel- berg onboard alongside a cameraman watching a monitor. Bingham said it was one of his most harrowing rides ever. "All I see is dust and occasionally this German on the bike in front of me," he said of filming the scene. "There's a cliff on one side and a mountain on the other and I'm going into the corners with this Gold- wing sideways! I had visions of having to live with the burden of killing the man who brought us E.T.!" Bingham's reputation as perhaps the foremost sidecar expert in the country grew due to his racing success and being a sidecar maker. By the early 1970s he began promoting an annual sidecar enthusiast gathering in Los Angeles that eventually grew to become one of the largest meetings of its kind in the world. Sidecar rid- ers from across the globe would come to the gathering at Griffith Park in Los Angeles, CA. One year's rally attracted some 12,000 fans and spectators who marveled at the unique bike/ sidecar combinations and their equally colorful riders. Bingham touted safety as a big reason for favoring three-wheelers versus two. "If you hit oil or gravel you usually just slide a little bit with a sidecar," Bingham explained in a 1980s interview. "Also, car drivers see you better with a sidecar." Plus, sidehacks were always a great conver- sation starter. "It was his way of getting to know people," his wife Liz Gibbons told the Los Angeles Daily News. "He had a pretty dry personality. He could see people very clearly and really enjoyed them. But when he'd talk about sidecars, he was just so enthusiastic." Bingham was a 50-year AMA member and Charter Life Member. He received the 1998 AMA MVP Award for advancing the cause of motorcy- cling and was inducted into the AMA Motorcycle Hall of Fame in 2003. In 2014, he donated more than 600 motorcycle-themed toys, which are currently on display at the AMA Motorcycle Hall of Fame Museum. Bingham passed away in January of this year. He was 76. In 1989, Dealernews named Bing- ham one of the 25 most significant people in motorcycling over the previous 25 years. For all of his racing exploits and accomplishments, Bingham's lasting legacy was reigniting the inter- est of sidecars in America in the 1970s. CN Subscribe to nearly 50 years of Cycle News Archive issues: www.CycleNews.com/Archives