Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/779724
CN III ARCHIVES BY LARRY LAWRENCE I t's hard to imagine now, but the motorcycles used for off-road racing in America up until the late 1950s, looked an awful lot like the bikes you'd see on the roads every day. There was a good reason for that—they were! Remember that prior to the 1960s it was practi- cally impossible to buy a purpose-built off-road motorcycle. The phrase "When men were men" surely must have originated from the days when riders raced full-sized Harley-Davidson and Indian street bikes through the woods. Sure, they would strip the bikes down to bare essentials, but the fact remains these were big, heavy mounts, especially when trying to maneuver through the sandy trails of Michigan in the annual Jack Pine Enduro, the granddaddy of off-road events for much of the first century of American motorcycle racing. Things began to change in the 1940s when foreign brands, like Triumph, BSA, Matchless, Norton, and Ariel, began to ap- pear at the Jack Pine. But even these bikes were massive by modern-day standards. Interestingly, in interviewing riders of that distant era, the sheer weight of the big ma- chines used in enduro competi- tions were actually considered advantageous. The idea was that the heavier machines could plow through obstacles like downed branches and mudholes and not get stopped and hung up like lighter weight motorcycles. Not to mention the horsepower advantage. They even felt the momen- tum of that weight helped when tackling uphill sections! I had the opportunity a few years ago to test those big- bike off-road theories in a way by running a near stock Suzuki DR650 through the single-tracks trails of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Fellow riders were shaking their heads that I would even attempt the trails on the 350-pound ma- chine. I found the bike to be surprisingly good as long as the going wasn't too technical and it gave me somewhat of a kinship with previous generations of off- roaders, even though in reality the DR is infinitely more capable than a stripped down 1950s Harley 1000cc V-Twin. I also found out from old- timers that off-roading in the early years often involved team- work. The bikes of that era had short, soft suspension with little ground clearance, and tended to get hung up on every root or rock they came upon. Unless you were Arnold Schwarzeneg- ger, it meant you would have to wait until nearby fans could come to your aid or another rider came upon the scene to get help lifting a bike that was THE LIGHTWEIGHT REVOLUTION P98 Leroy Winters was the first to real- ize that lightweight motorcycles were the way to go in off-road.