Cycle News

VOL. 54 ISSUE 15 APRIL 18, 2017 P113 And Kerker was fast. He was so good that he would lap riders in short club sprint races. Kerker thought it would be a good idea to warn the lap- pers he was coming and mounted an ambulance siren below the seat of his purple Norton race bike. "George would come up on other riders so fast that he hit the siren to let him know he was coming and to get the hell out of the way," remem- bers fellow racer Harry Klemm. "You could hear the siren going off all around the track. He scared the crap out of countless guys with it. It was the cowboy days of "pre-superbike" racing. In 1972 Kerker was part of a group of Southern California racers who raced in front of what was, at the time, perhaps the biggest crowd ever to see a motorcycle road race in America. It was a Los Angeles Times-promoted car road race at Riverside International Raceway with motorcycles as part of the show. A reported 80,000 people watched Kerker, on a near-stock Honda CB750, finish second to Pat Evans on a Yamaha TR-3. Kerker, with his connection to Berliner Motor Corp that imported a variety of European brands, was also instrumental in getting several police departments to switch to Moto Guzzi motorcycles and helped set up the bikes for police use. While preparing for Daytona one year, Kerker worked countless hours with little or no sleep preparing his motorcycle, according to friend and racing travel mate Steve McLaughlin. "He'd been up for days and we set off for Daytona," McLaughlin remembers. "George was taking speed, which was pretty common for long- haul drivers back then. I was talking enthusiasti- cally to him about one subject or another and he suddenly looked at me and said, 'This pisses me off! I have to take drugs to keep amped up and you do it naturally!'" Kerker was a part of the famous Norton Gang, a group of Norton road racers who helped foster big-bore production racing in Southern California, which was a forerunner to the AMA Superbike Series. Kerker was also one of Yoshimura's first riders when he raced a Honda CB750 in 1972 for the then new-to-America company. Kerker pipes gained an excellent reputation among the racing community, but he was doing his work on a small custom basis. He couldn't scale up quickly enough to meet the growing demand, so he sold his namesake company. He briefly tried coming back with another header company called Winning Performance, but it was short-lived. By the late '70s things began spiraling out of control for Kerker. His girlfriend was paralyzed in a freak accident while changing a lightbulb in their apartment. Friends say George fell deeper into addiction. In late September of 1977 Kerker was found dead in his Van Nuys shops. He'd committed suicide. He was just 35. The final round of the AMA Superbike Series of 1977 at Riverside was named in Kerker's honor. Even though he had a brief life, Kerker and his exhaust company left a lasting legacy in the sport. He also left lifelong impressions with those with which he crossed paths. "I only met Kerker once, he came by Race- crafters on Sunset in the old location, I think it was in '72 or '73," said legendary author and road racing guru Keith Code. "The 'annex' was in an old drug store building and chock full of widow parts. Pierre and I were building a 550 Honda for club racing. Pierre and Lyn had just bought Kerker pipes. George seemed pretty mellow, maybe a little too mellow (Code smiles). I knew his reputation and I'd just raced at OCR on Pierre's bike and George was impressed with the lap times we'd turned on the bike. It was one of those moments for me that really counts. I was a nobody Griffith Park canyon guy and the encouragement hit the right chord." CN Subscribe to nearly 50 years of Cycle News Archive issues: www.CycleNews.com/Archives

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