Tabla de contenidos para January/February 2025 en Motorcycle Classics

The small displacement, Italian-built Harley-Davidson production racing Sprints never achieved the legendary status in American professional racing that they deserved. The simple design, a horizontal “sloper” four-stroke 250cc, later enlarged to 350ccs, won every AMA Grand National Championship discipline it was entered in: short track, road race and even TT, though the TT and and road race were short-lived “Lightweight” Grand National Championship (GNC) events. Nevertheless, this distinction in GNC competition is one only a few much more vaunted motorcycle types can match. The Sprint racers took two basic forms — the CR, which was a brakeless, rigid framed flat tracker, and the CRTT, the fully-suspended road racer. While starting out sharing some components with its more pedestrian street models, after a redesign in 1966, it shared almost no components,…

Soon after he began riding a scruffy 1962 Honda CA77 Dream, our editor, Mark Mederski, started visiting a new Honda shop in his hometown. This was around 1967, when the Honda CB450 was a newer, bigger bike from Honda. Mederski remembers that the 250 Scramblers, the Super Hawks and especially CB160s flew out the door, but the CB450K0s (colloquially known later as Black Bombers) just… sat there. Prospective buyers of middleweight machinery looked at the not-so-sporty looking CB450s, shook their heads and went down the street to look at the Harley Sportsters, the Triumph 650s and 500s, even BSA Victors. The mechanic at the shop found the DOHC design interesting, but he was skeptical with rumors of oiling problems. Back at the Honda factory in Japan, management was becoming increasingly…

Benelli is a venerable Italian motorcycle manufacturer with a long and storied history. The company was founded in 1911 by six Benelli brothers in Pesaro, Italy. In 1921, they introduced their first production motorcycle, and soon after, their 175cc four-stroke race bike won multiple Italian Championships in 1927, 1928, 1930 and 1931. Notably, Benelli has won the 250cc World Championship twice — in 1950 with rider Dario Ambrosini and again in 1969 with Kel Carruthers. In 1951, they launched their famous “Leoncino” model, which went on to win the Motogiro d’Italia in 1953. The company faced financial struggles in the 1970s but was revitalized when Argentinian entrepreneur Alejandro De Tomaso acquired it. Under De Tomaso’s leadership, Benelli launched the world’s first production six-cylinder motorcycles, the legendary 750cc and 900cc “Sei”…

James Lansdowne Norton founded the company that bears his name in 1898, first making bicycle parts and then motorcycles. The first Norton motorcycle was the 1902 Energette, powered by a 143cc Clement engine. In 1907, Rem Fowler rode a 5-horsepower Peugeot-powered Norton in the first Isle of Man TT. Norton started making his own engines in 1908, a side-valve single, and by 1909, Norton motorcycles could be purchased in Harrod’s department store. Norton became known as one of the best in the business and their racing success continued. Norton won 78 out of 92 Grand Prix races between 1930 and 1937, and seven of the nine Isle of Man TT races between 1931 and 1939. Like other manufacturers during WWII, Norton withdrew from racing and focused on military production. Between…

THE COMPREHENSIVE VINTAGE MOTORCYCLE PRICE GUIDE 2025/2026 EDITION Compiled by the Motorcycle and Model Railroad Museum of Wisconsin, this is the 21st edition of the Comprehensive Vintage Motorcycle Price Guide. Through hundreds of hours of research and data entry, formed by the opinions and data gathered by more than 450 worldwide dealers, auctioneers, collectors, and experts in the vintage field, we believe this is the most accurate price guide available. Includes data through 2006 for more than 115 well known and lesser-known marques. #12563 $21.95 Members: $19.95 VELOCETTE: THE THREE TWINS In this unique text, authors Brian Agnew and Ivan Rhodes team up to provide you an analysis of the Roarer and the Model O, comparing and contrasting the methods adopted by their designers to meet the different design specifications…

Airheads, snowflakes and safety checks I’ve been subscribing to Motorcycle Classics for several years since I found it, and enjoy it as much for its ability to let me relive my younger years as for its entertaining and informative content. Most of my friends and I all were starting trades that paid well enough that we all (about twelve of us except for a Norton die-hard) bought new /6, and /7 Airheads, mostly R90Ss and R90/6s when they were introduced in 1974, through the last 100/7s before the significant changes in 1980. They were as “long haul” fast as anything other than Laverdas and Ducatis, but had big gas tanks, long touring range, and WATERPROOF Krauser luggage! We put six-figure miles on them, and most of us still have at…

If riding in the Motogiro d’Italia is on your bucket list, but the logistics or cost of getting to Italy are daunting, consider participating in the U.S.-based Small Bike Big Adventure (SBBA) event instead. It’s a smaller event than the Motogiro (a few dozen riders rather than a couple hundred), but both events cover about the same distance over five days. And while the U.S. ain’t Italy, our domestic scenery can certainly rival what you’ll find on the other side of the Atlantic. Faithful readers of this magazine may remember Richard Backus’s story featuring the 2023 SBBA event (www.MotorcycleClassics.com/SBBA), which went into the origins of the event. The 2024 SBBA was the fifth edition of the event and, for the first time, took place outside of Colorado. In keeping with…

All good things must come to an end. After inventing the V-twin café racer more than sixty years ago, Swiss performance guru Fritz Egli, now 87, explored the full range of two-wheeled excess. He and his team constructed a series of bikes to the highest engineering standards in a converted hilltop lumber store south of Zurich, which served as the Egli factory. The motorcycles featured engines ranging from one to six cylinders. Egli hand-built approximately 3,000 performance motorcycles between 1968 and his retirement in 2012, when he handed the business over to the Frei family. They ran it until last year, when they finally closed up shop. These motorcycles included esoteric two-wheelers of every extreme. Cult classics to race machines These motorcycles ranged from the dozens of Vincent twins and…

I visited Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve eight years ago while leading a group of Chinese tourists on a 5,000-mile ride across the American West. Our stop was necessarily brief due to a tight schedule. We pulled into the Craters entrance, grabbed a few photos and continued our trek west (I always regretted this as I wanted to see more). I returned to Craters of the Moon for this article and an in-depth exploration. A great destination is made even more so if the ride there is memorable, and this one certainly was. Our journey originated in Boise, about 170 miles to the west. The ride from Boise to Craters takes you southeast on Interstate Highway 84, then east on U.S. Highway 20 (Highway 20 runs across…

Motorcycle designer Alfredo Bianchi arrived at Aermacchi’s factory on Lago di Varese in early 1956. His first task was to create a new motorcycle for Italy’s immensely important 175cc class. Bianchi could point to a successful career with Moto Parilla, and despite an unfortunate start, in due course made a big contribution to Aermacchi. Bianchi’s first effort, styled by car-guy Mario Revelli, was the sensation of the 1956 Milan show: the 175cc Chimera (Dream). With its space-age bodywork and futuristic styling, it looked more like something out of Marvel comics. But despite positive reviews of its performance, handling, and ergonomics, buyers stayed away in droves. However, the Chimera was considered significant enough to be displayed in the Guggenheim’s Art of the Motorcycle exhibition in Las Vegas from 2001 to 2003.…

Prior to my visit to this museum in August 2024, it wasn’t on my radar. I’m embarrassed to admit that I’d never heard of it. I was on my way from Texas to South Dakota to ride in the Small Bike Big Adventure (SBBA) event (see page 14). The route went up I-135 in Kansas, and I saw one of the four billboards the museum has posted along highways advertising the museum. I was running ahead of schedule and figured: Why not make a small detour? The museum in Marquette, Kansas, (population 590) houses about 145 bikes of all ages and nationalities in addition to over 600 trophies won by the museum’s founder, Stan “The Man” Engdahl. Stan was a legendary Midwestern dirt track racer whose career spanned six decades…

It’s hard to think of any new model as immediately dominant out of the box as the Suzuki GSX-R750 was during its debut 1985 racing season. Nothing demonstrated this better than its supremacy in that year’s inaugural Motor Cycle News (MCN) Superstock British Championship. The GSX-R750 dominated the first motorcycle racing series in the world to carry the Superstock name, winning nine of eleven races. Veteran star Mick Grant, then 41, won the first four rounds in succession, proving he didn’t need to apply for a pension just yet. He convincingly wrapped up the title with five victories aboard the bike entered by U.K. importers Heron Suzuki. Every race in the series offered nail-bitingly close competition between top-tier riders on evenly matched machinery that the average spectator could easily identify…

If your Amal carbureted British motorcycle isn’t running well, a checkup and rebuild of the Amal Concentric carburetors might be in order. Poor idling, uneven acceleration and misfiring can all be symptoms of a dirty carburetor. Thankfully, Amal Concentrics are very simple devices. However, experts say that given material quality, they are often worn out at 10,000 miles, even with good air filtration. Scratched bores or slides might mean replacement is best. Replica Concentrics and even Monoblocs are available. Ready to go right out of the box, they are much higher quality than originals. Whether rebuilding or replacing your carbs, note fuel lines, filters or any nuts, bolts and screws that are deteriorated and order replacement parts. So let’s get started on a cleaning and rebuild. Depending on your bike,…