Cycle Round Up
CYCLE ROUND UP
JOE PARKHURST
RIDING THE DUCATI 500 NOT ONES TO SIT BACK and rest on their laurels, they being the Berliner Motor Corp. in New Jersey, their laurels being an already excellent line of 50cc, 150cc, 250cc, and the new 350cc and 1260cc Ducatis, now comes the welcome news of a new Ducati 500. I had the pleasure of riding the vertical twin after a breakfast hosted by the Berliners, and though I have ridden snappier machines, it is a most interesting entry. It is an overhead valve, all-alloy engine (in the biggest case I've ever seen) with electric starting, fourspeed gearbox, and mounting those giant new Ducati double-leading shoe brakes seen on the racing 250s that fared so badly in the Daytona 100-mile road race.
I was assured that the machine I rode was a prototype and that the production model would be different in many ways. It is very smooth and remarkably quiet, typical traits of low performance, high longevity machinery. Gear changing was a bit clumsy, but that could have been attributed to several things. Despite a few minor flaws, I think B.M.C. has another winner on their hands.
OUTDOOR AD WINNER One of the winners from among 332 entries in the recent 13th annual Outdoor Advertising Contest, judged first in the "Embellished Painted Bulletin" category, should give our readers a glow of pride:
BENELLI PRICES Last month in our road test of the Benelli 200 Sprite, we made a grave error in quoting the price of the 200 as being $479.00. In reality that is the price of the 125cc Benelli — and a bargain it is. We should have listed the price of the 200 as $599.00. Our apologies.
TRAIL SCOOTER EAST Aftermath to my short experience at the Erie Stanley Gardner ranch, came in the form of the nearby photograph of Jess Starr, of Paradise, California. Jess is seated on a three-horsepower Pak-Jak Burrito at the summit of Berthoud Pass as he was headed East to see the New York World's fair this summer. Bill Berry of the American Motor Scooter Association took the photo. Our touring-bymotorcycle readers will appreciate the size of young Starr's feat; the rest of us will simply marvel at the young.
BSA MANAGERS AT DAYTONA Heads of the mighty Birmingham Small Arms firm, builders of BSA and Triumph motorcycles, were among the many notables in Daytona for the running of the AMA National and to attend the motorcycle trade show in the Daytona Armory. Mr. Harry G. Sturgeon, Managing Director of BSA Motor Cycles Ltd., divided his time among the American ends of the mighty BSA empire by making the rounds with Pete Colman, Manager of the newly created BSA Western, and Ted Hodgdon, of BSA, Inc., in the East, and between Wilbur Ceder, head of Johnson Mtrs., Triumph distributors in the West, and Denis McCormack of Triumph Inc., Baltimore, Md. We salute Mr. Sturgeon for his excellent job of diplomacy; it seems we are seeing him more often on this side of the Atlantic than the other.
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BULTACO METISSE ON DISPLAY Probably the most interesting and exciting entry into the scrambler market this year is the new Bultaco 250cc single-cylinder engine mounted in the Rickman Brother's fantastic Metisse frame. It will be sold by Bultaco dealers as the Bultaco/Metisse„ although the frames will be built at the Bultaco factory in Spain on a Rickman license. Absent also will be the beautiful nickel plating found on most Metisse frames, such as CW's Editor's Matchless/Metisse. Sporting bright yellow fiberglass components, the new bomb was placed on view at the Daytona trade show, by Cemoto East, first time in the U.S. for this machine.
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It will of course be seen in the Bultaco Western display at the 2nd Annual CYCLE WORLD National Motorcycle Show, taking place virtually at press time for this issue. We will be given the opportunity to do a road test on the Metisse for next month's issue; we look forward to it pretty eagerly. If the Bultaco version of the Metisse is only half as good as the more familiar (to us anyway) Rickman product, we probably won't be able to contain our enthusiasm.
NEGRO MOTORCYCLE PUBLICATION ANNOUNCED Negro motorcycle fans in Southern California now have a publication slanted completely to the negro motorcycle enthusiasts. The Bronze Motorcycle News Bulletin's first edition contains much of interest on a local scale, but Publisher H. A. Jamal promises his readers the paper will be built on a national scale. One of the most unusual editorial services offered readers of any publication I have ever seen is that proferred by Everett Redd, Editor, who publishes his phone number under the heading, "A friend in need." Redd's offer is to come to the aid, mechanical or otherwise, of any reader, at any time, any place, under all conditions. This service obviously cannot be offered to readers of publications in the numbers CYCLE WORLD has, still 'tis a noble thing indeed that he volunteers.
Distribution of the paper is through local motorcycle dealers and club officers. Their address is 6308 South San Pedro St., Los Angeles, California; the phone number is PL 9-1521. Apparent goal of the paper is to unify negro motorcycle enthusiasts into a national association of small clubs, to promote the growth of motorcycling and give them a media of expression. We welcome them to the fold.
NEW TRIUMPH 250 British publications devoted to motorcycling notwithstanding, the latest news coming through one of our treasured, ever-secret sources, tells me the next addition to the famous line of British built Triumph motorcycles will be a 250cc single cylinder, overhead valve bike built on the lines of the Tiger Cub. Our little birdie tells me that the first version to be made available will be a sports type machine; presumably they mean a scrambler. Completely new, it will be slightly longer than the well-proven Cub and slightly heavier, though it will probably resemble it in many ways. Interesting features reported are such things as the provision for five or six speeds in the gearbox, though initial models will probably have a four-speed unit. Ignition will be by alternator with an AC magneto (their term), with the alternator on the timing side of the engine. We guess that the ignition points will be mounted directly on the shaft.
A personal observation, based on a visit to the Meriden works and keeping my ears open, would be that this is just the first of many new developments from the recently reorganized Triumph/BSA combine. In order to avoid being a complete rumor-monger, I contacted Don Brown, Sales Manager for Johnson Mtrs., distributors of Triumph in the West, and asked him. He of course denied it, but he was smiling!
SALES SEMINARS SUCCESSFUL It seems that activity around the Triumph distributing organization here on the West Coast doesn't allow its being ignored. Johnson Mtrs., the very same, recently instituted a series of meetings they dubbed Dealer Seminars. Sales Manager Don Brown created the series, the result of an extensive investigation of sales methods of Triumph dealers in his areas. The seminars are simply classrooms to develop techniques in more enlightened sales methods and are conducted by Max Sacks' Persuasive Selling Clinic. Since Sacks and Brown are both members of the Sales and Marketing Executives Association of Los Angeles, Brown persuaded Sacks to conduct the seminars, limiting them to Triumph dealers and their sales staffs. I am told that U.S. Suzuki is planning a similar series of seminars to be conducted by Sacks.
Each dealer and salesman attending pays a fee of $85.00, and everyone that I talked to was absolutely enthusiastic at completion of the course. Considerable praise is due Don Brown and Max Sacks for this precedent-breaking pioneer effort in the fastest growing industry in the U.S., and one that needs this kind of improvement more than just about any other. •
