The Scene

THE SCENE

IVAN J. WAGAR

CYCLE WORLD appears in its biggest issue ever this month-166 pages. As such, it is the biggest monthly motorcycle magazine ever published in the United States, and equals or betters the size of most full-format monthly magazines published in the world. In the months to come, we will continue to be bigger and better. What a far cry from the CYCLE WORLD of 1966, the year I became editor. The March 1966 issue was a “whopping” (at that time) 1 20 pages, with a motorcycle industry to match, just beginning to grow up and creaking with growing pains.

Now motorcycling has reached the big time. Everybody is paying attention to us. Los Angeles television covered the California State TT Championship at Ascot. We rated the 10 O’Clock News. The counties, the states, and the Bureau of Land Management are paying attention, too. And so is the Department of Transport. What it all means is that motorcyclists have grown in number, the ad budgets are bigger, and the sales figures are bigger, but we still have growing pains.

For us in publishing, the job becomes harder. As motorcycling grows more diverse, we have to strive harder to sift out its essential aspects to present to the reader. We have to be more candid in our evaluation of new products, which deluge the beckoning mass market. We have to scrutinize and criticize the political part of motorcycling in depth so that the people affected by these politics may see what is happening, and those directly involved may take action. That is our goal. To give the reader the

essentials, to give him variety, to help him understand and enjoy the widening motorcycle mainstream.

A motorcycle magazine, like any other business, must make a profit, and we are doing so. But the thing which makes us different from just a plain old charts and graphs business is that we are motorcyclists, too. We do what we write about.

Motorcycling used to be a much more intimate “club,” and nowadays it is getting away from that, which both pleases us and worries us. The one thing that sustains us is that we enjoy what we do. We enjoy what you do. We care. And that is why you will continue to come first.

ABERG HUSQVARNA 405

It’s not often that we get the chance to ride a world champion’s motorcycle, so we jumped at the opportunity to blast around the motocross course at Saddleback Park on Bengt Aberg’s powerful 405 Husky a few days after the final race in the Inter-AMA series.

Gunnar Lindstrom dropped by our offices and left the machine with us for a few days. It was received in the same condition as it finished the last moto: a little muddy, a little oil weeping out of

the fork seals, a little paint rubbed off the gas tank from Aberg’s leathers and Champion spark plug decals on the tank and rear fender.

Aha, we thought, this bike is really going to be special. A true one-off works machine. Probably got magnesium crankcases and all the “trick” stuff. But after a close inspection, the only thing we could find different from any other 405 Husky we’ve ever seen was the addition of another spark plug, to the right of the original plug.

The footpegs, handlebars and seat were all standard Husky items and the bike was fitted with Trelleborg tires.

A few deliberate prods at the kickstarter brought the machine to life, and after a brief warm-up, Assistant Editor Nicholas set out for a few quick laps. He reported that because of the nonstandard quick throttle, and the awesome power available, the machine wasn’t as easy to ride as other Husqvarnas he’d ridden. In fact, in some places around the course the bike was quite hard to keep under control.

Upon closer inspection, we found that the frame was broken just behind the right-hand swinging arm pivot bolt which allowed the entire swinging arm to move over an inch out of line when the throttle was screwed on. We’d noticed that Aberg had pulled right up behind winner Ake Jonsson during the last moto, only to drop way back. No excuses were given, but it’s obvious to us that any man who could ride a machine with such a serious handling problem as fast as Aberg did, certainly deserves to be a world champion. ÍQI