Book Review
BOOK REVIEW
1977 MOTORCYCLE RACING ANNUAL
Official Competition Yearbook of the American Motorcyclist Assn.
Paul Oxman Publishing Co.
3629 W. Warner Ave.
Santa Ana, Calif. 92704
A legendary motoring journalist habitually referred to racing fans with a taste for statistics as Figure Filberts, meaning people who are nuts about numbers. Fans who don’t care about official records and finishing orders and lap speeds and all the rest are usually baffled by people who do care. Fact is, there are a lot of people who care.
Which is why this book. Paul Oxman is a publisher specializing in motor sports, two wheels and four. The AMA needs no introduction. The two parties have gotten together on a project, a racing annual, in hopes of attracting racing fans who’d like a wrap-up of the year's action, plus all those figures and charts.
Not a bad idea, and not a bad book. There are some limitations. One must be the timing. It took so long to collect the pictures and facts and organize, edit, produce, etc., that the 1976 collection must be billed as the 1977 Annual, and didn’t go on sale until April 1977. When the current season is under way. last year’s season is difficult to get excited about.
The material is first rate. Most of the pictures are by Paul Webb, one of the best photographers in racing. The text comes from Joe Scalzo. an experienced and talented and enthusiastic reporter and the author of several books about motorcycle racing and racers.
This is very much a book about AMA racing and the publishers say it probably won’t appear in many bookstores. It's being sold by mail, $5.95 plus 50c handling. Some of the larger cycle shops will
have copies for sale at the parts counter.
Economics play a part in book selling, and because the price was kept reasonably low, the book is soft cover and printed on paper which doesn’t do the pictures justice. The colors fade. What began as excellent full color photography becomes just pictures. To be convincing, a book must have a certain number of pages and while the actual race accounts are done well, there was room left over. The back of the 1977 annual is, for space reasons, filled with records set 40 years ago, with the racing records of all the top men of the past generation, with, in short, pages and pages of sheer data. Because of this and because the pictures have not been printed with the care they deserve, the AMA’s 1977 racing annual will appeal to the non-figure fan as no more than a way to settle bets: Who won the No. 1 plate in 1963? Figure Filberts will love it.— Allan Girdler
MOTOCOURSE 1976-77 The Motorcycle Road Racing Annual Published by Hazleton Security, Ltd., 1 Church Terrace, Richmond, Surrey, TW10 6SE. $21.95 9Vz x 12 208
pages.
Grand Prix motorcycle road racing has never received much exposure in this country. Indeed, there exists little in-depth information on the sport. No more, for with this first effort Motocourse presents in a handsome and orderly format a complete summation of all the major international road racing events of the ’76-77 season. Not only does the book review the big bike events but also the just-as-furious quest for the world championships in the smaller classes down to the incredibly quick 50cc screamers.
Full specifications of each bike are given
in one chapter while another presents profiles on the current world champions, names unfamiliar to even the most earnest of race fans. After reviewing the top 20 riders in the world today, the book then documents each race as completely as possible, recalling even minor mishaps and the personalities of the riders as the season wears on. With this information the reader enjoys an immense amount of knowledge, perhaps even more than having been in attendance.
The feeling of taking part in the races is further enhanced by the use of photographs, some 300 plus in all, many in color. Photos of the lesser known riders and bikes, especially the sidecars, are very unusual and interesting.
The large format of Motocourse makes it a fine coffee table book but most of all it is a quick reference when discussing road racing, for the memory of a race fades quicker then the banshee scream of the TZ Yamaha and by mid-season the details of the first race are confused with races in other years. Like its sister. Auto Course, now in its 25th year, Motocourse is a book to use as well as enjoy.— Peter Vamvas
TheYowling Two-stroke Jeff Clew
THE SCOTT MOTORCYCLE! THE YOWLING TWO-STROKE By Jeff Clew; GT Foulis & Co., Ltd., Sparkford Yeovil Somerset BA22 7JJ, England
“Machines were mice and men were lions once upon a time, but now they’re just the opposite twice upon a time’.’
It was the former period of time in which Alfred Angas Scott lived, a time
when man was in touch with his desires, a time of controlled development when pride in workmanship outshone the dollar. Scott was as much a dreamer as a doer but the harsh realities of everyday life did not detract from the quality in his work. Indeed from 1892 to 1920 Scott had developed and patented some 60 inventions in an effort to improve his bike’s performance, safety and sales. His dedication then is reflected today in the efforts of a few to keep his marque alive.
One such person is Jeff Clew, the author of this book. Clew’s fascination and intrigue with the bike and its builder come across in his writing style which is as precise and functional as the bike itself.
Both the Scott bike and Scott the man would have to be considered ahead—no rather, outside—of their time. A watercooled vertical Twin two-stroke with enough power and reliability to run and hide from the four-strokers was quite a development in 1912 but this is just what rider Frank Applebee did in the 1912 Senior TT at the Isle of Man. The stepthrough frame was decades ahead of Mr. Honda’s million seller and the water cooler is a model for what is being done today. Not content with this victory, Scott went on to build racing sidecar units, gun cars for the Army and the Flying Flea aircraft engine.
The book’s many photographs are a visual delight to anyone who enjoys quality machinery for its own sake. (Here again, the book is very much in the tradition of Scott.) The competition photographs of the Isle of Man TT in the early 1900s that show the riders and owners are a source of pleasurable day dreaming. The stories within the pictures need no words at all.
In today’s industrialized age of overkill, this book takes us back to a time when man’s quest for quality was not blinded by the dust of progress.— Peter Vamvas
