Where Are They Now?
WHERE ARE THEY NOW?
25TH ANNIVERSARY
Not gone and not forgotten: We track down 25 of motorcycling’s closest friends.
JEFFREY HANSEN
SOICHIRO HONDA
MOST LIKELY, NEITHER THE MOTORCYCLE YOU CURrently own nor the magazine you’re reading right now would exist if it weren’t for Soichiro Honda, the man who started it all. His inventiveness, his perseverance, and most of all, his vision of a world on two wheels were the driving forces in the motorcycling revolution of the Sixties. Today, the 80-year-old Honda is retired, but serves as Supreme Advisor to Honda Motor Company; and he is still very active socially, appearing at company functions and entertaining dignitaries in Japan with his favorite hobby—magic tricks. But no sleight of hand will ever top the magic he worked on the motorcycle industry more than two decades ago.
TORSTEN HALLMAN
IN THE SIXTIES. HALLMAN MADE HUSQVARNA FAMOUS with four 250cc MX world championships. Today, he’s a jet-setter with a major interest in Eneqvist, a Swedish group that owns 18 companies, including importing operations in Sweden for Yamaha, KTM, Volvo, Hang 10, etc.
Despite having a back injury at the time, Hallman once came out of retirement to ride for his club team in 1978, but was T-boned in the first turn and broke a leg. He hasn’t raced since, although he still rides streetbikes. He is proud of being instrumental in the development of both motocross and Husqvarna in America, and when he goes to races now, he roots for the USA—and Sweden, of course.
MALCOLM SMITH
MOST PEOPLE KNOW HIM AS A STAR OF “ON ANY SUNday,” the winner of eight ISDT gold medals, or as a naturally gifted off-road rider. But few know that Smith has an aircraft A&E license, that he once built a special plane for the late stunt pilot, Art Scholl, and that he restored an antique French Blériot monoplane for another famous flier, the late Frank Tallman. Neither is it widely known that his highly successful company, Malcolm Smith Products, has been voted the best aftermarket firm in the nation three years running by dealers themselves.
“People ask me why I’m successful in racing or business,” says the 45-year-old Smith. “The main reason is that I’m stubborn. I make up my mind I’m going to finish a race or produce something right, and I keep at it.”
BART MARKEL
AT 51, MARRIED TO THE SAME WOMAN (JOANNE) FOR 28 years and still living in Flint, Michigan, Markel works as a tool & die maker for General Motors. But if you think that this three-time winner of the AMA No. 1 plate (’62, ’65, ’66) has given up racing, you’re mistaken. Although Markel officially retired in 1960, he still rides an occasional TT and does ice racing, which, he says “is safer than you think.” Oddly, though, the famous H-D rider has switched to Hondas, and even rides a 650cc Nighthawk to work. Yawns Markel, “I don’t do much anymore—just work around the house a little bit. But I still hang out with a lot of the guys— Springsteen, Nixon, all the old-timers.”
JOE PARKHURST
IF EVER A MAN SAW HIS CHANCE AND TOOK IT, THAT MAN was Joe Parkhurst, founder of CYCLE WORLD. When his original financier, Jack Pelzer, backed out after the inaugural issue, Parkhurst decided to back the magazine himself. He sold his home and car, worked two jobs, and borrowed the money needed to print the next few issues. The rest is history.
While at the helm of CYCLE WORLD, Parkhurst also produced the L.A. Sports Arena motorcycle show for 14 years, and invested in Saddleback Park, the racing/ playriding facility south of Los Angeles. He once served as vice-president of the AMA, and was the founder of the NORA off-road racing organization now known as SCORE. Parkhurst sold CYCLE WORLD to CBS in 1971, but continued as publisher until 1976, when he left to open an ad agency and begin publishing Motorcycle Business Newsletter, an industry trade paper.
Says Parkhurst, 60, “Motorcycles made me a living, taught me a business, introduced me to unique people. They gave me a whole life.”
GARY BAILEY
No AMERICAN MADE THE WORLD MX CHAMPIONS SIT up and pay attention until Bailey beat them at Saddleback Park in California on July 4, 1969, bringing 20,000 cheering spectators to their feet in the process. Bailey, now 43, got $ 150 for that win, but capitalized on his name, relocated that same year to Axton, Virginia, and today runs the country’s most successful motocross schools. Of his son and current 500 national champion, 24-yearold David, Bailey said: “Unbelievable, isn’t it? Just because I did well didn’t mean he would. That’s neat—and very satisfying.”
ROGER DE COSTER
THE likely WAY that RACING anyone WORKS will THESE outdo DAYS, De Coster’s IT’S HIGHLY record UNof five 500cc World Championships—or his mind-boggling achievement of 15 wins in the Motocross des Nations.
These days, De Coster is Team Honda’s MX race manager, working out of the company’s Gardena, California, headquarters. A trim 42, he still is fast enought that, on the team’s Simi Valley, California, test track, no Honda works rider can beat him for three laps, though his stamina fades after that.
A pessimist by policy and an optimist by nature, De Coster always concentrates on the future and accepts risk. “I never look back, only ahead. I try to forget what I’ve accomplished and meet the challenge."
EDISON DYE
THE ica, GODFATHER the colorful, OF controversial BIG-TIME MOTOCROSS Dye made IN a AMERname for himself by promoting the first Inter-Am series back in the Sixties. Once a part-owner of Saddleback Park, the nation’s premier motorcycle playground, Dye helped motocross to grow so big in this country that the AMA was forced to recognize that form of competition. Contrarily, when Dye once reneged on a race near St. Louis, the AMA adopted a rule requiring promoters to have cash purses in hand 24 hours in advance.
Dye now has a home in Switzerland and land interests in the U.S., and he is a New York wholesale furrier who anticipated the shortage of exotic pelts, froze them years ago and is now selling them for great profit.
PRESTON PETTY
AN pioneered ponents, ASTUTE Petty DESIGNER unbreakable lacked AND plastic business A COMPUTER motorcycle savvy, and WHIZ comlost WHO it all in 1979 when he sold his holdings and the deal went awry.
At his peak, Petty was one of the best desert racers ever, and even won a gold medal at the 1970ISDT in Spain—the year he loaded his bike in his twin-engined plane and flew to the event. Now 45, he lives in Thousand Oaks, California, and recently installed six computer systems for the CMC racing club. He shrugs off his boom-bust life, pointing out that Babe Ruth was home run and strikeout king. “Motorcycles taught me all I know and gave me a chance to put my ideas to use,’’ he says. “What more could I want?’’
DICK O’BRIEN
ACCORDING handlebars TO in THE his hands LEGEND, and “OBIE” cut his WAS teeth BORN on WITH con rods. Which is appropos, considering that he was director of racing for H-D in the company’s glory years (1957 through 1983), and the glue that often held disparate forces together in the AMA.
Officially, the 65-year-old O’Brien is retired. But that lasted only a month. Now he’s working on the Hal Needham/Burt Reynolds NASCAR Chevy (driven by Harry Gant) near the Statesville, North Carolina, home he shares with his wife, novelist Ellen Devlin. Says O’Brien, “Cars ain’t more fun than motorcycles. One’s as good as the other. The only difference is that in NASCAR, you’re talking megabucks.’’
MARK BLACKWELL
TROUBLE song confused WAS, THE Blackwell BEACH when BOYS AND he THE was HONDA an impressionable kid in the early 1960s. With more clarity, he might have become a rock’n roll drummer, rather than U.S. national motocross champion in 1971 —and one of the first Americans ever to win a moto in Europe. Today, he’s the national advertising manager for Suzuki, after having been in charge of Husqvarna’s U.S. operations for several years.
In school, Blackwell traded good grades for motorcycle privileges. Now 33, he claims that, “No B.S.—I can remember reading CYCLE WORLD as a kid, dreaming what it would be like to be a big-time racer. Subsequently, I did well, but CYCLE WORLD is where a lot of the inspiration came from.”
JOHN TAYLOR
IN THE EALL OF 1960. AT A ROADRACE IN SPAIN. JOHN TAYlor had a revelation that would alter the course of motorcycling in America: Soon, he thought, very, very soon, most kinds of racing will be dominated by two-strokes. Taylor had just watched the Ducati factory’s ace rider on that company’s best four-stroke get soundly trounced by a relatively unknown racer on an equally unknown two-stroke—a Spanish-built bike called a Bultaco. So impressed was Taylor that he put together an importing company in Schenectady, New York, called Cemoto East, and in the summer of '62 became the first U.S. distributor of Bultacos. Almost overnight, those motorcycles revolutionized racing.
Taylor followed his success with Bultaco by putting OSSA motorcycles on the map in the U.S. starting in 1966, and for a while was an American bike manufacturer, building almost 800 Yankee 500cc two-stroke Twins in 1972. He also was the U.S. importer for Laverda and SWM motorcycles in the late Seventies.
Today, the 53-year-old Taylor lives in Fallbrook, California, and has turned his pioneering instincts to the field of sound reproduction. He is about to begin manufacturing an exotic and expensive new type of electrostatic hi-fi speaker that he has been developing for two years. The name of those speakers? Yankee, what else?
JACK McCORMACK
IT LOOKED LIKE A BAD MOVE WHEN JACK MCCORMACK
left the rock-solid Triumph organization in 1960 to become national sales manager for Honda's thenshaky U.S. operation. But he helped institute the clever marketing strategy that launched Honda into a position of leadership; and within three years, the company's U.S. sales soared to $52 million annually.
A disagreement over salary led him away from Honda and toward Suzuki. With McCormack as vice-president and general manager, Suzuki was on the road to success, due in no small part to the X-6, a bike he helped design.
After leaving Suzuki in 1 967, McCormack lost his Midas touch. He founded McCormack International, which sold American Eagles, a strange conglomeration of British-built motocrossers, private-label Kawasakis and a 750 Twin made by Laverda. Financial woes floored the company in 1971, but McCormack bounced back with Jac-Wal. a firm that sold Denselube chains, nylon sprockets and the Superwedge fairing. After licensing off those products, McCormack got out of the motorcycle business, and now heads a company that plans to run steam-locomotive tours of California’s wineries.
As you would expect from a man who has logged more than a million miles on motorcycles, the 55-year-old McCormack still rides today, mostly aboard a well-used Honda 550 Four. “I'd still rather ride a bike than do just about anything." he says. And somehow, you get the impression that motorcycling has yet to hear the last of Jack McCormack.
GARY NIXON
THAT HE LIVES IN COCKEYSVILLE. MARYLAND, IS only fitting for the cocky little guy who earned the AMA's No. 1 plate in 1967 and 1968, won Daytona in 1964 and 1967, had a near-fatal crash in 1974 and came back only to lose the 1976 world title in Venezuela because of politics. Said Nixon, 45, “I was robbed. Yamaha put on the race, but my Kawasaki won. That was bad for business, so somehow I lost. I still go crazy when I think about it."
Nixon and his wife, Mary, own a motorcycle products distributorship, but it's for sale, and he has set a new goal. What is it? “It’s a secret," he says. “But I'll say one thing: Guys now have it good. I earned $38,000 my best year. I wish I was 20 years younger. I’d make a million."
CRAIG VETTER
ME go SPENT fast, but YEARS now DESIGNING wants to go FAIRINGS slow and TO get HELP back BIKES to nature. His 100-acre ranch in Carmel, California, has a sea view, a river, pine trees, and more kids and cats and dogs than you can count.
After making his company wildly successful, Vetter, now 44, sold it in 1978. “It’s real important to me that people know CYCLE WORLD was instrumental in getting me started," he says. “When I first went into business and found myself unable to pay for ads, Ivan Wagar (then editor of cw) gave me a buy-now, pay-later deal that was crucial to my success."
Vetter still rides a Honda XL250, though he, his wife Carol and their sons mostly ride four-wheelers. “We’re living well," he says. “I hope I never have to work again."
COOK NEILSON
FRESH to apply OUT for OF COLLEGE. a job at CYCLE NEILSON magazine HAD THE AUDACITY in 1967, thinking that just because he had sold his first motorcycle story to CYCLE WORLD, he was entitled to an audience. Whether or not he was is a moot point; he got the job. and soon became the editor of the magazine, a position he held from 1970 through 1979.
During that time, Neilson set a Bonneville speed record on his H-D fueler, and won the Daytona Superbike race on a Ducati. But more importantly, he gave CYCLE a literate, interesting, often controversial style that made it a highly influential voice in the motorcycle industry.
Now living in Dorset, Vermont, and working as a commençai photographer, Neilson, 43, said, “I always thought CYCLE was an honorable thing to do and I tried to do it honorably. Without motorcycles, I don’t know what I’d have amounted to.”
JOHN PENTON
ONE OF THE TOUGHEST AND MOST LEGENDARY ENDuro riders ever, Penton built his own enduro dynasty by having bikes made to his specifications (and bearing his name) by KTM, and putting together a formidable team of riders made up of sons, nephews, sons-in-law and employees. He gave it all up in 1978 to concentrate on running his Hi-Point Products firm in Amherst, Ohio.
Now 62, Penton had ridden in the Jack Pine enduro for 30 consecutive years until the ’86 event. After falling off a ladder a few months earlier, he drove himself to the hospital, where his spleen was removed and he was put in intensive care for a week. Still, he went to the Jack Pine intending to ride, but decided otherwise after warming up his bike in the pits. Says son Jack, “That’s typical. You have to kill him to stop him.”
CARROLL RESWEBER
NO, HE ISN’T DEAD. BUT THAT’S THE KIND OF RUMOR that circulates when an AMA legend and fourtime No. 1 plateholder (1958 through 1961) has a near-fatal crash and disappears from the scene. Truth is, after having worked at Harley-Davidson for years, Resweber is currently a welder for a mover of heavy equipment in Milwaukee. “It’s a much better job and pays more money than when I was with Harley.”
The man who became famous for his feet-up broadsliding style still rides on the street aboard his Harley Low Rider. “I have access to parts, so I’d be stupid not to ride Harley,” he says. And you would never guess that his left arm was paralyzed in that infamous crash at the ’62 Lincoln half-mile national, for Resweber has regained 85percent use of the arm.
DICK BURLESON
WHEN Burleson CYCLE hadn’t WORLD even WAS ridden BEGUN a motorcycle; IN 1962, DlCK but by 1974, Burleson had won the first of his eight national enduro titles and had been the top-finishing American in the Trans-AMA motocross series.
Today, the 38-year-old Burleson lives in Blacklick, Ohio, with his wife, Jill, and their two children. He is Cagiva/Husqvarna’s race-team manager for the entire U.S., overseeing the company’s involvement in enduros, scrambles and hare ‘n hound competition. For down-time fun, he races Hobie Cats with Sid Wells, the man who loaned him $500 to buy his first Husky.
“Without motorcycles in my life, I don’t know what I’d have done,” he claims. “I can definitely say that I’ve had a lot of fun.”
DICK “BUGS” MANN
HE DOESN’T THINK IT’S ANYTHING SPECIAL, BUT DlCK Mann has done it all—roadracing, flat-track, motocross, enduros, ISDT—at the highest level. And with enviable success, to boot. He broke his hand while leading the AMA points race in 1962 and lost the No. 1 plate as a result, but won it the next year, and again in 1971.
The 52-year-old Mann lives in Richmond, California, where he restores old cars and motorcycles. He also has taken up promoting races, having just held his third annual Vintage Dirt Bike Rally at Sandhill Ranch, California. But he still retains the same modest personality he always had. As he puts it, “My life has never been focused on one grand event. Even after winning Daytona (’70 and ’71 ), it was no big deal.”
JOEL ROBERT
RACING CAREER-INCLUDING SIX 250cc World MX titles between 1964 and 1972—hasn’t paid off for Robert. He lost a Puch distributorship in Belgium when the company ceased motorcycle production, and his Suzuki distributorship folded, as well.
But things are looking up. Roger De Coster—who got his start from Robert—gave Joel a job running his truck stop/ restaurant complex in Lasne, Belgium. And lately, Robert has been organizing enduros, and will be a Toleman team menber in the upcoming Paris-Dakar race.
Robert feels that the best thing about racing was making friends all over the world. Certainly, the friend he made in De Coster is one he’ll long remember.
BRUCE BROWN
AFTER Brown “ON retired ANY in SUNDAY,’FILMMAKER 1974 to a 40-acre ranch BRUCE in Gaviota, California. He surfs a lot these days, but is still a familiar face at races at Laguna Seca, San Jose and Ascot. Besides, about all he has to do is watch his real estate holdings and predict the price of pork-belly commodities. That, and wonder how a motorcycle novice could change the sport’s image with a semi-documentary movie.
Says Brown, “Even today, people say, ‘thanks.’ You know, Mert Lawwill’s mother-in-law never saw him race until the movie. She stood up in the theater and shouted, ‘That’s my son-in-law.’ Suddenly, he was a hero, which he should have been all along.”
Brown, 48, rides a Kawasaki KDX200 and a handmade 500cc BSA built by Dick Mann.
GORDON JENNINGS
KNOWN make complicated FOR HIS REMARKABLE ideas simple, WIT Jennings AND ABILITY was alTO ways among the most prolific and respected of motoring writers, from the time when he was CYCLE WORLD’S first technical editor, to his more recent tenure as editor and technical wizard at CYCLE magazine.
Nowadays, Jennings applies his vast store of motorcycle knowledge as an expert witness, testifying in behalf of riders and manufacturers in motorcycle-related lawsuits. He recently moved from San Luis Obispo to Paso Robles, California, though he spends little time there. For the most part, he travels constantly, often finding himself involved in as many as 1200 cases at a time.
BRAD LACKEY
AMERICA’S FIRST MOTOCROSS WORLD CHAMPION (500cc title on a Suzuki), Lackey was his own man, a rider who told it like it was, and who insisted on using his preferred equipment, such as Simons forks—a trait that did not sit well with Suzuki.
Today, Lackey lives in Concord, California, with his wife, Lori, and their three children. He still rides an occasional hare scrambles—“just for fun”—and is thankful for the “common-sense education about how the world really works” that he got from competing on the GP circuit.
“Lately,” Lackey laughs, “I’ve been getting a lot of heat to get a job; but, heck, it’s only been five years!”
BUD EKINS
LEE cycles” MARVIN for CALLS such HIM derring-do “THE GOLDEN as being BOY OF the MOTORonly American ever to win the high-point trophy at the ISDT (1962, Garmische, West Germany), helping to introduce motocross to the U.S., or doubling in movie stunts for his good friend Steve McQueen .
Ekins’ main draw today is getting movie people and motorcycle racers to swap stories and hear sensible advice at his North Hollywood, California, shop called “Bud Ekins Studio Rentals,” where he restores and rents vintage motorcycles for people like Clint Eastwood. When guests say, “See ya later,” the 53-year-old Ekins deadpans oneliners such as, “Glad you warned me!” H
