Today in motorcycle history, January 6, 2003

 

 

   

  


  

  Dodge introduces its Tomahawk V-10, 8.3-liter (505 cubic inch!) concept motorcycle at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit. The "superbike" features independent four-wheel suspension and an engine borrowed from the Dodge Viper sports car.

  The 1,500-pound Tomahawk can reach 60 mph in about 2.5 seconds, and has a theoretical top speed of 300 mph. Each pair of wheels is separated by a few inches and each wheel has an independent suspension. Chrysler Chief Operating Officer Wolfgang Bernhard said four wheels were necessary to handle the awesome power from the engine.

  Chrysler executives said while the chrome-draped Tomahawk was outlandish, they were seriously considering whether to build a few hundred at a price of at least *$250,000 each.

  *The latest asking price for a Tomahawk V-10 is around $600,000 plus.

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Today in motorcycle history, January 5, 2000

Elvis and an unidentified woman at the corner of South Parkway and Elvis Presley Blvd. in Memphis, Tennessee on June 30, 1972.






  For 27 years, Kathy Selph's mother says she remained silent, watching over and over as her daughter showed up in photographs on a motorcycle with Elvis Presley. Each time, she was referred to as 'an unidentified woman'. 

  "I just didn't want her to go on as an unidentified woman," says the mother, Peggy Selph Cannon of Bartlett, Tennessee, after the photograph appeared in a special New Year's photo edition of the Memphis newspaper, "The Commercial Appeal" on Jan. 1, 2000.

  Cannon says her daughter, Kathleen 'Kathy' Selph, then 20, was being driven home by Elvis on the back of his 1971 Harley-Davidson FLH when the picture was shot by a photographer for The Commercial Appeal in June 1972. A neighbor showed her the photograph in the newspaper that week, and Cannon says she 'reprimanded' her daughter for dating a married man. That's when she learned that Elvis and Priscilla Presley had separated.


  Kathy had been working as a dancer and singer at the old Whirlaway Club, where according to her brother, Steve, "A member of Elvis's Memphis Mafia noticed she resembled Priscilla." He stated that his sister and Elvis were then introduced and that they dated for a while. 

  Sadly, Kathy Selph was killed in a car accident on July 18, 1972 less than a month after the photograph was taken. "There was a real nice spray of flowers at her funeral from the Presley family. And there was a huge orchid at the funeral. I always felt it came from Elvis," said Cannon.





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Today in motorcycle history, January 3, 2014

  


  


  

    A fitting funeral is held for 84-year-old Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs.

   The Rev. Dave Tomlinson, (who had conducted the funeral of Biggs's fellow robber Bruce Reynolds in 2013), told the congregation in the standing-room-only chapel, "Jesus didn't hang out with hoity-toity, holier-than-thou religious people, he seemed much more at home with the sinners." He added that he anticipated Biggs's arrival at a metaphorical pearly gate "will create a bit of a stir."

  Ronnie Biggs's wicker coffin, draped in the flags of Great Britain and Brazil and an Arsenal scarf, and accompanied by an escort of Hell's Angels and the London Dixieland jazz band playing "Just a Closer Walk with Thee", arrived at Golders Green crematorium in the midst of rain and storm. It departed at the end of a ceremony in which Shakespeare, Dylan Thomas and Oscar Wilde all received a mention, to the strains of "The Stripper".

  "This is," said the Rev. Tomlinson, with priestly understatement, "unlike any funeral I've ever taken." 

  Even after finishing his updated autobiography a couple of years ago, said Chris Pickard, his friend and ghost writer, Biggs had been keen to write more. He regretted that they would now be unable to finish their planned project: "Ronnie Biggs's Crookery Book for Single Men on the Run". The first recipe was to have been for porridge.


  With closing words from the Rev., Biggs's coffin slipped away. Outside the chapel, the strains of "The Stripper" gave way to "Bring Me Sunshine" as the police, in their final meeting with Biggs, handled the traffic as the mourners headed down the road to the Refectory bar.


  Golders Green crematorium has seen it all in the century or so since it opened. Biggs joins a distinguished list of those whose funerals were held there, from Sigmund Freud and Bram Stoker to TS Eliot and Joe Orton, the playwright who, in "Loot", encapsulated the enduring fascination with cops and robbers that shows no sign of abating.

   Parts of this story were borrowed from The Guardian.

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Today in motorcycle history, January 2, 1974

    

 

 
  

  President Richard M. Nixon signs the Emergency Highway Energy Conservation Act, setting a new national maximum speed limit.

  Prior to 1974, states set their own speed limits. The US and other industrialized nations enjoyed easy access to cheap Middle Eastern oil from 1950 to 1972, but the Arab-Israeli conflict changed that dramatically in 1973. Arab members of the Organization for Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) protested the West's support of Israel in the Yom Kippur War by stopping oil shipments to the United States, Japan and Western Europe. OPEC also flexed its new-found economic muscle by quadrupling oil prices, placing a choke-hold on America's oil-hungry consumers and industries. The embargo had a global impact, sending the U.S. and European economies into recession. As part of his response to the embargo, President Nixon signed a federal law lowering all national highway speed limits to 55 mph. The act was intended to force Americans to drive at speeds deemed more fuel-efficient, thereby curbing the U.S. appetite for foreign oil. Unfortunately, it would curb America's appetite for big-blocks signaling the eventual demise of the SS Chevy's (396/454).



  The act also prohibited the Department of Transportation (DOT) from approving or funding any projects within states that did not comply with the new speed limit. Most states put their tails between their legs and lowered their speed limits, though Western states, home to some of the country's longest and straightest, wick-twisting highways, only grudgingly complied.

  And now because of Nixon, at every bike/muscle car event you go to we hear Sammy Hagar's "I Can't Drive 55".
 

 "...Go on and write me up for 125/Post my face, wanted dead or alive
  Take my license, all that jive/I can't drive 55..."

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Today in motorcycle history, December 31, 2007

  

  







  Evel.  Maddo. Trigger.  Caesars Palace.  Rio.  Buffalo Run.  What's in a name?

  On the 40th anniversary of Evel Knievel's historic crash...uh...I mean jump at the fountains at Caesars Palace in fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada, Australian stunt rider Robbie "Maddo" Maddison, jumps more than the distance of an NFL football field.

  At the Rio Hotel and Casino (Las Vegas) Robbie Maddison leaps a world-record 322 feet, seven inches obliterating the previous Guinness World Record of 277 feet by Trigger Gumm.

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Today in motorcycle history, December 30, 1934

  

  

  

  

  Four-time World Champion Speedway rider Barry Briggs is born in Christchurch,  New Zealand.

  Barry Briggs not only won an World Individual Championship title four times (1957,'58,'64 and '66), but he appeared in a record seventeen consecutive World Individual finals (1954–'70).  Still not impressed?  Okay, Briggs won the London Riders' Championship in 1955 riding for the Wimbledon Dons.  Yeah, so?  He's a six-time British Champion, winning his first final in 1961 and then totally dominating the sixties, winning in 1964,'65,'66,'67, and'69. Wait there's more, proving there's no "I" in "TEAM", Barry represented the Swindon Robins winning the British League Riders Championship six consecutive years from 1965–'70.  

  Briggs retired from British league racing in 1972 after an accident during Heat 5 of the World Final at Wembley Stadium with the Russian rider Grigory Khlinovsky. As a result of the accident, Briggs lost the index finger of his left hand ("...it's just a flesh wound!").

   In 1973 Barry Briggs was awarded an MBE for his services to sport. 

   In 1990 he was inducted into the New Zealand Sports Hall of Fame.

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Today in motorcycle history, December 29, 1973

  

  Cal Rayborn II, back-to-back winner of the Daytona 200 in 1968 and ’69, dies after crashing his bike during a race in New Zealand.

  In 1968, the field for the March Classic was perhaps the strongest ever, with top British riders including former World Champion Phil Read, plus a strong contingent of riders on factory Japanese bikes from Yamaha and Suzuki. This was the first year the '200' truly became an international event. Harley-Davidson came to Daytona with a team of seven factory riders, but they would only need one, Cal Rayborn.


  In the race, Cal led most of the way. At one point he lost the front end of the factory Harley and slid so far that it actually wore a hole in the knee of his leathers. Rayborn would recover and lap the entire field en route to victory. He became the first rider to average over 100 mph during the 200-miler. That win established Rayborn as the premier road racer in the US.


  Even though Cal's Daytona performance in 1968 was dominating, his win the following year was even more impressive. By 1969, the Japanese had found amazing speed in their lightweight two-strokes. Beginning with pole winner Yvon DuHamel on a Yamaha, nine of the Top-10 qualifiers were on two-strokes. Rayborn, (who qualified eighth on a factory H-D), was the only four-stroke rider among the top qualifiers. During the race only Rayborn’s unmatched riding ability kept him in touch with the faster two-stroke leaders. But, one by one, the two-strokes experienced problems, all the while a white-knuckled Rayborn riding fast and steady, took the lead and pulled away for his second straight Daytona 200 win.




  It was in the spring of 1972 when Cal Rayborn turned in perhaps his most famous performance. Against the wishes of the H-D factory, he would accept an invitation to the Transatlantic Match Races in England. With Harley refusing to back him, Rayborn rode an old iron-cylinder XR owned by Harley-Davidson employee Walt Faulk. It was Rayborn’s first appearance in England. Legend has it, his teammate and friend Don Emde drew maps of the tracks they would race on a cocktail napkin. On the outdated bike and with no experience on the tracks, Rayborn went out and won three of the six rounds and tied Britains Ray Pickrell as the top scorer. It would mark the beginning of a recognition by the rest of the world that American riders, long thought only able to master oval dirt tracks, could be top contenders in International Road Racing. In the summer of 1972, Rayborn won two Nationals and had the distinction of giving Harley-Davidson its final AMA Grand National Road Race victory. It came on July 23, 1972 at Laguna Seca Raceway in Monterey, California. It also proved to be Rayborn’s final national win.

  It became clear to Cal that his future was in road racing, and it was also clear that Harley-Davidson would be less and less competitive on the road racing circuits. At the end of 1973, he made the gut-wrenching decision to leave Harley-Davidson and accept an offer to race for Suzuki.



  Sadly, Cal Rayborn would never race in America again. In December of 1973 he died in a club event in New Zealand when the bike he was riding seized and threw him into a guardrail at well over 100 mph. 


  Cal Rayborn II was inducted in the AMA Hall of Fame in 1999.





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