Today in motorcycle history, January 16, 1994

  

  Italy's Edi Orioli wins the 1994 Paris-Dakar-Paris Motorcycle Rally aboard his Ducati-powered Cagiva Elefant.

   After a grueling, and at times life-threatening, 8,313 miles (13, 379 km) Edi Orioli triumphantly rides into Euro-Disney. 


  Considered by many to be one of the greatest Rally riders, Edi Orioli wins the Rally that began in Paris on December 28, given a snack, a bottle of water and a nap in Dakar on January 6 and then returns to Paris ten days later in need of a cappuccino and a good wash.

   Orioli credited  his victory to  knowing all the good restaurant spots, having previously won the Dakar Rally in 1990.





  Dakar Rally firsts in 1994: The number “1” is a woman! Traditionally the number “l” is given to the smallest capacity vehicle. Marianne Bernard is at the controls of her Suzuki 350. And, after fifteen years an assistance plane is used to spot and help with mechanical failures and/or accidents.









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Today in motorcycle history, January 8, 2015

 

  


  


  

  Bonhams: The Las Vegas Motorcycle Auction at Bally's Hotel & Casino begins at 10:00am (PST).  If you hurry you can still make it. So, grab your wallet...

  The bidding on parts (spares) starts first with everything from a lot of mostly 1970's era Honda motorcycle seats.  Bidding opens at an affordable $250. Or for a bid of $150 you might get a lot of 1970's era Honda handle bars, a framed "Goodbye Cruel World" Von Dutch print that is the perfect size (21½" x 25") to cover that hole in your kitchen wall, for the bedroom there is an original Harley-Davidson advertising poster from 1938 (20" x 14") or splurge and bid $15,000 on an extremely rare 1937 35.5" x 49.7" art deco Grosser Preis von Europa poster.

  A butt-load of vintage British parts that include Vincent side covers, wheels, Amal carbs, Smiths gauges, tank badges , BSA sheet metal, etc., etc.


  Perhaps you'll get lucky at a craps table and you can now afford to bid $15,000 on that 1970 Honda CB750 (frame #CB750-1011574, motor #CB750E-1011391) that was featured in the Guggenheim Museum's "Art of the Motorcycle" exhibit. Maybe you hit a progressive jack-pot and treat yourself to the 1950 Vincent Series C White Shadow, one of only 15 ever produced, (frame #RC6376A, motor #
F10AB/1A/4476) that could be yours with a lucky bid of $140,000.

  My favorite is Lot 244, the "Star of the 1956 Earl's Court Show", an incredible, fully motorized 1956 BSA B34 Gold Star Clubmans "Cutaway" motorcycle and display stand. Estimated sale price is $350,000!

  Check the auction out at Bonhams.com or just Google it.  Happy bidding!

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Today in motorcycle history, January 7, 2009

 

  

   On a remote part of the Second Stage of the Dakar Rally, between Santa Rosa de la Pampa and Puerto Madryn, the body of 49-year-old French motorcyclist Pascal Terry is found. He had been missing for three days.

  “Officially the result of the autopsy revealed that the French pilot Pascal Terry died of pulmonary- oedema, which produced cardio-respiratory failure,” said Julio Acosta, Chief of the Department of Operations of the La Pampa province police, late on Wednesday night.

  “The death of the pilot occurred between Monday and Tuesday morning,” Acosta said. A preliminary Argentinian Police report suggested that Terry’s life might have been saved if the race organizers began a search immediately on Sunday night when he failed to reach the finish at the end of the Second Stage . He was not found until the early hours of Wednesday morning. “He could have been saved, if he had been rescued in time,” Acosta said.

  “The search was not started immediately because Pascal had informed Race Control that his Yamaha had run out of petrol at the 197 kilometer mark, but that he had procured some from another competitor. Organizers later tried to contact him on two occasions, but were unable to get any response. There was confusion because a Terry had checked into the Neuquén camp, but it wasn’t Pascal, but his brother who is also competing in the rally,” Acosta said.

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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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