The story of the 500cc Titanium BSA

.



by Eric Johnson

In 1966 the most ambitious factory-backed development effort in the history of modern motocross materialized on the esteemed Federation Internationale de Motocyclisme 500cc World Championship circuit.


In the beginning… The year was 1965, and BSA – commonly known as Birmingham Small Arms – was bent on ruling the motocross world. Keen on winning its third consecutive 500cc World Motocross Championship, the factory executives of the Birmingham, England-based motorcycle company held a big meeting in a smoky, dimly lit room – a meeting to which the company accountants were not invited. And it was in this room that that their master scheme of producing the fastest and lightest motocross bike mankind had ever seen was sketched out on a clean sheet of paper.


Their corporate mission statement now etched in stone, the BSA overlords – perhaps intoxicated by the success of the two previous world titles they had pulled down – declared that all of the factory’s resources were to be immediately tooled up and put into motion in a finely concerted quest to snag a third FIM Gold Medal. In doing so, the BSA accounting ledgers were slammed into a dark cabinet and the engineers, fabricators and machinists filled up their coffee cups and set about the task at hand. For them, the entire project was something of a dream come true: Free reign – and no budget restraints!


Enter Jeff Smith, the talented English rider who had delivered BSA its two previous titles. Smith, who was tapped to ride the exotic new “shadow works” project bike, was brought on board during the development process, and soon joined the army of machinists and engineers in transforming the bike from violet colored lines on a powder blue blueprint into a real lie, gas burning piece of machinery. It was at this point that the intriguing true story of BSA’s at “totalitarian rule” on the motocross world began. And like many great, timeless stories, when all was said and done, both BSA and Smith would end up riding an emotional roller coaster that would serve up hope, joy disappointment and an unforgettable conclusion.


BSA, having captured the previous two 50cc World Championships through it s creative and resourceful competition department, now wanted a third title at all costs. However, as with most motor corporations that race to win, there was more behind the project than just the desire to put a third gold medal in the company trophy case... Read more

Images: MotorcycleUSA.com






.

And there's a fight

.



By Eric Johnson

It was Noon on Monday, February 19, 2007 and I was sitting by myself in a booth at the Hooters on International Speedway Boulevard in Daytona International Speedway. I had three hours to kill before my flight was to leave for home for Orange County, California, so there I sat, looking out the front windows and directly at the tri-oval grandstands of Daytona International Speedway. "How in the hell did 200,000 people clear out of this town so quickly?" I said to myself. The night before, while standing on the pit wall with the crew of Boris Said's #60 Ford, I, along with over 200,000 other fans, had watched Kevin Harvick with the Daytona 500 over Mark Martin by .02 seconds.



The closest finish since the first 500 in 1959 (it took three days and a hell of a lot of finish line photographs to figure out Lee Petty had won that one), it was one of the most amazing things I had ever witnessed. (Sterling Marlin's #14 Waste Management Chevrolet sliding upside down on its roof and slamming the wall right next us and Clint Bowyer's Chevrolet - also on its roof and on fire - burning to the ground directly before us made the finish all that more memorable).



Back to Hooters. Trying to decide whether I should order a salad or another beer, I noticed the TV monitors behind the bar broadcasting the finish of the 1979 Daytona 500. The televisions were tuned to the ESPN 2 network and a documentary on the single greatest moment in NASCAR racing history bounced off the satellites and came beaming off those SONY big screens in that beer-soaked Hooters bar.



And that's when the memories came flooding back.

"I'll take another beer," I told the Hooters girl as now I had something to concentrate on (meaning the TV and "The Fight").

The date was Sunday, February 18, 1979 - 28 years TO THE DAY of the Daytona 500 I had witnessed - and for the first time in history, the CBS network was going to televise the race live from flag-to-flag. I was 12 years old at the time and the fact that the Daytona 500 was going to be broadcast live was big god damn deal in the Johnson household. My old man, a sportsman car racer, tuned in CBS while I sat on the floor watching the race while building a model Funny Car. Outside, it was nothing but white. What would later become known as the Presidents Day Snowstorm of 1979, a blizzard
wreaked havoc on the Midwestern and Northeastern sections of the United States, so NASCAR had something of a captive audience. Chris Economaki,David Hobbs and Ken Squire called the race, and CBS trotted out a new invention: The "In-Car" camera.



The first 15 laps of the race were run under the yellow flag due to rain, and on lap number 32, Donnie Allison, Cale Yarbrough and Bobby Allison all spun in the wet, muddy backstretch infield. Yarbrough would fall two laps down (and would eventually get them back) while the Allison brothers shook it all off and kept on chugging.

As fate would have it, the finish of the 1979 Daytona all came down to the 200th and final lap. In his big, hulking #1 Hawaiian Tropic Oldsmobile, Donnie Allison was leading the way back to the finish line. Immediately behind and drafting Allison was Yarbrough and his #11 Busch Beer Oldsmobile.
On the backstretch, Yarbrough attempted a slingshot pass on Allison.



"Donnie had a great car," reflected Yarbrough through the Hooters TV. "But I passed him twice on the backstretch when cautions came out to get laps back. I knew at the end I could do it again."

Allison refused to let Cale by him a third time and blocked the burly Oldsmobile so aggressively, that while door to door, Yarbrough's left tires touched the wet infield grass. Cale's big blue and white Oldsmobile lost traction and clouted Allison's car. Desperately trying to get their cars straightened out, it was a Detroit Symphony of crushing metal and roaring V8s and the two machines bashed and popped off of one another three more
times. It all ended up against the wall in turn three, the two cars locked together, sliding down the 31-degree banking and coming to a stop in the muddy infield, a smoking heap hissing with burnt oil and boiled fluids.


Richard Petty would flash by to win the race.

"Richard Petty has just won his sixth Daytona 500 and the crowd here is going absolutely mad!"

Meanwhile, Allison and Yarbrough scrambled to get out of their wounded automobiles. Upon doing so, and with steam coming out of their ears, they began to bitch at one another. Bobby Allison, seeing his brother squaring off with Yarbrough, swung his Ford down into the infield to see just what was up.



"I was trying to talk to Donnie when Cale started hollering at me," Bobbie explained. "Then he hit me in the face with his helmet."

"It was the lightweight championship of the world after that," mused Donnie.

Race announcer Ken Squire: "AND THERE'S A FIGHT BETWEEN DONNIE ALLISON AND CALE YARBROUGH. TEMPERES OVERFLOWING THEY ARE ANGRY BECAUSE THEY KNOW THEY HAVE LOST!"



With a national TV audience numbered in the millions watching on, kicking, punching and swearing a blue streak, the trio wrestled in the slop.

Back in Ohio, my dad was standing and talking to the TV set, "Holy shit!" he said. "Look at this!"



Myself, aged 10 and all, was in complete awe. This wasn't a TV sitcom or a cartoon or a made-for-TV movie, this was car racing and a bunch of dudes that wanted to win so badly they had completely lost their minds.

In the heat of the moment - and in the days that followed - Cale Yarbrough found the whole knuckle swinging, club wielding affair ridiculous. "It's the worst thing I've ever seen in racing," he would say in the newspapers that next week.

However, and as with most things, once a little time goers by, a person can see things an entirely different way. "I think it made a lot of fans," Yarbrough said 28 years later. "People looked at that and said, 'These boys are real people and they do real things.' Looking back now, I think it's one of the biggest things that ever happened in the sport. It got people's attention."

It certainly got mine. It was something I had never forgotten and to be sitting in front of Daytona International Speedway the day after the 2007 Daytona 500 and being reminded of it all brought a smile to my face.

I ordered another beer and watched on as ESPN 2 re-ran the documentary.

Built for Speed

.


By Eric Johnson



Last February, I alighted from a rental car in front of the massive grandstands that surround Daytona International Speedway. Affixed to these massive structures constructed of aluminum cross beams and steel girders were massive sepia-toned posters featuring great moments in NASCAR. One of them immediately caught my eye. The image was of the #40 Petty Enterprises Plymouth Superbird, driver Pete Hamilton behind the wheel, crossing the finish line in victory at Daytona in 1970.



While Daytona is now known as the stomping grounds of great drivers like Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson, Kurt Busch and others, in 1970, the Superbird was the star attraction at the speedway. Reason being? It was the most outlandish, futuristic and downright frighteningly fast stock car to ever leave streaks of rubber on superspeedways such as the 2.5-mile, 31-degree banked tri-oval of Daytona and the 2.66-mile, 33 degree high banks of Talladega Superspeedway. An exercise in the fantastic, the Plymouth Superbird was brought to life for one reason and one reason only: To beat the then omnipotent Ford Torino Talladega.



Throwing caution to the wind, Plymouth gathered around its finest engineers. Armed with T-squares and new technology. The engineers were told to ignore the accountants and immediately set about creating a stock car the likes Planet Earth had ever seen. Through their research and development efforts, the Superbird was designed aerodynamically by using a wind tunnel and computer analysis. Pure Detroit muscle, the Superbird’s body was silky smooth and seamless and graced with a shark-like front nose and a 23-inch high tail wing.



And with a 426-cubic inch big block dropped in the car, the Superbird cur through the air like an arrow, drivers like Richard Petty and Hamilton surpassing the 200 mile per hour mark like a NASA rocket. With Hamilton mashing the gas pedal into the floor, the Superbird won the first race it entered – the 1970 Daytona 500. So supernaturally fast was the Superbird that by 1971, NASCAR stepped in and restricted the car’s engine size, effectively clipping the Superbird’s wings. The car would effectively go the way of the dinosaur, but man alive, what a brilliant legacy it left behind.

Don’t believe the hype? Check out this YouTube segment.

The Chase

.by Eric Johnson



I was only four years-old at the time, but somehow I remember parts of it all. So much so, that to this day, when I refer back to my memories, my dad knows I have it all right. In 1968, my dad went to go see a film called Bullitt. Directed by Peter Yates, the film was described as an action thriller. The premise of the film involved a California politician named Walter Chalmers who was trying to bring down the Mob. For protection before a heavy-duty court hearing, Chalmers hires a Lieutenant named Frank Bullitt. Bullitt is played by the great Steve McQueen. Okay, now that we have that all out of the way, here’s where my story begins.



Bullitt is best known for featuring the best car chase scene of all-time. In it, Bullitt, behind the wheel of a 1969 Ford Mustang 390 CID Fastback, is chased by two hit men in a Tuxedo Black Dodge Charger R/T 440 Magnum. The chase ate up exactly 9 minutes and 42 seconds of film, but for any man (or four-year old for that matter) in America at the time, the chase would, in their memory, last forever. It would also make more than a few men reach for the wallets. I know my old man did. According to my mom, my dad saw the film on a Friday night, and the next morning, went straight to a Cleveland area Dodge dealer to buy the same Charger that was driven by the actor Bill Hickman in the film.



I don’t remember how it exactly all went down, but I do remember waking up from a nap, being led outside and seeing a shiny black car my dad had just bought. It looked mean. It looked mad. It looked cool. Not long after, my dad took me to see the movie. At that age I didn’t remember much of it, but I remember one part very vividly. I remember the part when Hickman – sitting in the driver’s seat and dressed in a trench coat – pulls up behind McQueen, puts on his seat belt and looks over to his shotgun. Seeing him in his rearview mirror, McQueen mashes the Fastback’s gas pedal to the floor and boils the rear tires. Hickman does the same and the chase begins.

Oh yeah… My dad started racing that car a few months later. He won’t admit it, but my mom later told me he traded his younger brother his entire record collection he had amassed while in the Navy for a new crankshaft.