GYPSY TOURS

from American Motorcyclist July 2023

by American Motorcyclist Association

Penton Owners Group

...got their start more than 100 years ago at places like Weirs Beach near Laconia, N.H., and Harley-Davidson Motor Co. in Milwaukee, Wis.

AMA Gypsy Tours have always been about riding and sharing the camaraderie of two wheels with like-minded enthusiasts at great destinations.

And that continues with the 2023 Gypsy Tour schedule, where riders can meet, share experiences and even grab their collectible AMA National Gypsy Tour pin dated with the year.

Remaining Events

Laconia Motorcycle Week

JUNE 10-18

Thunder in the Valley

June 22-25

AMA Vintage Motorcycle Days

July 21-23

Four Corners Motorcycle Rally

Aug. 31 - Sept. 4

FOR MORE INFORMATION: www.americanmotorcyclist.com/gypsytour

50 years ago

Honda launched its first real 2-stroke – the 1973

BY MITCH BOEHM PHOTOS BY KEVIN WING, TERRY GOOD AND JON ROSENSTIEL

Looking back now with five decades of hindsight, the success of Honda’s very first Elsinore motocrosser in 1973 seems like it was destined to be…just another flattened fence in the wake of the Honda steamroller that in many ways was motorcycling in America during the mid- to late 1960s and early 1970s.

During those crazy 1960s, while we were meeting all those nicest people, Honda Motor Co. was helping lay the groundwork that would result in a veritable explosion of motorcycle culture in the early 1970s, with ’73 being the all-time peak in new-bike sales, when Americans bought over 1.5 million motorcycles. It hasn’t happened since.

In the wake of AMA Motorcycle Hall of Famer Bruce Brown’s On Any Sunday moto documentary in 1971, it seemed everyone had a motorcycle or two, and you could ride just about anywhere you wanted. Motocross and hare scrambles events were everywhere, and things just seemed right, proper and balanced in the two-wheeled world. They don’t call the early 1970s motorcycling’s glory days for nothing, Vietnam and the Arab Oil Embargo notwithstanding.

A good-sized chunk of all that sales success in ’73 was due to Honda’s very first production-spec motocrosser, which this year celebrates its 50th Anniversary. Many feel the Elsinore is arguably the most important and influential dirt bike ever built, and it’s a difficult position to disprove.

But despite how perfect it quickly came to be seen for the times, the Elsinore’s appearance in late ’72 was a bit of a shocker, mainly because Soichiro Honda himself is reported to have said that the Honda name would never go on another 2-stroke motorcycle. It’s hard to know exactly why Mr. Honda recalled his first efforts in the motorcycle business — the “Chimney” engine, and the Aand D-type two-strokes of the late 1940s, which actually launched the company — so acidly, but Honda was, after all, a four-stroke company through and through by the 1960s, in motorcycles and in Formula 1, and had the wins and sales records to prove it.

In other words, 2-strokes were loud, dirty and unsophisticated…and very un-Honda.

Good thing, then, that some in Soichiro’s burgeoning

R&D department felt differently, and enough so that they began tinkering with some rough, two-stroke prototypes after work and on weekends after sanctioned efforts to create a competitive, XL250-powered off-road race bike with enough chassis and engine performance to compete with the European 2-strokes proved next-to-impossible. These guys had been to the local tracks and seen what Husky, CZ and Bultaco — but also Suzuki’s MX-oriented TMs, Yamaha’s do-it-all DT-1, and others — were doing with 2-strokes.

Kawasaki, Yamaha and Suzuki showcased radical factory-built racebikes ridden by the likes of AMA Motorcycle Hall of Famers Torsten Hallman and Joel Robert in the very early 1970s. But Japan Inc., even after establishing itself as the world’s premier two-wheeled power broker, still hadn’t come up with a world-class production motocrosser aside from Suzuki’s rare and very limited-edition RH69/TM250 of 1968-’69.

Enter the 1973 Honda CR250M Elsinore, the result of the work those Honda R&D techs put in between ’70 and ’72, much of it in secret. Eventually, though, word got out, but what happened next, reportedly, is just one reason Soichiro Honda is often called a genius. Instead of ripping his guys, he said something that had to be plenty inspiring. “If you’re gonna do this,” he supposedly said, “it better be the best 2-stroke race bike ever.”

And there it was in the winter of 1972, the sun reflecting off its beautiful alloy tank and the promise of trophies and podium finishes galore seemingly radiating from its leanyet-muscular body.

Introduced to Honda dealers in early ’73, the silver and green rocket brought near-works-level motocross performance to everyman, and at a reasonably affordable $1145. Nothing this side of a factory machine could touch it. Producing nearly 30 horsepower and weighing just 212 pounds sans fuel, the 250 Elsinore became an instant winner, offering amateurs and pros alike a powerful, lightweight and durable machine that could compete for moto wins week-in and week-out.

Liberal use of aluminum and magnesium — along with the bike’s minimalist design — kept it light and maneuverable. Honda engineering — and two years of testing under such names as AMA Motorcycle Hall of Famer and 250cc national champion Gary Jones, then riding for Yamaha but testing for Honda on the side — made it durable and fast. Dealers sold every unit they could get their hands on, magazines spread the word via glowing track tests, and race-result columns in Cycle News provided proof that Honda’s new 250-class motocrosser was a force to be reckoned with.

Only Yamaha’s ’74 YZ250, which debuted a few months after the CR but was nearly $700 more expensive and built in limited quantities, could match the Elsinore from a performance standpoint. With motocross in the U.S. on the verge of a serious explosion, the Elsinore not only provided a dry, powder-flecked fuse, but a strong and steady flame.

“After [riding] the CR250M Elsinore,” Cycle Guide wrote in its April 1973 issue, “Honda was fully justified in slapping on the [works] CR label. In its own way, the Elsinore is every bit as much a thoroughbred racing machine as its Grand Prix predecessors.”

Elsinore testing and development happened in private and, later, in public at local Japanese meets, which of course let the cat out of the bag during 1972. The Japanese media ran with the stories, but in America there was little attention paid to the presumably new and radical Honda. That would change in a big way come 1973.

The 250 Elsinore’s roots can be traced to the mid-1960s when rival manufacturer Suzuki began seriously developing a focused motocross machine. With help from Swedish racer Olle Pettersson, Suzuki aggressively developed increasingly competitive machines, culminating in the RH69 — which Pettersson rode to third in the ’69 250cc World Championship — and RH70, which newly hired champ Joel Robert rode to the ’70 250 championship, a feat he’d repeat three years running on Suzukis.

Honda engineers, of course, weren’t about to let Suzuki monopolize the motocross world. And despite Mr. Honda’s vow of never putting the Honda name on a 2-stroke motorcycle, prototype 2-strokes were soon running around

Japan in secret test sessions.

“The first prototype of what would eventually become the 250 Elsinore was dubbed the 335A,” says Terry Good, a leading collector and historian of works machinery and the guy behind the effort to bring the International Motocross Museum to reality. “There were plenty of secret tests at Suzuka Circuit in ’70 and ’71, some of which were photographed and written about by Japanese magazines. Honda actually had two bikes in development at the time — a 250 and 125, the latter of which was called internally the RC125.”

As the 335A morphed into the 335B, Honda contacted Gary Jones, then on his way to winning the ’72 250cc

National Championship aboard a DT-1-derived Yamaha that he, his father Don and the Yamaha factory had developed into a serious racebike. “Honda asked if we’d do some development work for them,” Jones told this author, “and things being pretty loose back then regarding contracts and money, we agreed to help them on the QT.”

Testing was plenty illuminating, for Jones and the Honda R&D techs. “The first bikes we rode and tested,” Jones remembers, “were pretty fragile. We broke stuff all the time — frames, shocks, engines, whatever. I didn’t care. I was racing Yamahas, and the Honda gig was just a side job. Honda’s first 2-stroke engines weren’t impressive…no topend hit, no mid, no bottom, too-heavy flywheels, etc. The even after we’d break something they’d come back with totally new parts — which were usually a lot better. Those guys worked quickly! Still, the bike was long and wouldn’t turn too well. I kept telling them it was a motocrosser, not a desert bike!”

Little by little, with testing happening in both SoCal and Japan, the prototype got better, and by the end of ’72 a C-model 335 was being tested in California.

“By ’72,” Good remembers, “the cat was pretty much out of the bag. The Japanese magazines had photographed and written about the bikes, Honda R&D techs had ridden the bike in local Japanese races, and even a U.S. magazine — Cycle Guide, I believe — had published bits and pieces.

Yamahas were clearly better. I’d suggest things like quicker geometry, lighter flywheels and punchier power, but they’d argue. The Honda guys were stubborn!”

“At one test,” Jones says, “we took a prototype and hacksawed the frame at the headstock, shaved off some of the steel, and welded it back together. We went from 31 degrees to 29, I think. Anyway, the Honda guys sh%$# their pants. But the bike worked better!”

Jon Rosenstiel, who joined Honda in the early ’70s and who’d go on to be a highly successful Team Honda mechanic in later years, echoed Jones’s sentiment. “Those early prototypes were really light,” he says, “but very fragile. They’d break all the time. Honda had bought a couple of competitive machines — Christer Hammergren’s works Husky, I think, and some others. The Elsie prototype seemed designed along the lines of that Husky — a long wheelbase and lots of rake, so it didn’t turn too well.”

Despite the durability setbacks, Jones remembers the Honda R&D guys rebounding quickly with improved product. “We’d test once or twice a month,” he says, “and

There was a definite buzz about a new Honda 2-stroke.”

Jones and his father Don kept with the Honda testing; the money was good, and with all their development work with Yamaha, they were having a positive effect. “At one test late in the game,” Jones remembers, “the shiny silver tank was reflecting sunlight and blinding me over jumps and at certain angles. I asked them to tape or paint the top of the tank to reduce the glare; all they had was some army green spray paint, some sort of primer they used on engine parts. Just crap. But it worked. Of course, I was surprised to see the green stripe on the production bikes!”

As the 335C improved and Honda contemplated the upcoming ’73 season, which would see a (hopefully) successful launch of the production Elsinore and a race team to promote the bike’s performance with race wins, a serious offer of race support was made to the Joneses.

“We didn’t want to do it,” Jones says. “We were happy with Yamaha, we liked working with their engineers, and their bikes still were better than the Honda. We weren’t interested in moving.”

But Honda, flush with cash from its dominant sales position in the U.S. and intent on putting together the best possible team, pressured the Joneses with literally loads of money. “It got to be a question of economics, really,” Jones says. “We kept saying no, and the numbers kept going up until we honestly couldn’t say no anymore. No one made any real money racing back then, and for Honda to offer us so much money to race their bikes — with real mechanics and box vans and flights to and from the races — we simply couldn’t say no.”

The ’73 AMA National season didn’t start out as smoothly as Honda and the Joneses thought it would. “The first racebikes we got were total prototypes,” Jones says, “hand-made works bikes that were really light.

Problem was, they were really fragile, just like the protos we’d tested earlier. We ended up not finishing a bunch of races early-on due to durability issues.”

“So we asked for some production Elsinores,” Jones remembers, “which Honda eventually provided and which we modified. We cut the frames to shorten the geometry. We modified the cylinder to accept a reed-valve assembly from a Yamaha, we built custom triple clamps, had the forks modified, tried different shocks, all of it. Honda wasn’t happy, of course. Maybe it had something to do with the engineers having to deal with Mr. Honda back home. But the production-based bikes worked, and we won a whole bunch of races at the end of the season, and took the ’73 250cc

AMA National Championship.”

The 250 title and the advertising campaign that followed certainly spurred Elsinore sales, but the bike didn’t really need much help. Elsies were being snapped up from Honda dealers everywhere, and were busy winning accolades of their own on local tracks and trails all over the country, not to mention in magazine tests. The bike’s fundamental attributes — power, lightness and durability — combined to allow riders of all talent levels to be successful. And it was the bike’s all-around ability — a goal of the design team from the very beginning — that helped maintain its impact and presence through ’73 and ’74 despite the new ’74 YZ250’s high level of performance. The CR125, which debuted in early ’74, carried the Elsinore tradition to the smaller class, and became an even bigger seller, Honda moving a reported 15,000 units — an amazing figure — in the bike’s first year. Ironically, the Elsinore’s massive success made life at Honda much more difficult by spurring other manufacturers to greater heights — more power, more suspension travel, less weight, etc. Yamaha’s YZ250 was a good example, though it was only the first OE to see the target clearly and aim significantly above it.

Honda didn’t help itself here, because it waited far too long to significantly upgrade its 250-class motocrosser. In 1975, with Suzuki introducing the radically suspended RM125 and Yamaha going the monoshock route, the CR250 was basically unchanged, save moved-up shocks and a high pipe.

Maybe the CR125’s success provided enough positive news, but for whatever reason, Honda was on the cusp of one of its well-documented sleeper periods. It would be three more years before Honda would jump back into a 250-class leadership position with its red-framed, red-engined ’78 CR250R, a bike modeled after the RC works bikes Honda was actively campaigning on the national circuit with Marty

Within two years of the CR250M’s launch (and just a year after the CR125M’s), Honda became the factory racing steamroller everyone remembers, with red-framed and -engined RC125, RC250 and RC400/500 works machines that were arguably the best on the planet. The late AMA Hall of Famer Marty Smith, seen here in 1975 aboard a Dave Arnold-prepped RC400, demonstrates.

Smith, Tommy Croft, Pierre Karsmakers and others. This time, however, the performance gap was narrow, with Yamaha’s ’78 YZ250E and Suzuki’s RM250 offering basically the same level of performance for about the same money.

Still, there’s no doubting the massive impact the original Elsinores had on motocross and motorcycling in general. “The Elsinore 250 redefined what riders could expect from their machines,” said Honda in its Elsinore promo material. “Compared to European offerings, the Elsinore was miles ahead in user-friendliness, ergonomics, carburetion and durability. The molded plastic, satin finish aluminum and the use of magnesium in the engine cases became the new standard.”

“I hated that stinking bike,” says the late Yoshimura marketing honcho Brant Russell. “It should have been banned! In other words, I was riding a Suzuki TM250 at the time. Overnight, this carpet-bagging Honda had infested Saddleback Park like the plague. My really cool TM was now yesterday’s news. Honda came to the party in force and instantly raised the stakes to a new level.”

“Even today when I see an original 250 Elsinore,” says ex-racer and collector Greg Primm, “I stop and marvel at its beauty.”

“In 1973 I was 15 and looking to ditch my outdated Yamaha AT1-MX,” says VMX Editor Ken Smith. “I’d read about the new Elsinore and Gary Jones. But walking into the Honda dealer and seeing one in the flesh was something else entirely. Other bikes had alloy tanks, or powerful engines, or brakes that worked, or half-decent suspension — but not all at one time! The CR250M had it all and then some. It was a motocross racer’s dream package at a very affordable price, and it threw down the gauntlet to every manufacturer — Euro or Japanese. The game had changed overnight.”

Game changer. The saying gets tossed around a lot, and in many cases it’s overblown, and not really apropos.

But in the Elsinore 250s’ case, and with the 1974-spec CR125, as well, it was well-earned. Destined to be, almost… AMA

“the shiny silver tank was reflecting sunlight and blinding me over jumps and at certain angles. I asked them to tape or paint the top of the tank to reduce the glare; all they had was some army green spray paint... Of course, I was surprised to see the green stripe on the production bikes!”