Crooks Suzuki Production Racer

What dreams are made of

It was love at first sight for Melling and the Crooks Suzuki

This is a really odd story to write and, I have to admit, more than a bit emotional because Crooks Suzuki, and the T500 production racer from 1970, have been with me almost all my motorcycling life – and that’s a long time!

The story starts in 1969. After leaving school aged 16 I had ricocheted from one job to another and established a fairly consistent record of failure at everything, from a labourer painting shelves to an executive officer in the Post Office – and all stops in between.

One rather unproductive avenue I explored was trying to get a job with any of the leading motorcycling magazines of the day. The brutal truth was that none of them would have me for free. I had no A-levels, and therefore hadn’t completed one of the excellent National Union of Journalists’ training courses, no experience of working with a magazine and no inside contacts. In fact nothing whatsoever to make me worth employing, except that I could write – and I really could write – and I loved motorcycles.

Through a series of incredibly lucky breaks, a lot of effort and some real natural ability I was accepted for teacher training in the autumn of 1969. At the same time, my Auntie Edie went to America – on an aeroplane! How exotic was that? I asked her to bring an American bike magazine back for me because America was an all-new motorcycling world. Auntie

Edie was very fond of me and so brought back not one bike mag but 14 – and the call of being a journalist began again.

When my mum found out that I still harboured hopes of writing about bikes she went absolutely bonkers. Her dream for me was to come home from work with clean hands. That was the ultimate aspiration all working class mothers had for their kids. Now I had won life’s golden lottery ticket by starting teacher training and she was terrified that I would lose everything for the sake of motorcycling: it was a wholly justifiable fear.

Regardless, I wrote to all 14 magazines with a fine piece of creative writing in terms of my experience and industry contacts – but not my ability to produce professional quality articles. This bit of my sales pitch was absolutely accurate!

Twelve magazines didn’t reply, one said no and Motorcycle World, of Park Avenue South, New York asked me to send them a piece. I did, they liked it and I was a professional journalist: it really was no more complex than that. You can read the full story in the first part of my autobiography A Penguin in a Sparrow’s Nest.

So there I am with the opportunity to continue with teacher training and at the same time get paid for writing about motorcycles. What could possibly be better?

The snag was that my new employers had great ambitions for the magazine – and for me. New York was in the wrong place because all the motorcycling action took place on the West Coast. But they did have a superstar English journalist – I was very creative when I first wrote to them – and this would give them the edge over their Californian opposition.

For my second article they demanded a world exclusive, and I just managed to pull this off by the skin of my teeth by writing an article on the Cheney Suzuki which was doing so well in British motocross.

My editor absolutely loved this and so decided to raise the stakes. He had very little idea of what the Isle of Man TT actually meant, and its status at the time, but he had accepted all that I told him about my industry contacts. He had no problem asking me to come up with another world exclusive – this time, the bike which won one of that year’s TT races.

Although the USA had very little tarmac racing at the time, the TT was still the most important event in the road racing calendar and was therefore known to my American editor. Hence his commissioning of the article.

At the same time, because it was the most important road race in the world, getting a ride on a bike which won a TT was quite simply impossible: not difficult but just not achievable.

When I speak to young journalists who want to be freelancers, I try to explain to them that perhaps the single greatest asset you can have is the ability to deliver. Always accede to an editor’s request – and then work out how to do the job later!

This black and white attitude was what I loved most about working for the Americans – and still do. America truly is the most democratic nation in the world. No-one at Motorcycle World asked me about my family background, my A-levels – or lack of them – or my total absence of professional training. Everything was wonderfully, beautifully simple. Write the story and if we like it we’ll pay you. If we don’t, you’re fired. What could be fairer than that? You could have all the qualifications in the world, but if you couldn’t deliver you weren’t going to get hired and certainly not paid.

I thought that this was great so I did what all good freelancers do – I lied. Yes, I would test a bike which won a TT and yes it would be an exclusive. What could be easier?

The answer was almost anything in the motorcycling world.

For a start, the main classes were simply beyond reach – even with my fevered and desperate imagination. Giacomo Agostini, and the works MVs, looked to be certain winners in the two Premier classes and things weren’t much easier in the 250cc and 125cc divisions. I just was not going to get a ride on any of these bikes.

My only hope was the Production TT. Production Racing is a class for what are, supposedly, standard road machines and at the time there was a huge amount of interest in the idea of racing machines which, in theory at least, the general public could buy.

Production Racing attracted factory entries from Triumph, BSA, BMW, Velocette, Bultaco and Norton all striving for race results which would help sell bikes so, in theory at least, I was in with a chance.

By this time, I was very serious about college. I had settled well into the academic work and professional training and so had to fit being a top international journalist in between lectures, seminars and tutorials. It was a busy time and the current obsession with worklife balance really does make me smile. I lived to work – and loved it!

Fortunately, there was a payphone at the bottom of the stairs leading from the English department and, with a pocketful of coins, I started to haunt this place. The first pitch was to BSA. “Hello, I’m Frank Melling and I’m a journalist writing for Motorcycle World…”

I didn’t get much further until the much loved “Dear Sir or Madam” response kicked in and I was asked to send my CV in to the press department for consideration.

1. The 1970 TT winning Crooks Suzuki was the motorcycle which changed the young Melling’s life

2. Melling fell in love with the T500 in 1970

3. The T500 is big enough for a holiday home and so comfortable for the rider