Where did Superbikes come from and why did we start racing heavy, flexible 1000cc streetbikes of the 1970s? Kevin Cameron talks with Mark Hoyer about the origin of Superbikes, how racing these streetbikes blew up in popularity, and how they led to the spectacularly good motorcycles we have today. There is no better basis for this conversation than Kevin Cameron & photographer John Owens’ new book, Superbike: An Illustrated Early History. Learn about Superbikes and how this amazing book came to be on this week’s Cycle World podcast.
https://www.cycleworld.com/motorcycle-news/superbike-an-illustrated-early-history-book-review/
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https://www.cycleworld.com/motorcycle-news/superbike-an-illustrated-early-history-book-review/
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Read more from Cycle World: https://www.cycleworld.com/
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00:00 If you're enjoying the podcast, subscribe to us,
00:04 like us, et cetera, click the bell
00:06 so you get a notification.
00:07 We're gonna do this every week.
00:09 Particularly what we'd like to have from you
00:11 is topics that you might like to have us discuss
00:14 on the show.
00:15 You can do those in the YouTube comments below.
00:18 We'd love to hear from you and put them on the list.
00:20 Well, we can't do everything,
00:22 but we'll sure try to get the big questions
00:26 you have answered or little questions too.
00:29 We'll do the ones that look like they'll be fun
00:31 for everyone involved.
00:32 - Yeah, absolutely.
00:33 The next topic I'd like to talk about, let's see,
00:42 next subject is the "Superbike" book.
00:46 So Kevin's just whiling away in his spare time
00:51 and suddenly there's this "Superbike" book.
00:54 And if you haven't seen it, maybe you have a copy
00:56 you could show us, Kevin.
00:57 There it is.
00:59 You have to pull back.
01:00 No, it looks, so yeah, that's the cover.
01:03 That's a John Owens photo.
01:05 And John Owens and Kevin Cameron
01:10 were both on the race circuit.
01:13 I mean, Kevin's been on the race circuit, what, since 65-ish?
01:18 - 65-ish, yes.
01:20 - Yeah, 65-ish.
01:22 I think you've relayed to me in the past
01:24 that you thought you might be a road racer yourself.
01:29 And the results were not satisfying.
01:34 So you switched to tuning.
01:36 But yeah, so you were on the circuit.
01:39 You had been an AMA technical inspector and-
01:44 - 1988.
01:45 - Yep, and John Owens in the '70s,
01:48 took his Nikons to races and he was an enthusiast
01:51 and he started working and taking photography.
01:55 And with manual focus cameras,
01:59 and you guys have been friends ever since.
02:03 Tell us how it began.
02:05 - Well, years ago, John had said to me
02:12 that he had the ambition that the two of us
02:15 should do a book of some kind.
02:16 And I thought, hmm, yes, after all these things
02:21 that we both had to do, make a living,
02:25 keep a family together, the problems.
02:27 But eventually he said, "Let's do it now.
02:36 "What I would like to do is bring you a Mac computer
02:39 "on which are several hundred images
02:42 "that I've selected from my files, which go back to 1975.
02:48 "And if you should feel while looking at these images,
02:52 "like jotting down a few words, I'd appreciate it."
02:56 And so I started to look at the images
03:02 and so many things sprang out.
03:06 Oh, look at this bike's got four megaphones on it.
03:10 That's really old.
03:12 Or, oh, well, there are no dust scrapers on this front fork.
03:18 So that means that's a sort of middle period super bike.
03:21 And I began to write commentary.
03:25 Now, mind you, this was never intended to be,
03:29 this is a history of American super bike.
03:32 It began when I just wrote down how it struck me.
03:37 And it must've struck me pretty hard
03:40 because before I knew it, I had 30,000 words.
03:43 - Well, that's adequate.
03:47 - And you won't find them all in this book.
03:49 But what's important about this period
03:54 is that starting in '73,
03:59 Japan began to put great big engines
04:03 into what were basically 1960s chassis
04:08 with 1960s tires and suspension.
04:11 Didn't work very well.
04:14 And people, private people were racing
04:19 these big thousand CC bikes,
04:21 notably the Kawasaki Z1 and the Suzuki GS series,
04:26 751st, then the 1000.
04:30 And people loved to watch them
04:34 because they wallowed and they wobbled.
04:38 And the hero riders were sitting up
04:41 with wide handlebars.
04:45 Remember the talking blues?
04:48 They ride motorcycles with high riser bars.
04:51 They go up so high, they don't know where they are.
04:56 Well, you couldn't exactly tell where these people were
04:59 because their bikes were misbehaving
05:02 in such fundamental ways.
05:04 And the Japanese began to notice,
05:07 "Wait a minute, we might be able to move some units
05:10 with this kind of racing."
05:12 And so the privately entered bikes
05:16 were sort of pushed downfield by factory bikes
05:21 with professional riders on them.
05:24 And it was a curious time because on the one hand,
05:29 there were drag race guys who were saying,
05:31 "Oh, no problem.
05:32 I can build a 15,000 RPM killer motor
05:35 that'll put you on top anywhere."
05:38 And of course those engines lasted about 1,320 feet.
05:42 And I remember Rob Muzzy telling me in 1982,
05:49 things start to go bad real quick at 11.
05:53 So this was a time of transition.
05:59 The Japanese and their American teams
06:03 were frantically modifying these bikes,
06:06 throw away the fork, throw away the wheels and the brakes,
06:08 throw away the swing arm, reinforce the frame.
06:11 The fuel won't feed, raise the gas tank up.
06:15 Oh, we need all these.
06:16 And what resulted from this was the second generation
06:22 of big, powerful sport bikes,
06:26 which began with the Honda Interceptor.
06:30 And the factories had said,
06:35 "Oh, we have a division which races
06:39 in the Grand Prix's in Europe.
06:41 Maybe they know something about these handling problems,
06:44 tire problems, suspension problems."
06:47 The second generation was a big improvement,
06:51 but people remain to this day,
06:54 remain fascinated by those giant racers
06:59 with hero riders like Eddie Lawson
07:03 and Wayne Rainey, wrestling with high wide bars.
07:08 And of course they made that lovely motorboat sound
07:15 that all the two-stroke haters thought was heavenly.
07:19 - Yeah.
07:21 - And everything was changing so fast.
07:25 I remember standing by the Superbike Tech line
07:28 at one point in the mid seventies
07:31 and a kid came running up to one of the bikes
07:36 and said to the people that were waiting in line with it,
07:41 "They just let a set of electrons through."
07:44 And then the line vanished.
07:45 Everyone went back to their garage
07:47 because every race had a different tech inspector
07:50 with a different opinion of what is or should be legal.
07:54 And so every team had to carry the stock carburetor,
07:59 the stock carburetor board out, Cahin CRs,
08:04 which I think are very beautiful,
08:08 electrons, Quicksilvers, you name it.
08:11 And so they had to have all these setups
08:16 and know how to make them work.
08:18 So it was a time of frantic catch up.
08:25 And I think that at the present time,
08:28 the baggers class in Moto America is something similar.
08:33 They started with a motorcycle
08:36 that was never intended to road race
08:39 and they have made it into something quite respectable.
08:44 - Yeah, they're remarkable.
08:48 It is a Superbike now.
08:50 The top teams are racing bagger Superbikes.
08:53 There's no other way of putting it.
08:54 - Yeah, and one of those baggers,
08:58 which people love to point fingers
09:00 and say it's not a real motorcycle
09:02 and this and that and the other thing.
09:04 Let's face it, a motorcycle is an engine,
09:09 two wheels and some place to sit.
09:12 The rest is extra.
09:14 So know this about baggers,
09:20 that the bagger lap record at Laguna Seca
09:24 is faster than Eddie Lawson's 500cc Yamaha GP bike record
09:30 from 1988.
09:33 Tires have come a long way.
09:36 There's been all kinds of changes,
09:38 but that just tells you how fast this thing moves.
09:42 - Yeah, let's put that on the next topic list
09:45 is we got to do a show about baggers.
09:47 - Yeah, because we've enjoyed them.
09:51 So they're really irony at the highest degree.
09:56 - Yeah, it's so American.
09:57 It's so beautifully American.
09:58 It's just sort of like, we got air compressors,
10:01 let's race them.
10:02 I mean, NASCAR is not Mustangs.
10:05 NASCAR was based on huge land yachts
10:09 that everybody bought.
10:10 Or they ran Moonshine in 'cause they were big,
10:13 whatever it was.
10:14 So we'll get to that.
10:16 - In talking to you about the book,
10:17 one of the questions I would have is,
10:21 surely John wasn't just shooting super bikes
10:25 and probably has a library that is massive
10:30 and covers everything.
10:33 So talk about sort of why super bike
10:36 or how it came to be focused in this way.
10:39 We would like to take a moment to say
10:42 that this show is made possible by Octane,
10:44 our parent company, Octane Lending.
10:47 You can visit octane.co.
10:49 We'll have a link in the description.
10:51 On cygoworld.com, you can go visit what we call the widget.
10:56 You can read a bike test and et cetera.
10:59 And you'll notice a tool that allows you
11:01 to get pre-qualified for a loan on that model
11:04 or any model you can shop on Cygoworld or on octane.co.
11:07 So check out the link.
11:08 This show would not be taking place without their support.
11:12 - Well, there was an identifiable story
11:17 that could be pulled out from the background
11:19 of so many photographs,
11:20 but our friend Matthew Miles basically said,
11:25 "You're going to have to make a story here.
11:30 You can't just say,
11:31 'Well, here's a bunch of pictures I took at the races.
11:34 Here's a GP bike and over here is some other thing.
11:40 And so the first cut was to take the first 10 years
11:45 of Superbike, which was really the 1000cc sit-ups
11:53 and the transition period.
11:55 So that's 1975 to 1985.
11:59 It includes the beginning of the second generation
12:03 because the Honda Interceptor arrived in '83.
12:08 So, and then the rest were, this was the thing.
12:13 You see, the industry had in quotes,
12:20 learned that the only thing the public cares about
12:25 is quarter mile time and top speed.
12:29 Give them a good number, should sell some units.
12:31 Suddenly for no apparent reason,
12:37 people were interested in handling,
12:39 or I should say handling became a subject of discussion.
12:43 So the first 1200 Interceptors sold out,
12:49 twing, and the owners went around telling everyone,
12:53 "Man, this thing is really different."
12:57 The fact that it was different is owed
13:01 to that intense period of sit-up 1000cc racing.
13:07 Because nobody had brakes that were satisfactory.
13:11 Some of those bikes, the rear wheel,
13:14 the moving mass at the rear of the bike was 65 pounds.
13:19 So the wheels went in the trash.
13:23 When Honda jumped in in 1980,
13:27 there was Steve McLaughlin buying $12,000 worth
13:32 of titanium valves and titanium rods at a whack,
13:37 coming in crates, with cardboard dividers,
13:40 with all these rods in there.
13:42 - Right, and that's not 2024 dollars, folks.
13:44 That's house money.
13:49 - Yep.
13:50 So they, that intense period of development
13:55 showed that there was a market
13:58 for a better handling, a sports motorcycle,
14:02 not just a quarter mile missile.
14:06 Certainly, well, when I visited Kawasaki in 1972,
14:11 in the fall, the only test track they had was a drag strip.
14:16 And it was instrumented, and there was a quaint
14:19 little house with a peaked roof
14:21 that had all the timing equipment in it,
14:24 and there was a technician on duty.
14:28 So times are changing so fast,
14:33 and that's when things really get exciting.
14:35 The ideas come out, some of them are completely crazy,
14:39 some of them are surprisingly good,
14:41 and the result was that second generation.
14:44 And of course, the third generation is the JSXRs
14:48 and Interceptors and ZXs and what have you
14:52 of the present day.
14:57 But there had to be a cause, a driving force.
15:00 And that was that seeing these motorcycles
15:04 go fast on a road course somehow excited people.
15:09 - Well, I mean, I think it's--
15:10 - Okay, we'll accept it.
15:12 - We love our prototypes, we love MotoGP,
15:15 but that identifiability, particularly with those bikes,
15:18 because they were so basically exactly
15:22 what you were getting off the showroom
15:24 and then everything was thrown at them.
15:26 I think that identifiability
15:27 and that they were set up bikes
15:32 and they did have the high bars
15:34 that it's sort of like, yeah, I can do that.
15:36 So I think the identifiability is there, certainly.
15:39 We love our prototypes, but also these became prototypes.
15:43 And I think one of the most remarkable things
15:46 about the book, I mean, of course, what you did,
15:49 in the review I wrote, basically what you said earlier
15:52 about, oh, this is not an exhaustive history.
15:55 I'm not sitting, I'm not starting
15:56 with the beginning of Superbike and results
15:58 and massively researched of all that stuff.
16:01 It's all of the cultural
16:05 and other things happening around racing.
16:09 And that's what John captured, photographer John Owens,
16:13 captured so beautifully with his manual focus,
16:17 black and white film cameras.
16:19 I mean, there's some color,
16:21 but black and white film cameras.
16:24 And he's processing the film.
16:26 And I think, I look back, like I'm a photographer,
16:29 I've done photography for Cycleworld here and there.
16:32 Our photographer, Jeff Allen,
16:34 would call me an editor with a camera.
16:36 And so, but I'm a hobby photographer also,
16:41 and I have the actual lens.
16:43 I have a 500 millimeter F8 Nikkor C lens,
16:47 which is a pretty derided lens
16:49 in sort of pro camera circles.
16:52 It's a mirror lens.
16:54 That means it's light,
16:56 but it also shoots kind of dark, like looking through it.
16:58 It's sort of like looking into,
17:00 it's like looking into dusk, like even in bright sun,
17:04 I'm looking at aircraft or I'm trying to shoot,
17:06 you know, vintage races with it
17:08 when I go to road America in the summer, things like that.
17:11 And I just, my awe and respect for somebody like John,
17:14 who shows up and gets a product,
17:16 particularly with a very challenging lens.
17:18 He loved the lens and it is extremely sharp.
17:21 And he said, he found me on Instagram and he's like,
17:24 I shot at least 15 photos in the book
17:28 with that Nikkor that I saw.
17:31 And I was like, oh my gosh.
17:32 And then you can see, because of the mirror lens,
17:35 it gives you this really weird donut
17:37 bouquet in the background.
17:40 So the stuff that's out of focus, out of the depth of field
17:43 has this kind of circular sparkle to it.
17:45 Some people find it distracting
17:47 and certainly it's a very much a signature of that lens.
17:50 But as soon as he said that, I'm like, oh my God.
17:52 And I went back and I looked at the photos,
17:54 the clarity and the scanning is spectacular.
17:57 And anyway, I just mad respect.
17:59 Like I just, for anyone in that era to do,
18:03 I know everybody was manual focusing cameras
18:05 and doing this, you know, pulling the trigger
18:08 and hoping for the best.
18:09 And certainly he's edited down a huge collection,
18:11 but his percentage of hit rate has to be amazing
18:14 because these photos are stunning.
18:17 And then the post-work on them as scans, you know,
18:20 the negatives are great.
18:21 The scans are fantastic.
18:23 And the post-work to bring out the texture.
18:27 And he didn't just shoot action.
18:28 That's the other thing I think is what's so strong about.
18:32 It's so people oriented.
18:33 It's the man in the van with the plan.
18:35 It's the guy filing engine cases.
18:37 Like you're never gonna see someone filing engine cases
18:40 in MotoGP or World Superbike.
18:42 Probably not even in the AMA, you know,
18:44 Moto America paddock in any class.
18:45 - 'Cause the engines come in a sealed case on
18:47 and you break the seal, it's ready to start.
18:51 It's got a dino tag hanging from it.
18:53 - Right, you pop it in and you go and you know.
18:56 - It's a black box.
18:57 - Yeah, and so to see all of that or the still life
19:00 of a bowl full of spark plugs.
19:04 - I came into the garage area at Daytona
19:11 during one of those years, one morning
19:15 during practice and in front of one of the garages,
19:19 I don't remember whether it was Kawasaki or Suzuki
19:21 was a stack of five wrecked crank cases.
19:25 That day's work.
19:27 And the other garage had three crank cases.
19:31 And in 1982, Honda had gone through all the engines
19:37 they had built by Wednesday of speed week.
19:43 And I heard them often they would blow on the way
19:46 into turn two in the infield.
19:49 And they made a crunch like somebody had stepped
19:52 on glassware or a huge cockroach.
19:55 Not very dramatic, they didn't go bang.
19:57 And the rider would then just lift up the bike
20:01 and ride off into the grass, let the bike down,
20:05 pops possibly he would throw it down
20:07 and sprint for another one.
20:10 So on that Wednesday morning,
20:13 they had set up build stands out in the sunny,
20:16 it was a sunny day.
20:18 And they were building new engines out of the parts truck.
20:22 So this is why I say that this was an intensely
20:27 motivated development exercise,
20:33 wherein street bikes designed to sell to you and me
20:39 were given the task of racing.
20:41 And it was a very improving exercise.
20:46 - Yeah, I think it's just all of that is so beautifully
20:48 captured in the book.
20:50 I think you're gonna make it in this business, Kevin.
20:53 (laughing)
20:55 No, you're just your ability to take the photograph
20:58 and to contextualize because you don't say,
21:03 Billy passed Bobby or this guy won this race.
21:06 I mean, you do in some cases say,
21:09 this is what happened and this is what was going on,
21:11 but it's also very much the feeling of being in the paddock
21:15 and the feeling of,
21:16 well, you get a concept or feeling for the texture
21:20 of the bikes and you see the side shot
21:22 of the Honda Subaru bike engine,
21:24 and you see handmade linkage and you see springs,
21:29 you see all the safety wire,
21:30 you see the texture of the brakes and AP Lockheed
21:33 and all that.
21:34 And the narrative quality of your words in these photos
21:38 is I think what makes it such a spectacular book.
21:42 Like really in this type of,
21:47 I think one of the best books I've read on motorcycles.
21:49 I mean, there are many other incredible,
21:51 there are many other incredible titles that we can go down
21:54 and we can talk about tuning for speed.
21:55 We'll do a book segment.
21:57 You know, we can do, yeah, we can do, yeah.
21:59 I mean, there's so different,
22:01 but in terms of a cultural cap,
22:03 yeah, exactly.
22:05 I see you're ready, always.
22:06 We'll do something on that, but I,
22:11 if you folks, if you haven't seen the book somewhere,
22:15 go to superbikebook.com and check it out and get a copy
22:19 'cause it's a worthwhile addition to anybody's library.