A hundred bucks well spent
I was somewhat startled to see a ’39 EL go for 110,000 Simoleons at the Mecum auction in Las Vegas. My first motorcycle was a ’39 61 inch Knucklehead. I gave a friend a hundred bucks for it. That was in Milwaukee where I grew up. The EL tranny needed help so I took it to a shop out on 60th and Fond du Lac Ave that dealt only in used Harleys. It was run by a soft spoken older gent named Ralph who always had classical music playing. He called and said it needed a bottom shaft but that he couldn’t find one anywhere. This was in the ’60s. I called a family friend, Sal Tarantino, who had worked in the racing division at Harley in the ’40s but was now in export. I explained my problem. He told me to call back in an hour. I called and he said to come down to the plant, the first plant at 37th and Juneau, and pick it up. I went down there. It was lying on his desk. When he got off the phone from arranging to send a bunch of motorcycles to the Cambodian army, I asked how he did it. He said, “I walked out on the factory floor and lifted it out of the basket as soon as it was machined.”
There’s a shot of me on my ’39 EL. Later while driving truck around the state at night for The Milwaukee Journal newspaper and attending college by day, I happened on the ’47 Chief on a farm near Oshkosh. I went back and hauled it home for $85. A friend in California still has it. Among a host of others, I horse traded into an 841 military shaft drive. Other trades yielded a Gold Star, a 441 Victor and a ’58 BSA 650, a long stroke favorite that pulled like a John Deere tractor. I rode it all over Vancouver Island and had some adventures. The scene had shifted by that time to Seattle where I still live.
My uncle said he was on a back road near Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, practicing standing up on the saddle of the police Harley when the mayor drove by. Of course, I had to try it. The Indian Chief could almost ride itself, so I stood up on the saddle with arms outstretched. My wife, later ex, saw me, screamed, and ran inside to look for life insurance papers.
The mag is a favorite! I read every issue from cover to cover!
—Walter Marquardt, Seattle, WA
Print quality through time
Whilst enjoying the latest (and eagerly awaited) fine issue, I realised how good today’s magazines are. It is only when you look at an old motorcycle magazine that you truly appreciate how far things have come. We take for granted that today’s magazines feature high-quality, full-colour photographs on gloss paper. To sate my curiosity, I recently bought a copy of Motorcycle Enthusiast from January 1989 and Motorcycle International from February 1990. The vast majority of both magazines’ photographs are black and white, only the cover, centre spread, and article header pages being in colour. Neither monochrome nor colour images are anywhere near as sharp as current magazine photographs, either. The print is somewhat smaller too, and the font is not as easy to read. Printing too then has progressed by leaps and bounds. Even the paper is superior.
My interest in buying these was partly to see what new bikes were launched back then, and to see which proved successful, or sales of which didn’t fulfill the promise. Reading young Alan Cathcart’s review of the Milan Show, two paragraphs were devoted to the Suzuki VX800, an attractive bike in my opinion, the engine of which was also used by Sachs. The promise of this alternative to the inline four was presumably not fulfilled as it slipped quietly from the range after seven years: 1990-1997. A reasonable length of time in production, yes, but how many were sold, and have you ever seen one? Certainly thin on the ground now, with none listed at the time of writing. Was it launched at the wrong time, when inline four race replicas ruled the roost? Would it sell better now, I wonder? Full page advertisements for British companies now a distant memory. Pride and Clarke, Coburn and Hughes, Devimead and others. Time, like an ever-rolling stream, etc…
—Les Curtis, England
Speaking of readability, as of the July/August 2025 issue, we have begun using a bolder type font in our features. A few subscribers wrote in and offered constructive criticism, I think we made an improvement. But still, good lighting and a pair of “readers” handy to your favorite reading location are a huge help… as I have discovered. –Ed.
KZ 1000 MkII correction
Great mag, but your article on Second-Gen Superbikes mistakenly states that the KZ 1000 MkII was a stopgap model waiting for 1981’s four valve GPz. Kawasaki’s first open class bike to receive four valves per cylinder was actually the Ninja 900 released in 1984.
—Douglas Paul Hopkins via Facebook
Correct! –Ed.
