Win a CB160 at the Bonneville Vintage GP!

Reader Contribution by Richard Backus
Published on June 30, 2008
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A recent CB160 build by Vicious Cycle — nice!

If you’re hankering for a race-ready CB160 to run in AHRMA or just add to your collection, don’t miss your chance to bring one home following the 3rd Annual Bonneville Vintage GP at Miller Motorsports Park in Tooele, Utah, proudly presented this year by Motorcycle Classics. For the second year in a row, some lucky classic race fan will head home with a fully restored and race-prepped Honda CB160, expertly crafted by the crew at Vicious Cycle in Portland, Ore. And all you gotta do is pony up a paltry $5 for a raffle ticket — or $20 for 5 tickets — for the chance to bring the Vicious CB160 home.

Make no mistake, this will be one sweet bike, as the pic of a recent Vicious Cycle build proves. Working from his shop at 4711 N. Interstate Avenue in Portland, Joe Pethoud and crew have made a well-deserved name for themselves in the West Coast — and increasingly in the national — vintage racing scene. With a special concentration on CB160s running in the AHRMA, OMRRA and WMRRA race series, Vicious Cycle has become ground zero for anyone — make that everyone — interested in racing CB160s.

The CB160 racing craze makes a lot of sense. From 1965 to 1969, Honda made hundreds of thousands of the little twin-cylinder, overhead cam CB160s, making parts and surviving bikes plentiful. They’re light, fast (hey, 80mph on a 160 is fast!), easy to keep up, and hugely competitive in their class (200GP in AHRMA, 250GP in OMRRA, 160 Vintage in WMRRA). Better yet, they’re still relatively cheap, making them an excellent point of entry for anyone interested in vintage racing, and there’s no question the combination of light weight and relatively slow terminal speeds makes them an excellent machine for novice racers. Crashing at 50mph is generally a lot easier on your body than crashing at 100mph, and a bike you can overpower versus one that overpowers you is always a good recipe for success, especially for the novice.

Bonneville Vintage GP organizer Tom Kullen gives credit to AHRMA executive director Cindy Cowell for coming up with the CB160 raffle, but it takes a laundry list of enthusiastic supporters in the guise of parts suppliers, mechanics, machinists and knowledgeable insiders to make it all happen. Vicious Cycle has assumed the role of builder, applying their prodigious talents with all things CB160 to building the raffle bike, but other folk help make it what it is by supplying all the parts to make it a running bike.

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