A lot of Americans got their first taste of off-road motor-cycling when they saw The Great Escape. Steve McQueen stole a massive kraut beast and took off across the grassy hills of Middle Europe, eventually to rendezvous with a barbed-wire fence. We will now have a moment of silence for those who tried to duplicate the (concluded on page 176)Light Bridge(continued from page 121) feat on their Harley-Davidson 74s, or Norton Atlases. Those reckless pioneers soon discovered the meaning of ground clearance (a well-placed rock could tear a low-slung exhaust pipe right out from under them) and traction (the rubber-band-sized treads on a highway tire couldn't pull a quarter-ton bike out of a ditch or a sandy beach). Obviously, a different kind of motorcycle was needed. (Fans of Then Came Bronson--the TV series of a few years past--may have noticed that whenever their hero took his chopper off the road, it miraculously changed into a dirt bike outfitted to look like a Harley.) The few riders who got bitten by the desert bug stripped their Triumphs and BSAs down to the frame and added knobby tires, but those make-shift changes weren't enough. A road bike is built for main-line comfort--the weight, steering geometry and gearing are designed to handle highways that were intended for cars--where a driver isn't expected to make more than one decision every hour. A few companies responded to the demand for off-road vehicles with "scrambler" versions of their road bikes--upswept pipes, knobby tires, a larger sprocket on the rear wheel, a steel plate to protect the underbelly of the engine. A slight improvement, but you can't break a thoroughbred for range riding. Eventually, engineers realized that a different breed was needed and set out to build the mechanical equivalent of the quarter horse.
The bikes shown are the result of several years of research and development--projects fueled by an awesome market. During the early Seventies, increasing numbers of Americans took their pursuit of happiness to the end of the road and beyond, leaving a trail of dollar bills. Because form follows function, the similarities between off-road machines are greater than the differences. Superlight materials, a simplified frame and an eye for the absolute necessities of travel have brought the weight down to under 300 pounds. Narrow tanks and seats, longhorn handlebars, larger wheels, higher ground clearances and flexible suspensions make the machines more maneuverable, if somewhat less comfortable. And most of the bikes have single-cylinder two-cycle engines that are light, easy to repair and develop incredible stump-pulling torque when channeled through a high-ratio gearbox. Climb into the saddle of one of these machines, find a desert, a fire road or a plot of land about to be claimed by a housing project and you'll experiencea total involvement with the environment that people in four-wheel portable living rooms will never know. As William Blake wrote, close to 200 years ago, "Improvement makes straight roads; but the crooked roads without improvement are the roads of genius." To say nothing of the land beyond the barbed wire.
