Bernhard said:
Well pointed out, but he did not win the 1963 Daytona 200
Did someone say that he did?
Bernhard said:
The manufacture of 200 bikes rule which someone else pointed out was also applied to keep the Norton Manxs out, which by the 1960s were only being made below triple figures.
If Matchless made 200 G50s then they may have been allowed, as were the watercooled Yamaha TZ350 racers in 1970s which won the 1972 Daytona.
The AMA rules changed all the time, so you really can not quote them from one year and apply them to others.
At the time the G50 and Manx were banned, all a manufacturer needed was 25 bikes to qualify, but they had to have lights and an electric generating system, which the Manx did not.
Racers had to run plunger-framed Manx Nortons through 1952 because the featherbed was not used on a production bike then. So in 1953 and later the frame was approved and it appeared at Daytona that year with the Daytona 88 bikes. I do not know when the "lighting and generator" rule came out, but the DOHC and short-stroke Manx never had those, and by the mid-fifties the featherbed SOHC International was very limited production, down on power and expensive compared to the USA Goldstars and probably was never sold in the USA in any quantity.
The 1962 Norton Daytona 88 bikes had to use the slimline frame because that is what the roadsters had, the Isle of Man Domiracer would not have been allowed with it's special engine parts and frame.
Matchless brought over 26 of the G50 street bikes in roadster frames with lights, plus extra road-racing frames and other parts for approval by the AMA, but because they won, and because Triumph, BSA and Harley each sold ten times the motorcycles as Matchless and Norton both, and probably had ten times the money and people in the USA, Norton and Matchless would always be at a disadvantage when it came to politics. So Matchless and Norton, both with little money to develop and produce high-performance street bikes in quantity, were at a big disadvantage compared to everyone else.
By 1964, when most of the bullshit was sorted out or thrown away, Honda was pumping out OHC bikes in the tens of thousands, and it was more or less legal to race the G50, they were being eclipsed by more modern 2-strokes and multi-cylinder bikes, so the politics had done it's job.
In the later 1960's Harley, BSA and Triumph tried to protect themselves in racing by upping the number of bikes needed to qualify as production to 200, but the Japanese factories were making thousands of bikes on one day and they had tons of money, so it was easy for them to pump out racing bikes to bury the American and European marques.
The AMA still ended up banning multis and two-strokes from some dirt-track racing classes in the mid 1970's after KR started running a TZ700 there, siting safety and other reasons..politics!
Read this:
http://www.superbikeplanet.com/2002-Apr ... _story.htm
