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Mike Hailwood was their final choice. However, the British rider was contracted to MV Agusta until the last 350cc race of the 1965 season, which was at Suzuka.
Yes, I’d already sent a letter to my mum to say I’m going to come, but she was actually reading the letter as I walked through the door and that was the start of my run-in with the people above me and then when my dad did what he did – The answer was to break more new ground, the result a bike whose legend looms larger than any other. The Honda 250 Six. Some guys were getting caught, but the colonel would always phone his grandson and say, “Don’t open for them”, so we had a lot of fun, you know and then I was racing Favaros, so that was a fulltime business. We had about 65 horses and we had mares and putting them to Favaros. We had to buy mares because the people wouldn’t put the foals there. When he proved himself, it was Favaros is everywhere and his stud fee went from R4000 of begging people to pay R4000 and giving them free to some people who had the best mares and it was R30 000 by the time everybody recognised him. When I was a kid I was evacuated up into Shropshire and because I had passed the 11-plus exams, I think I was about eleven or twelve, I had to go to a grammar school. They actually sent us to Shrewsbury instead of Dewsbury, so we were in the wrong place anyway. My young brother and sister (twins) were very young about five. They got to stay in a nice place out in Dewsbury, a village outside Shrewsbury. They were very happy there and stayed there for the rest of the war and they also called their foster parents mother and father, they were there for so long, so they said they had two mothers and two fathers. Redman would go on to claim four consecutive 350cc World Championships from 1962 to 1965. In 1962 and 1963 he claimed double championships winning both the 250cc and 350cc World Championships. After being injured at the 1966 Belgian Grand Prix, Redman made the decision to retire. [4]
Honda RC148 125cc – Howling Wolf-Cub
Aika-San eventually gave-in to Redman’s request and turned the front forks around to add another couple of inches. Honda itself was emblematic of Japan’s new role in the world. Metallurgist Soichiro Honda had established his company in 1948, by buying a job lot of World War II army radio generators and installing them in bicycles to create low-cost powered transport. By 1965 Honda was the world’s biggest motorcycle manufacturer, producing 1.25 million units annually. The flowering of engineering adventure was eventually kerbed by regulations in the late 1960s, but not before Honda and rivals had produced some of the most exciting racing machines of all time.
Between 1958 and 1960 the British born Rhodesian competed on the Island mainly on Norton machinery gaining a best 7th placing the Formula One 350cc race in his debut year. It was already motorbikes. So if you’re in motorbikes, I always went every year that I was old enough and had my bike. We always went to Silverstone for the Grand Prix, I think they called it TT, or whatever, but we started going to motorbike races that were within the distance of what we could afford. I watched racing. When I got to Rhodesia, John Love was working at the CMED on the motorcycle section, I was on the car section and then later the engine section. I always wanted more of everything, you know, more of stuff. Then I met John Love and he was racing motorbikes, so wow, now I’m working next to the guy. We became friends and I started going round and he was talking about racing driving cars. To further confuse things, Honda started referring to the ‘Six’ as the RC165 - thus maintaining the mystery - and no doubt baffling its staff. The machine was Honda’s RC165, a six-cylinder 250cc four-stroke created to defeat Yamaha’s twin-cylinder RD56 two-stroke, which had proved too much for Honda’s four-cylinder RC164.
The Motorcycle Diaries
In the first segment this week, Senior Editor Nic de Sena chats with Arthur Coldwells about KTM’s latest Super Duke 1290 GT. That’s the sport-touring version of the Super Duke R. The question is whether KTM overly detuned its fierce superbike, or whether even in touring mode, the heart of The Beast is still just as savage. For the 1965 / 1966 season Honda upped its ante. It had developed the ‘Six’ further and wanted two riders on its team for the 250cc class. With its secretive past, its enshrouded launch at Monza and its sheer power, the Honda RC165 is in the strictest sense of the word, a legend. And with its six-cylinders, its decibel-busting megaphones and its dainty frame, it is an icon of motorcycle design.
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