Bultaco Wins!

In late 1965, Gary Griffin and I opened a Bultaco/Hodaka shop in Monrovia. Bultaco had released their first 250 off-road race bike, and it had a great combination of power and handling that suited desert riding very well. Gary and I took a couple of the bikes out to a race one Sunday to see how they compared against the other 250's of the day. We had only taken them out play riding before this day, and so we weren't sure how the jetting, suspension, etc would work in a racing situation.

Well, the bikes performed very well, and we were way out in front of everyone! About halfway through the first loop, Gary's bike started running crappy and we stopped. The plug had

whiskered. Gary cleaned the plug and we took off again, just flying, having a great time. Then his bike started running bad again. Plug whiskered. This happened one more time, and we stopped, but something else was wrong and we couldn't get his bike started. So I rode behind Gary and put my foot on one of his rear shocks and pushed him along. We finished the first loop that way, still in front of everyone.

When we got to the end of the loop, race officials told us that Max Switzer's brother, or cousin (I don't remember which) had been killed in a crash, and the club decided to cancel the 2nd loop and declared Gary the winner, even though I had pushed him across the finish line!

Neil Fergus