A little Motorcycle Hist: Malcolm Smith

[camos]

Tripped over this interesting tidbit of history and thought you all might be interested.

[Yammer Dan]

Good One!!

[Venturous Randy]

On Any Sunday was a very special movie and Malcolm made it. Yeah, Steve McQueen was good too, but old Malcolm made the movie.

Even though the movie is almost 50 years old, it is truly about the love of motorcycles.

Randy

[djh3]

I loved that movie. I can remember seeing it at the drive in wben in high school. That was first time I ever saw flat track racing.

[cowpuc]

INDEED!! GREAT FIND CAMMY!!!

IMHO,, Bruce Brown did a bang up job with On Any Sunday and motorcycling hero's like Malcolm DEFINITELY made it work!! It was a very special time of life back then - way before the tree huggers got wind of all our fun so MX, Harescrambling and BAJA riding happened openly and freely in every small town across the States... Japanese 2 stroke bikes entrance into the dirt world was HUGELY successful partially because of Malcolm and, some may remember this,, those wing dingers even made some AWESOME success in the street bike circles of the day with Yamaha's lil RD350 (the big 4 stroke V-Twin SLAYER) and Kawi's H1 and H2's... Definitely an amazing time to be young and a rider!!

Lots of folks may not know this but because of his Native American heritage, later in life Malcolm set up and operated dirt bike excursions on Indian reservation property giving pale face riders a chance to see a side of America that they would never have been able to otherwise..

I got involved with another team of dirt hero's of the day back then.. A family known as "The Penton's", who produced some AWESOME dirt bikes right here in the states.. After some successful racing (USDT) on their part and in producing the Penton line, John (Penton) and family sold out to an Austrian company named (get ready,,, drum rollllllllllllllll) KTM who went on to develop some of the worlds greatest machines known to the dirt world.. Back in the 2000's I got an invitation to speak about the old days at KTM HQ in a place called Amherst Ohio and John gave me a copy of his memoir book which I absolutely treasure to this day..

WOWZY WOW WOW WOW the memories this all brings up..

Thanks Cammy!!!