Hagerty Barn Find Hunter, his first motorcycle-centric episode

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Fire-medic

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Tom Cotter visits a couple of East Coast collections, one is probably larger than any other you've seen. Lots of Japanese bikes from the 1960's & 1970's. Be sure to pay attention to see the Yamaha SC500, the most-fearsome production dirtbike Yamaha ever made. Their later YZ490 was a better bike but the SC500 was like the Maico 501, a bike not meant to be ridden by mere mortals. Just ask 'Super-Hunky' (you have to be 'of a certain age' to know that reference).

The 'most fearsome dirtbike Yamaha ever made' honor goes to the TZ750 4-cylinder two-stroke which made as-much power as a well-tuned Generation 1 VMax but it weighed half as-much. It was a bike for the mile flat track races, and it made Kenny Roberts famously say, "they don't pay me enough to ride this thing!" It looks like this:

Yamaha TZ750 flat tracker.01.png

Be sure to watch the video, and see everything from 1960's Hondas to the Hercules-Wankel, the Suzuki-Wankel (RE-5, styled by the famous Italian Giorgetto Giugiaro), and other oddities like Vincent Rapides painted red, with British Postal Service paint, from the Stevenage Hertfordshire factory.

Some other designs by Giugiaro: https://www.hotcars.com/most-beautiful-cars-designed-by-giorgetto-giugiaro/
I normally don't like Hot Cars as a website because their content is usually riddled with errors, but this is an impressive list of accomplishments, and it contains probably my favorite car, the deTomaso Mangusta.

Vincent Rapide.01.png
 
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