ATV Florida Forum

For those of you to young to remember, there was what was called the Japanese invasion. I am not talking about Pearl Harbor. In the late 60's there were dozens and dozens of small and large companys building motorcycles both street bikes, dirt bikes and enduro bikes. These companys were primarily in Europe and the US. Then the Japanese started building low budget transportation and eventually started building dirt bikes as well. I worked at a bike shop that sold Triumph, BSA (BSA used to build guns) and Husquavara. The point is this, only a few companys survived and the rest went under. Some actually came back like Triumph, Indian, (gone again) KTM (which used to be called Penton). Anyway if anyone can remember some of these defunct bike builders sound off with the names. I have a few like Cagiva, Ossa, Bultaco, Hodaka, Rickman (Canadian), BSA, Norton, ETC. Any others. Harley barely survived, they got bought out by AMF who supplies basketballs of all things and while they had the company is when they did some real poor quality built equipment. There are several others, I need some help thinking of them without doing a search. Jap built bikes do not count.       

I think Hodaka was korean. My uncle had a Wombat Combat 125 back in the warly 70's. wow what a blast from the past. I was 9 back then. Just turned 40 last week. The one thing I remember is that thing flew.

Husqvarna just signed a deal with an Italian company to bring back its dirtbike division & word is they are gonna build a 450cc race quad using their 4stroke 450 engine that we will see on the first round of dirtbikes. They are supposedly serious about this & plan to contend with teh big boys.

How about DKW, Bridgestone, Matchless.

There's Montesa, and Maico too

Way to go kawGirl. I forgot about those. The old man I worked for at the bike shop was over 50 at the time and he would race a 450 Husky in the enduros and would be on the podium everytime. I was a teenager so he would send me up to get his trophy and sometimes a kiss from the trophy girl. He used to race a 650 BSA as well. That thing had no suspension, the engine alone weighed about 200 lbs. He kept all his race machines and when I go back home to visit what was once a showroom is now a Museum for all his rides.  

anybody remember CZ :)

How about Mzed?

I didn't know BSA still made guns until last night I saw some scopes at Wal-Mart and got on the web and found out they still make guns.

My stepbrother has a Montesa(80's model), they are nice bikes. He was into trials. Montesa's current bike are only trial bikes. In fact I learned to ride on an old Yamaha trial bike. I don't know what year it was but I think it was 73-75 250. Looks identical to this.

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Nice looking ride. I like the vintage bikes. You will find that several bike companys started out building something else and branched out into bikes or visa versa. There use to be what they called the 6 day trials in Europe and the U.S. It was a brutal test of man and machine. In those days these guys were riding 400 to 500 pound bikes at break neck speeds through some difficult terrain. The Japanese changed all that.