Throwback Thursday: Behold Russ Collins’ Wild Creation “The Sorcerer”

Larry Lawrence | April 21, 2022

This Top Fuel Drag Bike was just one of RC Engineering’s Outrageous Machines

In this week’s Throwback we travel back to 1977 to take in the absolute insanity that was 1970s Top Fuel motorcycle drag racing. Case in point, the late-great Russ Collins on his famous double-engine Honda dubbed “The Sorcerer.” Collins, along with young RC Engineering cohorts Byron Hines and Terry Vance, built this Top Fueler powered by a pair of 1,000cc Honda engines configured to run as a V8. And as if that were not enough, the RC Engineering boys fitted the beast with a GM supercharger. If your mind isn’t “blown” enough already, consider “The Sorcerer” was built because his previous triple-engine Honda he called the “Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe” was nearly unrideable and eventually put Collins in the hospital. RC came back strong though with “The Sorcerer”, which reportedly made on the order of 700 smokin’ ponies. In 1977 Russ tripped the lights with a quarter-mile run of 7.30 at 199.55 mph aboard “The Sorcerer”, a record that stood for 11 years.

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