| March 24, 2024
Cycle News Archives
COLUMN
“I am as mad as hell! And I’m not going to take it anymore!”
By Kent Taylor
The year was 1977 and the movie, Network had just swept the American Motion Picture Arts & Sciences annual awards, with Faye Dunaway, Beatrice Straight and the late Peter Finch all picking up “Oscars” for their performances in the movie about a television news anchorman gone mad. The lead character, Howard Beale (brilliantly portrayed by Finch) used his anchor’s chair at the fictitious UBT network to shake a fist at somebody, anybody, everybody (it didn’t matter) who was responsible for the maladies that were plaguing these United States! We were all “mad as hell!” And we needed to let those corrupt rascals know that we weren’t “going to take it anymore!”
What was so egregiously wrong, you might ask? Well, just take a gander at the March 30, 1977 issue of Cycle News for a brief glimpse at the injustices motorcyclists were forced to live with—a veritable hell of our own! Product Evaluations, 1977, took a closer look at the efforts of well-known companies and here-today-Chapter 11-tomorrow entrepreneurs who wanted to make life just a little bit easier for the two-wheeled bourgeoisie.
Tires as flat as hell? Reach for a can of Suzuki’s Quick Seal Tire Seal/Inflater! Cycle News’ editor John Ulrich had strapped two cans to a couple of bikes, hoping that he would never actually need to use them. Unfortunately, like an overanxious teenaged lover on his first real date, one can prematurely exploded, “permanently staining the seat and fender” of the owner’s DKW (a German-made two-stroke of the era). The other can was affixed to a street bike and had nearly a year’s worth of a free ride before being called upon to do the job of fixing/inflating a flat. Alas, the Suzuki sealer performed poorly, requiring the rider to make frequent gasoline station stops to add air to the only slightly inflated, leaky tire. An “E” for effort, but the Suzuki Seal barely avoids an “F,” thanks to free air from gasoline stations everywhere in 1977.
The Bell Moto Star! Today, a full-face motocross helmet is seen as often as Taylor Swift at a Kansas City Chiefs’ game, but in the mid-70s, only a handful of MX riders opted for full-face protection. Riders like Kenny Zahrt and Tim Hart wore Bell helmets, but they were modified street versions. Everything changed, however, when Team Suzuki’s Roger DeCoster was badly injured in a crash at the 1975 Livermore Trans-AMA. DeCoster’s works Suzuki snapped its frame at the steering head, and The Man suffered serious facial injuries, including a broken tooth. The following year, Bell introduced the first full-faced motocross helmet for the masses. Roosts to the face? We weren’t going to take it anymore!
The only downside to the Moto Star was that it was slightly heavier than a standard, three-quarters helmet. Still, it was much lighter than filmmaker Peter Starr’s “Belle Starr” helmet camera! The famed director’s creation featured a four-pound film camera mounted to the side of the rider/cinematographer’s head. On the other side of the rider’s noggin was a counterbalance weight, which was also presumably four pounds. A cable connected the apparatus to a battery pack, mounted (somewhere) on the rider. Finally, a small microphone was affixed to the inside of the helmet, with a separate recording device to be stowed inside the rider’s leathers. Starr guaranteed that, in the event of a (likely) crash, all cables would come unhooked and keep the gear safe! No price is listed, and no actual point of sale is even referenced, making the reader wonder if Starr really thought anybody actually wanted to buy such an item?
All racers want to know their lap times, and serious racers in 1977 needed the Cronus Stopwatch to tell them if they were keeping pace with the leaders. The Cronus Stopwatch was a one-rider operation, as the racer handled both starting and stopping the watch. Looking for a product testimony? “We were able to teach a wife,” said Ulrich, “with no stopwatch experience to record accurate lap times in a matter of minutes!” Just 57 years after being awarded the right to vote, women were now being trained to keep accurate lap times for their spouses!
Malcolm Smith’s Water Bottle was also featured on the page Product Evaluations. Never mind that it held only a pint of water and that you had to stop riding, take the bottle from your belt, unscrew the cap, and take a swig. This is before the day of sophisticated hydration systems, and anything that Malcolm Smith does is good and right! According to CN, “Blurring vision, crushing fatigue and incipient crashing” can all be thwarted, thanks to Malcolm’s little drink bottle, which is good enough for the rest of us!
These products are still with us, though 47 years of development have refined them significantly. Nobody likes flat tires, we all deserve better facial protection, and every budding filmmaker was, at some point during production, thirsty as hell! Thanks to these revolutionary products, we don’t have to take it anymore! CN
