Vintage motorcycling: it’s for everyone! My son’s competent on his TT-R90, but in the past few months it’s become plain to me that putting a 49-pound child on a 147-pound motorcycle is a recipe for him being a bit tentative while riding it. So I decided to get him a 50cc bike. After having two Honda CRF50s snatched out from under me because I couldn’t travel to rural areas on short notice. I found this Yamaha PW50 a mile from my house. Except it’s not a PW50; it’s a 1982 Y-Zinger 50. It’s been thoroughly rebuilt so it starts and runs great.
John really loves it; he’ll pin the throttle to the stop across the eighth-mile grassy field behind the house, then he’ll hit bumps deliberately so the bike jumps up in the air a bit. This weekend he told me that he wanted to name his motorcycles. “Crusher,” he said, pointing to the TT-R90. “Snail,” referring to his Avigo electric bike. Then, dramatically, his finger extended towards the Y-Zinger that was still popping and hissing from being run flat-out for half an hour, “DeathTruck.”
I don’t know where John gets his sense of literary drama. But I do know what his Uncle Bark and I were up to last week, and here it is!
Bark started his week answering questions like usual, but then the horizon was suddenly dimmed by the approach of a new Bark-Mobile. First, the foreplay. Then, the dismissal of suitors. Finally, the consummation devoutly to be wished Ford. But as Bark drove off into the Nitrous Blue sunset, he couldn’t resist poking an autocrosser.
At TTAC, I rang the comment register pretty hard by talking about female autowriters, then I discussed Honda’s penchant for borrowing styling themes.
For R&T, I reviewed the revised BRZ on-track then shared some memories of Brock Yates.
In a separate post tomorrow, I’ll give you the Spotter’s Guide for this month’s print magazine — there’s a lot of my writing in there, and even the long-awaited guest appearance from Mr. DeathTruck himself!
This reminds me of my Son decades ago when he was learning to ride….
-Nate
FYI: The female autowriters link is wrong
Fixed it, thank you!
Yates was the first thing I turned to in CandD every month. At times he could be a blowhard - well maybe all the time - but I enjoyed reading him in the ’80s and ’90s. I even have his 1983 book: the Decline and Fall of the American Automobile Industry.
When he walked away from Csabe I wrote to Farago and suggested that he bring him on TTAC, which was then at its height. Yates came on board, if only for a brief while, but it was clear even then that his candle was starting to dim.
It was around that time I started plotting to drop in on him and Miss Pamela at their Wyoming NY homestead. I never did, and shortly thereafter I began hearing whispers that he’d taken ill.
Cut from a similar cloth as the also recently departed John MacLaughlin, Yates left a far richer legacy than most of us will.
Great print articles in Road and Track this month!
thank you!
nice tribute to Yates. Back when Car & Driver wasn’t afraid to bite the hands which fed them, he was famous for flaunting the headline “The Most Important Car Detroit Has Ever Built” by calling it (the Chevette) a “shitbox.”
I hit the Y-Zinger link. Fighting the urge to ridiculously modify my PW-50 that everyone is too big to ride.
The Brock Yates tribute was a great read. I grew up reading my father’s back issues of C&D. It’s not a stretch to say that those articles, coupled with my dad’s influence, certainly sparked my passion for automobiles. Having lost my paternal grandfather to Alzheimer’s, Yates’ death hits a little close to home.
Perhaps it’s due to being raised in the “1960s-70s” by my father and his parents, but it saddens me as to how far the media landscape has slipped in some regards.
I’ve always loved reading, and still prefer it over youtube and other forms of “modern” media. It’s a shame that we lack journalists along the lines of Yates and O’Rourke these days; men that are/were not afraid to be outspoken. While this might be interpreted by some as internet fellatio, I’m glad that we still have people like Jack who aren’t afraid to state what they feel regardless of the consequences. Keep fighting the good fight. Otherwise, we might find ourselves drowning in garbage YouTube videos and articles penned by “writers” that don’t even own a vehicle.
I was delighted by the calling out of the odious “April” troll. I’m sure SJW Mark Stevenson loves “her.”
Lead photo flashed me back to Christmas of 1981. My younger brother and I woke up to discover Santa had wheeled a brand new Yzinger and a GT80 into our living room and next to the tree. We nearly shit our collective pants.