25 Years Ago August, 1969

25 YEARS AGO AUGUST, 1969

ROUNDUP

Was this issue a genuine Big Deal? You bet it was. It featured the most eagerly awaited road test of the decade. The August 1969 edition carried an analysis of the Honda CB750, and Cycle World’s test personnel, usually flinty-eyed in their objectivity, couldn’t help themselves. They raved about the bike, calling it, “...the finest production road machine available....”

• Ah, those Norton Girls! This issue’s inside-front cover-in the business it’s called the “second cover”-shows an appropriately ’60s lass, complete with long hair, miniskirt and boots, draped fetchingly over a 750 Commando S. You remember the S, surely? That was your basic Commando, but with high pipes. Worth having then, worth having today.

• A look at an MV Agusta racing engine is like a sip of fine wine-to be savored and remembered. This edition provides such a look, and in retrospect it is particularly bittersweet. It’s an out-of-chassis shot of the 350cc MV Six, seen from the rear, with carbs, distributor and gorgeous castings visible. What makes the shot bittersweet is that it was taken by incomparable race-photographer Volker Rauch, of Nürnberg. Rauch was the man who shot the memorable three-quarter-rear view of Mike Hailwood bending his 250cc Honda Six into a left-hand sweeper at an impossible lean angle-a shot which later became a widely distributed Cycle World poster. Rauch died by his own hand last year. Jon F. Thompson