THOUSAND MILE STARE

Is it strange that the Baja 1000 was first conquered by the 1962 Honda CL72, a 250cc twin scrambler also known as a Dream? It wasn’t much of a dirt bike, but then again nothing built back then was. But Triumph racing legend Bud Ekins suggested riding the length of Mexico’s Baja Peninsula as a way for American Honda to showcase the reliability of its new CL72 scrambler, and so his brother Dave, and Billy Robertson Jr., “raced” the 952 miles from Tijuana to La Paz starting at midnight, March 22, 1962. Their time of 39 hours, 56 minutes, was a two-wheeled record primarily because there wasn’t one, but it was a grand feat, one that set the stage for what would eventually become the monster that is “The Thousand.”

Because purpose-built, off-road race bikes hadn’t been invented, scramblers were the