IT TAKES TWO...
As a callow youth of the 1970s I used to buy the weekly bike papers and read about the latest models, the death throes of the British bike industry, and the various competition reports.
Most of my mates were into UK short track racing or speedway, but I was captivated by the then esoteric activity known as endurance racing. Teams of riders competing across Europe over 24 hours riding in shifts, through the night, come rain or heatwave, it all sounded rather macho and desperately self-reliant in a Boy Scout kind of way. Everything seemed to be done on a shoestring and there was little, if any of the modern corporate stuff either. And perhaps what appealed most was the vast range of machines that were beasted relentlessly around the Tarmac for a whole day.
In amongst the likes of CB750s and Z1s there were fully paid up loonies on Yamaha TZ700/750s, staunch patriots chancing life and limb to ailing British singles, conformed masochists on Spanish singles, and then those hugely unlikely big Guzzi V-twins and parallel twin Laverdas. Amazingly, and despite being down on power and generally up on weight, the two Italian marques generally featured on
