Since the age of 16 I’ve had a fascination with the humble two-stroke – there’s something intrinsically pure about a motor with so few moving parts.
The sound, the way they spin up, how they come on pipe, even that smell from the exhaust… it all puts a smile on my dial. Yes, okay, I freely admit my first dalliance via a Mobylette SP93 very possibly wasn’t the best start but the Yamaha RD200 that followed it certainly pressed all the right buttons. And somewhere between paying the hire purchase payments of the ‘Moby’ and saving for the RD I discovered performance two-stroke singles. To be more precise the weekly bike papers flagged up strangely dedicated individuals racing 250cc-plus single pot stinkwheels against much bigger, faster and more powerful twins, triples and fours. Despite the apparent incongruity and the lack of cubes, in the world of late 1960s and early 1970s endurance racing the likes of Bultaco, Montesa and Ossa occasionally pulled off something of a coup. And even if they didn’t, riders on these Spanish machines certainly embarrassed some big money, and
