HOW CROZ CREATED A STORM
IT’S 1977. My mate Bev and I are sat, legs dangling over a wall overlooking the pit lane at Le Mans just before early practice kicks off the Bol d’or. The pit lane is busy – a cacophony of noise with people out-shouting each other as, one by one, bikes are being fired up. The air is filled with excitement and expectancy of a great weekend.
But in a split second all that noise is drowned out and people scatter. All we can hear is a bike at full bore coming down the pit lane. Conversations stop. Eyes crane left. And there is this guy, with Bel Ray emblazoned on the chest of his leathers, on a Kawasaki with high bars, no fairing, howling flat-out down the pit lane – on the back wheel.
Bev and I look at each other, both raise an eyebrow and – I can’t recall who says it – but the sentiment is: “That’ll be that Crosby bloke then!” And we burst into fits of laughter. Graeme Crosby was actually on a Yoshimura Kawasaki on that occasion, teamed with Aussie Tony Hatton, but after running as high as seventh in the race, they eventually succumbed to a series of tech problems and a Hatton crash. But that one brief but outrageous moment in racing history confirmed everything we already knew about the Kiwi – and we weren’t disappointed. Back then I had a weird agreement with an Aussie enthusiast who advertised in one of the weekly bike papers here for someone to send him any unusual motorcycle pin-on badges. In my thirst for knowledge about racing worldwide, instead of swapping pins I managed to persuade him to send me copies of Revs, the Aussie weekly motorcycle newspaper. It meant I was well tuned in to racing Down Under at that time and knew Crosby was emerging as something of legend before he arrived in Europe, so Bev and I were well pumped to see Croz racing. If he ever intended to leaving a calling card, that wheelie was it – and it has remained etched on my brain ever since. For 1978, Crosby signed to ride a Moriwaki Kawasaki (Mamoru Moriwaki was Pops Yoshimura’s son-in-law) and was a sensation whatever he rode in an all-too-brief career – but him and high-barred Kawasakis were special. I guess it was the unconventional styling of the bikes on a racing grid that made him and the bike stand out. But Crosby’s antics cemented his place in history, so it’s cool to be able to run Alan Cathcart’s test of the Moriwaki he rode in Britain in this issue (see page 34).
As this is the 50th anniversary of Kawasaki’s first superbike, we have a road test of an original Z1 by Gez to celebrate. I remember seeing my mates Podge and Mullet hauling around on their new Z1s – complete with matt black four-intoone race pipes made by Russell Savory of RS Performance and Sanyo Honda racing team fame.
I wasn’t exactly jealous (well, maybe...) because I loved my Triumph, and was a fervent Brit-bike fan, but I realised just how much these superbikes put our twins in the shade at the time when it came to performance, not to mention bling. And from what Gez says, the Z1 still cuts it – 50 years later. Read his test on page 28.
Enjoy the issue.