Edison Dye

Mention Husqvarna anywhere, but especially in the USA, and the human dynamo called Edison Dye will soon come up in conversation. It is likely that without his influence and sometimes crazy vision, the Swedish marque would have taken a lot longer to get going in the USA and it was all down to a chance meeting in a restaurant with a Swedish motorcycle dealer holidaying in Southern California. It’s not that the company wasn’t known in the USA – it was, as there were riders who’d competed in the likes of the ISDT in Europe and seen the machines and how they went – but there was no coherent plan to import Husqvarna. Initially the factory was not in favour of the idea either, there being no MX to speak of in the USA, but Dye wasn’t going to let that stop him and persuaded the factory to chance it. One of his greatest flairs was for publicity and surely it can be no coincidence that where once Triumph were the movie stars’ bike of choice for the dirt, by the late Sixties it was Husqvarna. The bikes were ideal for the movies too, being glamorous and shiny, but they proved this was no make-up, they could perform too.