RACING’S GOLDEN ERA
Reliving the Transatlantic Trophy battles 50 years on
‘The idea was to promote the terminally ailing BSA-Triumph’
Fifty years ago in April 1971, the very first ‘Anglo American Match Races’, soon to be better known as the Transatlantic Trophy, were held in the UK. The three-round series took place over the Easter weekend at Brands, Mallory and Oulton, pitted two teams of British and American riders against each other and was originally conceived as a one-off event using matching machines to promote the then terminally ailing BSA-Triumph.
Yet within a few short years the Match Races had become an annual highlight, introduced UK fans to US stars such as Dave Aldana, Freddie Spencer and Kevin Schwantz, and attracted record crowds as Brit captain Barry Sheene took on ‘the Yanks’ led by Kenny Roberts.
In short, it transformed British bikesport, energised ’70s racing with Stateside sparkle and helped give US stars a big British fan base that defined the 1980s heyday of 500 grand prix. And yet the Transatlantic Trophy could just as easily never happened at all.
The first event came about as a by-product of BSA-Triumph’s extravagant onslaught on the Daytona 200 in the early 1970s (MCN, March 17). The Florida event was then the world’s biggest bike race and the perfect shop window to promote the Rocket3 and Trident triples in the US. The narrow failure of its six-strong team in 1970, when a mix of British and American riders rode special Rob North-framed 750 triples, prompted a return the following February, this time with a 10-strong squad.
The 1971 event saw American Dick Mann’s BSA win ahead of compatriot Gene Romero and Don Emde (on a Triumph and BSA, respectively) after top Brits Mike Hailwood and Paul Smart both retired from the lead. Perhaps inevitably, the week also included a heated barroom debate between BSA-Triumph’s British and American bosses about which nation’s racers were better.
The result was the first, hastily arranged ‘Anglo-American Match Races’ in April 1971. Peter Thornton, CEO of BSA-Triumph US operations, agreed to provide and finance the US squad. Chris Lowe, head of Motor Circuit Developments (MCD), offered Brands, Mallory and Oulton, and much of the organisation was by ex-pat Brit and ex-MCN reporter Gavin Trippe, then a race promoter in California who later helped launch AMA Superbikes.
Custer’s Last Stand
The glamour and excitement Trippe brought, such as using Monty Python pin-up girl Carol Cleveland in a Union Flag/Stars ‘n’ Stripes bikini in promotional posters, was quickly evident – although at the outset, the American riders didn’t quite know what they’d got themselves into. “We got handed an itinerary for a trip to England,” American team captain Dick Mann remembered later. “We were told it was just some kind of exhibition. When we got to England we found it was more like Custer’s Last Stand.”
Mann’s disappointment was due to how the odds seemed stacked in the Brits’ favour. Although on face value all riders had similar North BSATriumph triples, the British team of captain Percy Tait, John Cooper, Paul Smart, Ray Pickrell and Tony Jefferies had not only grown up on the British circuits the Americans were about to visit for the first time, they also had the latest ‘Low Boy’ versions of the bikes. By contrast, although Mann and other top American Gary Nixon