DOMINATION TOTAL
When Graeme Crosby left his native New Zealand for Australia in 1976, his absence left a massive void that had to be filled. Dave Hiscock was just one of a line of production bike riders yet he went on to dominate the NZ racing scene like no one else in h
Dave Hiscock and elder brother Neville grew up in Stokes Valley, a suburb near Wellington where the pair rode an old BSA Bantam in grass paddocks. Born on 25 May 1953, Dave moved onto bigger bikes as a schoolboy and cut his teeth on a BSA 650, then 500cc and 750cc Nortons. The famous Rimutaka Hill road became their local racetrack. Dave and Neville first raced in 1972 at the Gracefield street circuit in Lower Hutt, on Commando 750s. Neville crossed the line fifth, and 19-year-old Dave eighth. “We were against some pretty good riders in that first meeting, guys like Alan Collison and Ginger Molloy,” Dave Hiscock reflects. Fresh from finishing second in the 1970 world 500cc championship to Giacomo Agostini,
Molloy was no slug either! ‚
After a stint on a 750 Triumph Bonneville during the 1973/74 season, Dave switched to a Suzuki TR500. However an early ‘74/75 season crash left him with a badly broken leg, sidelining him for two years. Looking for a change of scene, Dave travelled to South Africa and worked in his trade as an electrician.
Go Big
Fortunately, Hiscock returned to NZ and road racing to become the revelation of the 1976/77 season after thrilling rides on a standard Yamaha RD400C in the smallest of the production-based classes. Following a stint in ‘scrambles’, ‘Nifty’ Neville also returned to road racing where he raced a similar RD400C the same year into second place in the NZ Junior Production class championship – one place behind his brother. Dave was never beaten!
With a Wellington Motorcycle Centre-supplied Suzuki GS750 for the next season, Dave Hiscock became the first rider in NZ with a fully-sponsored production machine. On that bike Hiscock would battle the likes of Graeme Crosby and John Woodley who were on bigger and faster machines, and he occasionally come out with the win.
For the same ‘77/78 season, Dave bought a Yamaha TZ350 to compete in the smaller classes in the final edition of the Marlboro Series. Then, in late 1978, he raced a GS750 in the 1978 Australian Castrol 6 Hour to finish second in the 750 class with fellow Kiwi Peter Fleming. That single race taught Hiscock many lessons and on his return he completely dominated the big-bike production class to notch up almost 40 consecutive wins on Suzuki GS1000 and GSX1100 bikes spanning two seasons.
Hiscock and Australian Neil Chivas partnered to take victory for Suzuki in three straight NZ Castrol 6 Hour races from 1978 to 1980, riding a Suzuki GS1000 and the four valve GSX1100s. The same pair won again in 1985 on a GSX-R750. Many rivals were left wondering how he won so often, but what they didn’t see from the quiet Kiwi was the unprecedented level of pre-planning and thought that went into his racing, particularly so with the three and six hour endurance races. One such example was when his GSX1100 ran for ten minutes longer on the track than other Suzukis. Not surprisingly, his competitors said he was cheating. But Dave had worked out during refills he could get several extra litres of fuel in by venting the air which was trapped at the top of the fuel tank, behind the long internal spout. Everybody else simply filled their tanks up in the normal way. As such, his refuelling kit included the ‘U’ bottom of a snorkel, carefully hidden from view when not used.
For several years Hiscock raced for both Suzuki Australia and for the Wellington Motorcycle Centre in NZ, taking a good number of important wins on each side of the Tasman. Never confident of any race win before the flag dropped, the Wellingtonian took victory on the world race debut of the Suzuki GSX1100 in NZ at the Pukekohe 3 Hour race in late 1979. Wins in the 1980 Adelaide 3 Hour, Calder 2 Hour, Perth 4 Hour and Surfers 3 Hour led to the successful Hiscock/Alan Hales partnership starting the Australian Castrol 6 Hour as favourites, although the experienced Hales crashed while in the lead.
Big Bikes Rule
But while Hiscock established his superiority on big Suzuki production bikes, it was the pure racing class which fired his enthusiasm. Hiscock raced a slower TZ350 against the likes of Kiwi internationals Woodley and Stu Avant on RG500s for two seasons before landing a ride on the first McIntosh Suzuki F1 bike at the start of the 1980/81 NZ summer road race season. Ken McIntosh of McIntosh Motorcycle Racing Developments is renowned for his Manx Norton racing frames. During the early 1980s the Aucklander produced around 50 lightweight mostly GSX1100-based road and race frames for NZ and Australian customers, where they became regular front runners. The McIntosh GS1000 came at the right time and became an outlet for Hiscock’s incredible talent, with the lanky rider winning two consecutive NZ Open Racing titles (1980/81 and 1981/82) against John Woodley, Rodger Freeth and Stu Avant on Suzuki RG500s, and Trevor Discombe on his TZ750E. Like Crosby before him, Dave Hiscock was by now driven to win a world TT Formula One title – he had to race in the UK. NZ Suzuki importer and 1954 Isle of Man TT winner the late Rod Coleman was a major sponsor through his Coleman Suzuki operation. For 1981, he organised a pair of GS1000 engines directly from Pops Yoshimura for the second McIntosh frame, built to a high specification with three-spoke magnesium Dymag wheels and the latest Suzuki RG500 race bike front end including floating discs. With the bike only run in the workshop, the first stop was the famous but challenging Bathurst meeting in Australia. It didn’t go well as the team experienced ongoing mechanical problems in the premier Arai 500 endurance race. But Hiscock enthralled the crowd with his fighting spirit when he won on his standard GSX1100 in the big-bore production race.
Two months after Bathurst, the quiet Kiwi entered the 1981 Isle of Man TT where he used the new McIntosh GS1000 to finish 14th on debut in the TTF1 race. From July to September, Hiscock rode the NZ-built bike above his station to earn a trio of fifth placings, a sixth and a seventh in back-to-back
rounds of the prestigious Forward Trust/Motorcycle Weekly British TT F1 championship, racing against factory-backed riders on more powerful and highly-developed machines. It was a tough ask to race and beat the factory-backed local racers on faster bikes and without prior knowledge of each track, often with only six laps of practice time. Living out of a Transit van and tents, Hiscock would go out and race amongst the fastest riders in the four-stroke world. Eden Bridge resident and former racer Geoff Monty let Hiscock use his workshop for repairs between meetings. With up to seven works bikes on the start line, Hiscock recalls the most difficult part of racing in the UK. “It was pretty hard racing against local guys like Roger Marshall, Mick Grant and Ron
Haslam, they had been around for years and they were on factory bikes on their home tracks. It was very challenging.” Incredibly, by season’s end Hiscock finished eighth in the British TT-F1 championship (won by Crosby on a Suzuki) riding a bike with the frame and most of the running gear designed and built in a small workshop halfway across the world. At the same time, Heron Suzuki supplied the redheaded racer with a standard GSX1100 to contest the popular British Streetbike series. Despite missing three rounds, Hiscock completed the season in second position to Honda’s Ron Haslam. Not surprisingly Hiscock’s McIntosh Suzuki GS1000 was regarded as the most competitive privateer bike in the British championship. He recalls, “It was very competitive over there. The McIntosh was almost as good as the factory bikes. With the motor used as a stressed member, it took a long time to get the motor in and out of the frame and, when we only had one bike, it was important to have another motor and that we could change them quite rapidly.”
The Answer is Monocoque
For the next season a search for a better F1 chassis led to a visit to former Aston-Martin employee turned NZ resident Steve Roberts, resulting in an all new aluminium monocoque F1 bike – designed and built in only six weeks.
Born in Hertfordshire, England, Roberts began working with aluminium with the de Havilland Aircraft Company. Roberts later joined Aston Martin to hand-build DB4s and Lagondas before he and wife Pam came to New Zealand in 1962.
In a coals-to-Newcastle story, between 1969 and 1974 Roberts made replica TR500 factory racers, with two supplied to Suzuki UK. Prominent riders to use Steve Roberts TR replicas include Ron Grant, Pat Hennen and Warren Willing. Roberts also made an aluminium monocoque for Keith Turner in 1972 using a TR500 motor, who was second to Agostini the previous season in the World 500cc championship – on a Steve Roberts replica TR500. Again with funding from Rod Coleman, a pair of twin-spark Pops Yoshimura GS1000 engines were sent direct to the UK, where Hiscock mated them into the new frame – after flying his disassembled alloy chassis ‚
“It was a tough ask to race and beat the factory-backed local racers on faster bikes and without prior knowledge of each track, often with only six laps of practice time.”