Manufacturers wouldn't be able to get away with not having a great air cleaner. When is the last time you read a review where someone called out a bike for having a great air cleaner? You probably can't remember, because the reality of living in 2017 is that all bikes have great air cleaners. Image from Popular Science.Steve talked fondly of the 650 cc engine and how impressed he was with the air cleaner. I've added the prices, adjusted for inflation, to provide perspective about what your money would get you now as compared to 1966.īSA Hornet. In no particular order, the following are the top six dirt bikes of 1966 as evaluated by Steve McQueen, along with my thoughts about bikes of today. a sand wash with some rocks (to be avoided at all costs) sand dips of the washboard type with a depth of two feet maximum several high-speed jumps of the TT variety and a lot of fast trailing with quick changes, both up and down and side to side.” As you read along, think about how a modern "scrambler" or ADV machine would fare in similar terrain. Steve explained that all of the bikes were tested on a six-mile loop consisting of “cow trailing with a top end close to 70 m.p.h. My biggest takeaway from reading this article was to put modern scramblers and ADV bikes in perspective by directly comparing them to the bikes they are based on. Lately, we have seen "scramblers" being released in a variety of shapes and sizes from nearly every OEM on the market. For perspective, we looked back at the original scramblers. There's a lot of discussion about how capable today's scramblers, like the BMW R nineT Scrambler, are off-road.
As it turned out, Steve had taken the good folks of Popular Science out to one of his favorite desert spots to test the hottest off-road machines of the day. The title of the article, “Motorcycles: What I Like in a Bike and How I Pick ‘Em,” only told half the story. The prize selection of the night was an issue from November 1966 with Steve McQueen on the cover sitting atop an old desert scrambler. I immediately gravitated to a stack of crumbling Popular Science magazines dating to the 1960s.
(A better description would be a dimly lit, abandoned warehouse, stuffed with enough aging books and magazines to keep the Fire Marshal awake at night.) Having grown up in a home littered with motorcycle magazines, it should come as no surprise that my current house is decorated in a similar fashion. I rarely find myself out past the witching hour these days, so I was surprised to stumble upon an all-night used bookstore. But how good were they really?Ī few weeks ago, I found myself walking home from the bar with the help of a few bourbon cocktails. These bikes, which provided the foundation for the modern dirt bike, are often viewed through rose-colored glass. OEMs caught wind of the craze and began producing scramblers of their own (sound familiar?).
Historically, "scramblers" were bikes originally designed for street use whose owners customized them for better performance off-road. Lately there has been a lot of talk about scramblers.