AGV Backmarker: Mann and Machine Part 3
March 2, 2006
By Mark Gardiner
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Note: This is the final installment of a three-part series. For the first two parts, go here and here.

The 1970 Daytona 200 featured the most amazing starting grid in the history of the event. The Harley-Davidson XR750 (actually the XRTT, in road racing guise) was all-new, though in Milwaukee’s tried-and-true V-twin configuration. The BSA Rocket III and Triumph Trident triples were also brand-new. But the real drama came when Honda uncrated four “CB750 Racing Types.”

Although three of the factory Hondas failed to finish, Dick Mann won on the fourth, and that was all anyone remembered. Honda’s win established the Honda 750/Four as the dominant 750, at a time when the aforementioned BSA and Triumph, not to mention the Norton Commando, were all still threats in the marketplace.

The 1970 Daytona 200 had the most historically significant starting grid in the history of the event, with all-new Harleys, BSAs and Triumphs, as well as this bike—the built-for-Daytona Honda CB750 Racing Type. If you think the Buell XBRR is too exotic to be homologated by the street-going XB12, you should compare this to Honda CB750 K0. Mark Gardiner archive

Mann’s deal with Honda was for one race only. Honda had not intended the 750/Four to be used as a race bike at all, and they had no intention of racing in other AMA events later that year. So the fascination with Mann’s Honda was piqued by the way it simply disappeared after Daytona.

Two of the Daytona Hondas were sent over to France, where they were fitted with lights and used in endurance races until they were, for racing purposes, used up. At least one of them was crashed and burned. The other was eventually forgotten, and gathered dust in a Paris Honda dealer’s storage shed. Eventually a Parisian body shop owner and motorcycle nut bartered for it and began a long, loving restoration of the machine to its original Daytona specification.

Patrick Bodden and I met the owner (a man I’ll identify only as Daniel, since I promised to protect his privacy) in the summer of 2003. Bodden is an expert on Honda’s U.S. racing heritage, but he was unable to confirm if the machine was, as Daniel claimed, the Dick Mann bike. Together, we arranged for the bike to be temporarily displayed at the Paris “Musee des Arts et Metiers” (sort of a French Smithsonian) and to have Mann’s 1970 Daytona team (crew chief Bob Hansen and mechanics Bob Jamieson and Ron Robbins) come over to examine it.

At the time of the 1970 Daytona 200, all Honda four-cylinder street bikes still had sand-cast cases. Those models are the “sand-cast K0s” that collectors crave. If someone claims to have an authentic one, it’s pretty easy to verify. There are nerds who can painstakingly examine it. These are the sorts of OCD sufferers who know that such-and-such cable was gray not black, or that in some particular year, turn-signal lenses had a certain prismatic pattern molded into them. Since every machine came off the assembly line pretty much the same, if you can find the right expert, the question, “Is it authentic?” has a definitive answer. That answer is often buttressed by the fact that stock bikes have serial numbers and supporting documentation that can be matched with factory production records, if you want to build an ironclad case.

(I was skeptical a few years back when I heard some guy claimed to have restored the Brough Superior on which T.E. Lawrence offed himself, but it turned out he had a complete paper trail, from factory door all the way to the coroner’s report.)

It’s not like that for old race bikes. They didn’t roll off an assembly line identical to one another; they were hand-built with inevitable tiny differences from machine to machine. Bikes in the same series often had intentional variations, for testing purposes. Even if they were never crashed and rebuilt, factory bikes were different every time they rolled off the truck, as they got a constant stream of updates and tweaks. As they aged, motors and major components were swapped in and out of frames.

“Is that the bike?” becomes a philosophical question that can only be answered by defining “the bike.”

I once asked Kansas City vintage racer Steve Spence (who as far as I know, lives in a cross between a motorcycle museum and a scrap yard) how many bikes he owned. He rolled his eyes and said, “You’d have to devise some kind of points system, with 100 points for a complete bike, some number of points for a frame or complete motor, points for a crankshaft…” That was a good idea, but without agreement on points per part, the vast majority of “authentic” vintage race bikes are an amalgam of correct components (hopefully the major ones like the frame and cases,) NOS parts, and replica bits.

Daniel’s meticulous restoration, minus bodywork. After decades of supplying paint and bodywork to top French race teams, he had all the connections needed to fabricate anything that was missing. Mark Gardiner photo

Besides, obviously, wanting his bike to be the actual one Bugsy rode, Daniel believes the bike pictured here is Mann’s machine because a Honda France racing manager told him so. But what does that mean? That the bike arrived in France with Mann’s #2 painted on the fairing? U.S. Honda employees took one of the other Daytona bikes and painted up a #2 fairing for display purposes. So there were at least two real CB750 Racing Type bikes in circulation with the right number.

Or did the Honda France guy know it was Mann’s bike because he knew what serial number frame Mann had ridden? Robbins and Jamieson still had their Daytona setup notes. They’d identified each of the four by the final two digits of the serial number and knew that Mann had ridden #11. The catch was, the frame numbers had been ground off long before Daniel took possession of the bike.

My friend Brian O’Shea (“Mr. Vintage Superbike” in the U.S.) has run into this problem in the past. He once pestered an FBI agent to tell him how the federal crime lab re-exposes numbers ground off firearms. The agent leaked the information that a particular acid bath is used. The chemical brings the numbers up because the stamping—even after the numbers have been ground completely away—affects the underlying crystalline structure of the metal.

O’Shea’s done this, but it involves stripping the frame and positioning it with the number area horizontal. A small dam is built around that area, and it’s flooded with acid. After a few days, the numbers appear as if by magic. Of course, the steering head is damaged in the process.

We described this technique to Daniel, and he flat refused to submit his bike to it. Partly, he was concerned that the perfect finish he’d laboriously put on the frame would be destroyed. Who could blame him, though, for feeling there was too much downside and not enough upside to this (literal) acid test? As things stood, he had the only bike that could be Mann’s machine; there was at least one chance in four it was, but there was a good chance it’d “just” emerge that it was one of the Daytona non-finishers.

In the absence of a legible frame number, an alternative way to reach a definitive answer would be to positively track the other three bikes. Of the four factory bikes, two went to France and two remained briefly with American Honda.

Would the U.S. Honda guys have sent Ralph Bryans’ bike, which was crashed and burned, off to France to be raced? I doubt it, but I have never spoken to anyone who could definitely say they did not. I prefer to think that the Bryans bike was decommissioned. At the time (as now), it may well have just been cut up or crushed to prevent it falling into enemy hands.

Vintage superbike guru Brian O’Shea sourced this photo of one of the Daytona Hondas, taken in the Honda Collection Hall in 1970. Wherever this bike is now, it’s not there. Mark Gardiner archive

Based on the recollections of Hansen and Co., I believe Honda painted one of the other fairings with Mann’s #2 for display in its California office and that it later shipped that same bike to the head office, for display in the Collection Hall.

So why doesn’t Honda still have that bike? I think it was later taken out of the Collection Hall and raced by Morio Sumiya, a Grand Prix-caliber Honda test rider. It was probably wrecked or parted out and eventually trashed. (Two things are certain: Sumiya will never tell me; he died in a racing accident in 1975. And Honda does not have it now.)

All that was just speculation, but even if it was true, it was still only somewhere between “possible” and “probable” that Daniel’s bike was Mann’s. What would our experts say?

Hansen, Jamieson, and Robbins greeted Daniel’s bike like an old friend. Robbins spotted the welding-rod reinforcement added to the exhausts. “It’s got those,” he said, before realizing that Daniel had actually fabricated the pipes. “I welded those on to strengthen the megaphones—they were cracking.” Daniel smiled, “I thought it was something like that.”

While the three veterans studied Daniel’s bike, Bodden pulled out a superb 8x10-inch transparency of Mann’s bike, which had been taken by Honda’s PR department. The image was so detailed that I thought I might be able to “fingerprint” the bike by matching weld-flow patterns, but that was bedeviling and inconclusive.

A “who’s who” of French motorcycle racing had gathered at the Musee des Art et Metiers. After a few hours, Daniel crated the bike again and rolled it out of the museum and into his van. We all went to dinner. Well, not all of us, actually—one of Daniel’s employees actually sat in the van with the bike. Daniel—a very nice guy whose love of motorcycling in general and this Honda in particular were obvious—was in his element. Conversation ranged, to say the least. He made me laugh with stories of raising his daughters—a pair of beauties that are striking even in Paris, and that’s saying a mouthful. (“Oh, it was such a hassle!” he said, rolling his eyes. “Every one of their teachers wanted to tutor them in person.”) But what we all wanted to hear was the word, from Hansen et al.

Mann’s 1970 pit crew compares notes on Daniel’s bike, in the Musee des Arts et Metiers in Paris, in 2003. From left: Bob Hansen (crew chief), mechanics Bob Jamieson and Ron Robbins. Mark Gardiner photo

In fact, they kept us on tenterhooks until the very last minute. We were actually driving them to the airport when Hansen said, “I’m convinced it’s at least the most part of one of the Daytona bikes.” So, in the final analysis, no one could say for sure it was Mann’s bike, but even our experts couldn’t say it wasn’t.

Daniel continues to believe (as we all do) what he wants to believe. In his case, that his bike is the actual one Mann rode. The “Dick Mann” CB750 Racing Type was raced for years after Mann rode it. It was ridden on the street. Obviously, it’s not complete or intact. But I don’t think it matters. We’re fascinated by vintage bikes because they connect us to our history. Mann’s 1970 Daytona 200 win for Honda remains a high point in that history, and Daniel’s bike is the only Honda left that was definitely there. So the bike in Daniel’s secret back garden shrine is, by definition, the strongest physical link we have to that win, whether it was Mann’s, or Robb’s, or Smith’s, or even Bryans’ burned one.

I guess I choose to believe it is the one, because I can’t think of a nicer guy, or more devoted owner, for such a bike. It was laboriously restored for love, not money. Daniel will never sell it. “I tell my girls,” he laughed, “when I die, this is what you’ll inherit.”

Author’s note: For more information on the history of the Daytona 200, there’s one obvious place to go: Don Emde’s great book. Buy it right now here.