Consumed by a passion to build better motorcycles and a deep patriotic
desire to lead America to victory at the International Six Days Trial, John
Penton has spent his life redefining off-road motorcycling. Along the way he
helped change the face of American motorcycle competition, the polities of
racing, and what Americans expect from their off-road motorcycles. One of
the most visionary, driven, complex, dynamic, and influential personalities
in motorcycling, John Penton stands out in what may have been the most
exciting revolutionary quarter-century in the history of the American
motorcycle sport.
Author Ed Youngblood draws upon his 30-year personal acquaintance with John Penton,
and exhaustive review of the literature of the period, and more than 50
interviews with Penton, his family, friends, employees, dealers, customers,
business associates, and competitors to tell this captivating tale of the
creation of the high-performance, light-weight, purpose-built off-road
motorcycle. Yet John Penton and The Off Road Motorcycle Revolution goes
beyond the story of a man and his machine, it tides motorcycling in America
into a large cultural movement, explaining how major political and economic
events affected the creation of the off-road motorcycle in the 1960’s, the
precipitous decline of the market during the 1970’s, and the rebound that
found KTM motorcycles—successors to the Penton—competing successfully
against the powerful Japanese in the 1990’s.
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