The adventures of Moto-Bike Mike

Submitted by Rich Fowler on August 8, 20096 Comments

The explosion of dirt biking in the 1970s kickstarted other sporting movements, most notably the BMX craze.

Back in the mid 70s Yamaha decided it could cash in on the BMX trend and launched the Yamaha Moto-Bike. It was amongst the first BMX bike you could buy with dual suspension. The front forks were oil dampended units while a set of twin shocks were attached to the rear swing arm for a super smooth ride.

The Moto-Bikes made an immediate impact, but riders soon complained about them being far too heavy and the design of competition BMX bikes went in a different direction.

The ad itself is a real cracker with hero Moto-Bike Mike squaring off against Bermhead Bob, taking the win and getting the girl.

The tag line “Someday, You’ll own a Yamaha” no doubt rang true for hundreds of teenagers desperate to throw a leg over this hot machine.

Here in Australia we had the Malvern Star Mustang which, along with a Repco BMX bike, sported a monoshock design, soon to appear on the Yamaha Motocross range.

massivelysideways

Totally cool – bring back Moto-bike Mike!
Speed54

A mate of mine had one of these in the mid ’70s. Really quite heavy, so a bit slow to work up enough speed to get major air on a jump. Still, it was quite cool, and a clever marketing ploy by Yamaha. This ad is cooler than the bike!
craig

interested in selling that bike?
http://www.newcarsnark.com sam moses

This pic of the Yamaha BMX bike brings back big memories! I wrote an article for Sports Illustrated on the BMX phenomenon in 1974, and went riding on one of these with Dana Brown, who was maybe 10 years old. Son of Bruce Brown of “On Any Sunday” fame, and now a big-time surf filmmaker himself. We went to the BMX championships in the Los Angeles Coliseum. I think Yamaha even let me keep the bike, and I gave it away to a kid or something.
gerald

the bikes my bro and i built back in the early ’70′s (??? memories ???)

his was a schwinn easy rider model that i downhilled into the back of a parked volvo due to ignorance of turning radius, a choco float fizz and a lack of pavement at the bottom of the hill. i ‘commissioned’ a schwinn monoshock – modeled after the bmx sidehacks i saw in a supermarket newsstand dirt rag…boinga

of course, being young men, our mechanical aptitude far surpassed our intelligence quotient.

yahaha can boast whatever 70′s inovations they want, my recommendation would be the revival of a personal favorite, the straight piped 2T 90cc aermacchi mini – no more baffle(ing) maintenance due to overzealous injector engineering.

blah,blah blah
pancakes

Haha what memories! I had one of these growing up in Sydney in the 70′s. Great bike. Heavy, as others have said, but there was no jump too big. Man, I rode that thing everywhere. Don’t know if I’d let my 9 y.o. do that today.