Motorcycle Industry Icon Bar Hodgson - An Interview

Bar Hodgson is a respected name in the motorcycle industry. He's a brilliant motorcycle mechanic, bike collector, Vincent builder, and Motorcycle Hall of Fame inductee.

Hodgson is a Bonneville Salt Flats racer, International Motorcycle Supershow and Spring Show owner, Canadian Motorcycle Heritage Museum founder, and a certifiable motorcycle addict.

The owner of a 1920 Indian Board Tracker, a 2007 Frank Trombino Suzuki GSXR Superbike (which he rode at 170 mph at Bonneville in 2009), and everything in between, Bar's motorcycle collection numbers 281, at last count.

Formerly the publisher of Canadian Motorcycle Rider magazine, Bar possesses every printed issue of Cycle Canada, a huge assortment of other motorcycle literature, and a plethora of trophies and awards from various historic racers and icons in the motorsports industry, one of those being Bill Sharpless.

I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Bar and talk about his life and his passion for motorcycles.

CK: Going back to 1953, what does the film ‟The Wild One” mean to you?

Bar: That one kinda woke me up to motorcycling. That was at the Fox Theatre down at the beach. My buddy and I took the streetcar down there to watch that movie, so when we got out we were like, ‟Wow, wow!” He said, ‟Well I know a restaurant where bikes hang around, let's take the streetcar over there”. There were all these Harley's parked outside… guys with their girlfriends on behind, and I just thought, boy that's the life for me. I just wanna ride a bike.

CK: So that was the movie that inspired you?

Bar: Yeah, but really I didn't start out on the bikes they were riding. I got my license and bought a Corgi, which is a motor scooter. Rode that for a while then I wanted to get a bigger bike and that's when I bought the Triumph Thunderbird. That one I got from George Chuvalo.

The Thunderbird was doing a lot for me, and then one day this Harley showed up at the restaurant. The guy was looking to drag race anybody that was there. He said: ‟Who's the fastest bike?” And everybody said, ‟Oh, Bar over there! That's his bike. It's real fast!” Well, this guy just dusted me off so bad it wasn't even funny. So I said, ‟That's it!” I went and bought myself a '56 Harley FLH. I started making some modifications to it, and I started chasing down all the fast bikes in Toronto, all the way out to Port Credit.

CK: Tell me about the motorcycle club, the Chelecos. You started the club in 1958?

Bar: Yeah, we were up in Scarborough at the time, on St. Clair Ave, and there was a local restaurant we were hanging around. A few bikes started showing up, and so we said, ‟Let's start a club.”

Being young guys we're thinking, um, what'll we call this club? And someone said, ‟Well we wanna be good but we wanna be bad, so we'll call it the 'Hell's Saints'! We said, ‟Ok, that's a good idea.”

Then someone came to the meeting and said, ‟Well, there's this club down in California called the 'Hell's Angels'. I don't think we should call our club that.” So we ended up calling it the Chelecos.

We did a lot of things. We'd go on rides down to Buffalo, and things like that. We were affiliated with the AMA at the time. The AMA held a lot of the races in the States, and we'd often go down to Watkins Glen to the races there.

CK: When did you first start getting into motorcycle racing?

Bar: Well my racing really was in drag racing. One of the things we'd do is go out to Cayuga, or St. Thomas - two good strips, and Deseronto, which is East of Toronto to race those strips. People would just take their stock bikes down and race 'em and go fast. I started working on bikes back in the early 60's. I opened my first shop out of my garage at the time.

CK: How do you feel about racing aids? Traction control, ABS - do you think it's good, bad? Beneficial?

Bar: In terms of going fast it's definitely beneficial. Is that good? I'm not sure. I'm probably old school enough to say, ‟I don't need it… don't want it”. Would I like to try it? Yeah, but my generation is really about riding the fine edge of your limit, knowing that if you go over that fine edge you're down, whereas the traction control eliminates that.

Now if you just want to win the race, great. Technology is a great tool for all that, but a lot of my riding is about just going out and having a good time. It's not important to be the fastest guy on the track.

CK: When was the first time you found yourself at the Salt Flats, how many times have you been and what started it for you?

Bar: To get to the Salt Flats you really have to take a fast glimpse at my racing because I don't consider myself a big time racer of any sorts. But I drag raced in the 60's and 70's, and won a Canadian Championship in that and enjoyed it. When I turned 60, I decided I wanted to take up road racing. When I turned 70, I thought, well, what the heck is there left for me to do here? So I thought, well I've never gone to Bonneville. So to celebrate turning 70 I raced the Bonneville Salt Flats.

CK: You had a crash at the Salt Flats. How did that all happen? You were going pretty fast.

Bar: Well, I ran the Streamliner and it's an unusual bike in that it's a long cigar shape, you're laying flat on your back, you're looking out through a periscope, you're in total darkness.

All you can see at Bonneville is white salt and sky, but there is a mountain you can aim for. You're looking at a horizon line and that's really what your periscope is picking up on. When you see it start to tilt, you've gotta make a steering correction.

CK: And the crash? What happened?

Bar: Sometime in the second mile, as I'm getting up to speed I noticed the Streamliner starting to wander so I made a correction to come back to center again. I thought, oh there was a bit of a wind that got me on a gust there and got me off - that was at about 185 mph.

Another gust got me, started to move me off to the left, and I started going off and realized I could not correct it any further. So I forgot about looking at the track and started going where I was going.

As I hit the rough patches the Streamliner went over on its side. It started to skip like a stone along these big humps of salt. It was going, ‟BOOM, BOOM”, like a 45 gallon drum sound.

In the end it rolled about four times, came back and stood on its tail, and then all of a sudden went into about another 15 fast barrel rolls. I said, ‟Ok, I just gotta stay under control here,” because you gotta keep your senses about yourself and do all the right things.

I realized that when I stop I'd better get the hatch open in case there's a fire.

When the Streamliner finally came to a halt, it stopped on its side. All I could see were clouds of white and I thought it could be smoke. So I got the hatch open - which had come loose by the way. The hatch was being forced back on me and smashing against me. I banged up my knees, and broke my hand.

CK: At what point when things started to go wrong did you figure you were going to crash? At some point in your mind did you think, I'm over in the rough stuff, there's no saving it now?

Bar: No, never like that. My mind stays totally in tune with what I'm doing and I'm on to plan B.

You've kinda thought that stuff out ahead of time too. What happens if… so you have a rough idea of what you're gonna do. Mainly it's a matter of getting stopped and getting out as fast as you can.

CK: Out of all the races you've done, is there one that is your particular favorite?

Bar: Well, probably the vintage race I was doing at Mosport. Yvon Duhamel was there. He was a hero of mine.

When I opened my dealership in 1973, Yvon was brought in by Kawasaki to be one of the stars of the grand opening. I knew him from way back and I followed his career, and he's just a fantastic racer.

I knew Duhamel was in the race. I was on my TZ 750, which gave me a speed advantage. He was on the Daytona winning CR 750 Honda, which was a really nice bike too. But it's got the master on it.

I slowly started working my way through the pack from my position and realized that I was pretty well through everybody and there's this one guy that I can see way, way ahead… like half a track ahead.

So I set my sights on him and thought, who is that? As I got closer and closer I could see the racer looking back at me, and he'd pick up the pace so I had to try harder.

I kept closing on him and finally I see Duhamel across his back. And I can't believe I can possibly catch up to Yvon Duhamel, even though I'm on a faster bike!

It ended up that I passed him, and then we swapped the lead, oh… 5 or 6 times. I'm leading him on the last lap and we're coming into corner 8, and as I come into it, I started running into what we call 'back traffic' - guys that are slower, that you're catching up to. At that point he just went around me and that's how we came in. He proceeded to show me what it's all about. I loved that race.

This is a small glimpse into the life of motorcycle industry icon Bar Hodgson, a man whose varied contributions to the motorcycle community will be valued for years to come.

More stories on Bar Hodgson to follow.