In the annals of motorcycle history, few stories are as compelling as that of Herb Uhl, a visionary innovator from Boise, Idaho. Uhl’s story is a testament to the power of seeing potential innovation in an existing design and the transformative effects such vision can have on an industry1.
The Beginning
Herb Uhl was the first importer of a Honda motorcycle of any kind into the United States1. The Super Cub, known then as the C100 or CA100, was a scooter-like Honda with a pressed-steel frame powered by a 50-cc engine with a three-speed transmission and automatic clutch1. Despite its innovative design, Uhl struggled to sell the Super Cub in Boise1, Idaho because motorcycles were primarily used in the local mountains on the hundreds of trails and old mining roads in the area and seldom for city transportation because in 1960, Boise was still a small town.
The Vision
Rather than seeing the Super Cub as only a great little city transportation bike with little sales potential for locals, Uhl saw potential. He envisioned transforming the Super Cub into an all-terrain vehicle that could be used for hunting, trail riding, on the ranch, and on the open road1. This would have huge potential for the local market served by Herb Uhl’s Herco Engineering Co. dealership.
In his custom motorcycle shop, Uhl began modifying the bikes to his trail and ranch specifications1.
The Success
Uhl’s modifications were a hit. His sales escalated rapidly, culminating in a volume of Honda Cubs sold by Uhl that surpassed the combined sales of all dealers in the Los Angeles region. His success caught the attention of Honda, who visited Uhl to see what all the commotion was about1. Herb introduced them to his trail bike based on Honda’s Super Cub1. Impressed, Honda asked him for the specs and even took one of his bikes home to reverse engineer it1.
The Legacy
In no time, Honda had production models of the first motorcycle-derived ATV, and it was for sale in all Honda dealerships. The successive Trail 90 became the biggest-selling adventure bike in the world3. Despite his significant contribution, Uhl never saw a penny from his innovation1. But for Uhl, it wasn’t about the money. It was about making a contribution and making motorcycles better for the riders1. Plus, he could sell more bikes with less effort because Honda was building his design, which needed no additional modification to serve his clientele1.
According to Herb Uhl
One of my strengths is my ability to understand what the public wants in a specific product line. For instance, when I was a motorcycle dealer, I understood the customers wanted a trail bike and nothing good was available, so I made one by modifying an existing little city transportation bike, Honda’s Super Cub, transforming it into the first motorcycle-derived ATV, and that has led to a multimillion-dollar windfall for the major motorcycle manufacturers which has led to the four wheelers and side-by-sides of today.
I’m sure you remember that the Jeep was the first automotive-derived ATV and look how that has led to today’s super trucks.
Conclusion
Herb Uhl’s story10 is a powerful example of the impact a visionary can have on the world. His ability to see potential innovation in an existing design led to the creation of the Honda Trail 90, and the many ATV trail bikes, four-wheelers, side-by-sides, and adventure bikes that have followed. Uhl’s modifications transformed the motorcycle industry, and his improvements continue to be celebrated in the success of Honda’s new model trail bikes today4, 2. Visionaries like Uhl should indeed be honored for their contributions to the world1.
Note: During Uhl’s time in the motorcycle industry, his store was associated with 30 different motorcycle brands from 9 different countries in order to satisfy his customers’ desires.
I’m Herb Uhl, let’s start off in Boise Idaho. My wife at that time got hit by a car when she was riding her motorcycle and we got about 800 bucks for the damage. I fixed the motorcycle for a couple of hundred and the other five I put into the motorcycle business.
That was the start of the motorcycle business, 500 bucks. I opened my own dealership. I wanted off-road motorcycles because it was Boise Idaho, and very few people ever rode a motorcycle on the highway except to get to the hills in Boise Idaho at that time.
I wanted off-road motorcycles and so I took on Maico (m-a-i-c-o) and I they had Enduro motorcycles at that time. I know years later, Yamaha thinks they invented the name but Maico Enduros were available in 1955 – 56.
Herco h-e-r-c-o (Herb’s company) engineering was in Garden City, part of Boise. If you’re looking North it’s on the left. Simple as that.
I ordered a motorcycle, and I guess I sold a couple of them. Then the importer, Nicholas Gray, the importer at that time out of Detroit, came to see me, and he offered me motorcycles on consignment, which got me in the business. So, my total investment was $500.00.
You could ride from your house to the hills on a motorcycle without license plates. Nobody paid any attention. That’s what everybody did. Very seldom, anybody ever rode a motorcycle on the road. Well, there were a few road riders but not many.
There were a lot of dirt riders because the foothills were right there and so everybody went to the hills, and that was my interest too, I didn’t care about riding on the road. You can drive on the road, you don’t have to ride on it. And there were lots of old logging roads and old mining roads because there was a lot of mining that went on in that area. So, we explored all those old roads and rode in all kinds of places.
I ordered the first Hondas from Japan. In fact, I think I got the first Hondas that came into the U.S. A guy down in San Diego with the name of Sailor Maine also ordered about the same time. We both went into the motorcycle business.
They were actually off-road motorcycles. There was a little bitty article in Cycle World, I think at that time, that had a picture of this motorcycle. Honda, out of Japan, and everybody was wondering if the thing would be any good if it would be junk, or what it was?
It looked good to me, so I ordered a pair of them. I got them in and sold them almost instantly. I ordered more, and they wouldn’t sell me anymore because they weren’t serious motorcycles. Those were built in their race shop, and they didn’t realize that that’s what we wanted. They didn’t get the message for several years. They couldn’t understand it because we wanted motorcycles for off-road use.
When they moved to Los Angeles and set up American Honda, I was the first American dealer to contact them. That was when they were in an apartment house out on Sepulveda Boulevard. They were trying to figure out how to set up a distributorship in America. They were up in this big apartment in the apartment house.
The first bikes I got, I forget what the model was, but it wasn’t a series model. As I said, it was special. Then they came out with the CB 71, 72, and of course, the C-100, the Honda Cub. That was a little 50cc, and so as soon as they got set up on Sepulveda with American Honda in their little building front, I went down to see him. I ordered some of the Cubs and they had a little 150 as well, so I ordered some of those 150s, a couple of them, and ordered a couple of CB-72s and two or three Cubs. When they came in at Boise, I looked at those Cubs and wondered how I was ever going to sell them in Boise.
That’s when I started looking at them as, what I could do to them to make them so that people would want them. I got to looking at them and every time I walked by them, I looked down a little more and I decided that they would make a way better trail bike than the tote goats and so forth that people were using at that time.
There was a guy in Boise that built sprockets and had a machine to make sprockets. I ordered a sprocket to stick over the other one as an overlay. Then I ordered knobby tires for them because that would be necessary. It took several months for knobbies to come in for it.
I tried it out in the hills and found out that it actually worked really well, so I started building them and ordered them in. I guess I sold several hundred of them before Honda noticed that I was selling way more Honda Cubs than all of their dealers in the Greater Los Angeles area together. And these were city bikes, where they should have sold there but here I was selling them out in a little town in Idaho.
Jack McCormick from American Honda called and wondered what I was doing to sell all those little cubs because they weren’t moving. I told him to make them into trail bikes and so he said, “Send me one of them, so I can see what you’re doing.”
I sent it to him and he looked it over. They rode it around and played with it. Then they sent it on to Japan and told Japan that they wanted the exact same thing as a separate model. That was the start of the Honda Trail Bike. Of course, once Honda started building them, then all the other motorcycle companies copied Honda, and there was trail bike Yamaha, and Kawasaki, and everybody had a little trail bike of some kind. That started the ATV motorcycle business.
I was just selling motorcycles. It was just the way things were, you know, I was just selling lots of motorcycles.
(It didn’t bother you that they took your designs and made their own bike?)
No, really because it didn’t even occur to me that it was a big deal but that actually started the motorcycle-derived ATV. And that’s made the motorcycle companies more money than anything else that’s ever been done to motorcycles. That’s where it started, then the three-wheelers came, and from that then four-wheelers, and now side by sides.
In fact, if it wasn’t for that (Uhl’s trail bike design) the side-by-sides would probably say Chevy, Ford, and RAM instead of Kawasaki or Yamaha. So, that really started the off-road motorcycle business.
Getting to a little lake or something up in the mountains required a horse or a hell of a long walk. They were building little scooters with Briggs and Stratton engines on them with no suspension on either end so that they could go up into those places. They called those things “tote goats” which became a brand the company started up to build those little things. They had a piece of plywood on there with a little padding on it and covering for a seat and so forth.
I looked at that Cub and I said, “This will do a better job than that.” it was simple. Really, really simple. It was just looking at it and seeing another use for this piece of equipment that nobody was covering. There wasn’t anybody covering a proper trail bike, so I built a proper trail bike. Just by modifying that Cub and that’s all that was.
Honda never really understood the trail bike. They still don’t. And that you can tell by what they’ve done. In the first place, they didn’t realize that the seat height on the Cub had a lot to do with its appeal. The first thing they did when they designed their own, after copying mine, was to raise the seat height by about three or four inches. So, they never understood it.
They did finally understand that. Somebody told them they needed a high and low-range gearbox and they did that but they dropped it. That was the only thing that they contributed to the trail bike that really improved it, was a high/low-range gearbox.
This new one doesn’t have it. So, the new one is not a good road bike or a good trail bike. It’s neither one. What it is, is an off-road fun bike. That’s all it is. But if they’d left the high low-range gearbox in it, it would be a really good trail bike.
I made a bigger sprocket because it needed to have a lower range of gearing. I made a big sprocket that slipped on over the original and that made it a high/low-range gearing so that it could be used on the trail and that’s the way we sold them. If they wanted to use them on the road, they simply slip that sprocket off and put the chain down on the original sprocket and away you’d go. That was the main thing.
Then they had a leg shield on it and I took all that off. I took their bigger muffler off and put on a small pipe, again for clearance, and so forth. I moved the shock. The shock had to be moved at the top of the shock to give room for the sprocket to clear. I simply did that, moved the bottom of the shock out to the outside of the swing arm instead of the inside, and that gave clearance. Really, that’s all I had to do. And added the knobby tires.
They already had the trail bike. It was already in that design. They just didn’t know it.
The feedback I got from my customers was the best you can get. They were loving it and they and their friends were coming in and buying them too. Now that’s the best feedback you can get.
Special thanks to Callum Blackmore, Eric Stoothoff, and Adam Bale for helping to get the word out. Maybe someday, someone will make an even better trail bike.
Herb Uhl reviews UBCO’s Electric Trail Adventure Bike. The new company sought Uhl’s opinion of their latest model as he was the inventor of the first 2-wheeled ATV in the fifties. Herb’s design spawned a whole series of trail bikes from Honda.
Herb Uhl’s review follows:
I got to try out UBCO’s 2-wheel drive trail-utility bike with an electric motor in each wheel. The brand manufactures their units in New Zealand.
Their electric trail bike had enough battery for 2 to 3 hours of trail use, depending on how hard you ride it.
The bike was very well built with beautiful welds and well worked out controls.
What I most liked about both wheels pulling is that no leaning was necessary and at almost 0 speed, I could pick my way around most trail junk with almost no effort.
Most of the weight of the bike was that stupid battery.
Electric in-wheel is perfect for a trail bike, just like electric power to all wheels makes sense in a car or pickup. What does not make sense is getting electric power from a battery.
I know you have all seen lightning, so we all know we are surrounded with electric power. Since it exists, it can be harvested.
There are two problems with that; 1) No one has figured out a way to charge us for all that free power, 2) It would add to our freedom, and that must be squelched at all costs.
One of the first things to change when society goes the way of the do do bird, is we will be able to harvest that unlimited energy at the point of use.
My research shows that a small module that weighs 5 pounds or less would provide all the energy a trail bike needs, and you would never run out of fuel.
You think it’s not possible?
Nikola Tesla introduces battery-free electric powered car in 1931
In 1931 Nikola Tesla ran a Pierce-arrow that had been converted to a Westinghouse electric motor, around the Buffalo/New York-area for several hours, sometimes at speeds of up to 90 miles per hour.
The car had no batteries allowed and a witness said Nicola only took a rather large black box with him, hooked up some wires, and away they went.
Do you suppose Dr. Tesla was harvesting electrical energy at the point of use?
10 years before Tesla, brothers introduce electric car powered by atmospheric energy.
Electric cars running on atmospheric electricity were introduced as early as 1921, ten years before the Tesla run.
Tesla’s first experimental electric car project was built in 1897, did not have a storage battery, and never had to stop at a service station. The only mechanical moving parts in his car were the wheels and steering apparatus. Tesla used a new kind of primary battery. The battery could power the car for 500 miles, then could be simply roadside replaced in less than a minute.
The only thing that keeps us from harvesting energy at our homes or on vehicles now is various varieties of greed.
According to stats from UBCO, the all-wheel drive 2×2 electric bike weighs in a 330 lbs., has a 75-mile range, and can operate up to 6 hours with its 3.1kWh battery on a full charge.
Even by the time the trail 50 transition to the new trail 55, Honda still didn’t understand who the customers were for this ATV. This is a copy of the brochures we developed and had printed to give our customers an idea of the trail and ranch model’s overall usefulness.
Herb Uhl
By 1962 Honda’s literature started to catch up, but they still didn’t understand how useful these machines are on the farm and ranch.
Herb says, “Come on up to Boise where it’s reeeaaallllly happening.”
by David Swift
Dirt Rider Vol. 2 No. 11, November 1974
International Six Days Trials Garmisch, Germany, September, 1969, Herb Uhl, Dale “Punch” Deyo, Bill Uhl
All three of them have this same smile coming through this same beard. Uncanny. Three years ago at Evel Knievel’s first motocross at Twin Falls, I get three beards and three ultra-tooth grins that make a Cheshire Cat look like John Erlichman.
Bill Uhl, Pacific Coast Champion, Sidewinders TT 1969
And Sunday morning, Day Two at Bad Rock Two Days Trials, Bill Uhl lubes his chain, takes a trick four:.way wrench , unsuccessfully tries to tighten a host of nuts and bolts on his 175 Can-Am, and mumbles, “That’s what I hate about this bike, Herb-there’s never anything I have to do to it.” Grin.
Herb looks at everyone watching him. “Well, I guess someday we’ll have to do something about it.” Grin.
Later that day I’m waiting beside a highway. Bill is due by soon, gonna take me a picture. A, 550 Suzuki triple comes bumbling down the road, and it’s not Bill and it’s not Herb. It’s Mike. Haven’t seen Mike in years and we have fun letting on we both remember each other’s names, barely. Before he reassures me his name is indeed Mike, he says, “I’m the one who goes -slow.” Right away you know this is an unnecessarily touchy point. Nevertheless, grin.
It’s intrigued _ me for years now, that enigmatic Uhl grin. It’s the look of a man who knows something no one else knows, and he knows you know it.
Herb Uhl (pronounced simply “yule”) is an incarnation of a Walt Disney elf who comes bounding out of the bushes, glances suspiciously from side to side, and whispers out of the back of his hand, “Hey, I know where we can have some fun. . . .” I like to think motorcycles has a lot to do with it.
Herb Uhl has done a lot more things to affect dirt riding in general than a pixie from Boise is supposed to. More than one person has credited him with designing the original Trail 50, which Honda sent over to Japan some 15 years ago and since stamped out hordes by the boatload. Roaming through a Uhl scrapbook revealed this elegant little 80cc Suzuki flat tracker with a handmade monocoquc frame, expansion chamber, and other ahead-of-its-time features.
Last year at Trask Herb rode what once was a 185 Suzuki-Herb’s had a Sachs leading link front end and a frame butchered worse than Ake Jonsson’s Grand Prix Yamaha-and was entered in the 175 class. I asked him then if it was legal and he said, “Sure, see, the 185 cylinder is only 80 thousandths over a 175, and that makes it legal by AMA rules.”
Just the other day I point out that if the bike is sold as a 185, it can’t ever be a 175. Herb gets this oh-mygosh expression and says, with sincerity every vacuum cleaner salesman would be jealous of, “Is that right?
You mean all along I’ve . . . I don’t believe it.”
Herb, you punk, for a year you had me snowed. And I’m supposed to go around exposing people like you.
Which is why I made a special trip to Boise-to find out just why you are always wearing that maddening grin-the beard tickles, is that it, Herb? – and find out why your two kids got what you got just as bad.
When Bill was 18 and Mike 20, they had talked Evel Knievel into letting them design his first motocross course. No, it was the other way around. The job, simply, was to turn a flat cow pasture into something that wouldn’t send the nation’s top motocrossers home sniveling. No TT track. All they could rely on were rocks and trees to break up the monotony, plus the talents of a team of dump trucks to build a gigantic jump. Ah, memories linger at the old Snake River Canyon days: Jimmy Pomeroy almost launching himself over the canyon, years ahead of Evel; Barry Higgins breaking up the monotony by center-punching a rock and tree. . . . Mike and Bill (you couldn’t tell them apart because they had beards, grins, and hair down to here) were happy, hungry hippies then, living out of a tiny trailer, eating fresh vegetables and wearing overalls. When each told me the other was a very fast motorcycle racer, I thought, naw, these guys are back-to-the-land bumpkins trying to impress the Hot Zit from Cycle News. In November, 1971, I flew to Boise for an Trans-Am race, and there’s Bill and Mike again, this time one of them has cut his hair. Still can’t tell them apart. As a budding motocross purist, I am duly impressed with the Boise circuit, fast stuff, tight stuff, a water crossing, and a 450-foot downhill that even has Tim Hart sit ting at the top, rigid with fear, for 30 minutes of practice. The Europeans approve of the course, which is music to the MotoPurist’s ears. Again, the Uhls have scored while the guys in California still don’t know where it’s at. Cycle News is impressed.
Preston Petty, Herb Uhl, Bill Uhl, 1969 in Germany
Little did I know that one of them, Bill, has already gone to Europe and won a Gold Medal at the International Six Days Trial, in 1969. Herb, a distributor for Sachs, got to be part of the American team, and Bill, who was 19 at the time, will become the youngest lad to Gold the ISDT. “When Bill and I went to Germany for the Trials,” says Herb, “neither one of us had ever ridden a timed event before-just some cross-country events around Boise.” Herb was kept to a Silver because someone gave him the wrong directions-which, if you ask me, is a refreshing turn of events. In 1970 Bill was held to a Silver.
Mike Uhl, Carlsbad, 1974
That’s when everyone else on the team DNF’d, the years when everyone rode motorcycles that to this day are spoken of as Puchs but with a long “u”. Since then Bill has been on the Penton Trophy Team and finished on Gold the last three years. (What happens in Italy this year is between the time I write this and the time you read it-such are the miracles of modern communication.)
Amidst all of Herb’s and Bill’s accomplishments, one tends to think mostly of Mike, if one has any sense of fair play. Bill has a sense of fair play and is the first to offer, “Mike is a damned good racer. He was a lot faster than I was and I think today he can kick my butt if he wanted to. But he seems to be mostly interested in the shop and making it flow.” From Bad Rock I drive to the shop, Uhl’s Idaho Bike lmports, to watch it flow. I show up late Wednesday afternoon, enter the jingly-bell doors of a woodsy showroom (“this establishment condemned . . . by other dealers”), and am bombarded by every motorcycle accessory in the whole wide world. Counters, displays, pegboards, everything-it’s an Encounter Group session with every dirt bike doo-dad you’ve ever dreamt of owning. And in the midst of it all are the three bearded grins.
International Six Days Trials, Garmisch, Germany 1969 Poster
Outside the shop, Mike’s Suzuki is loaded with some things. He’s going on a bike trip, take a vacation, now that Bill is done with the Six Days Qualifier thing and can mind the store. I ask Mike to remove his helmet and pose for the photograph you see at the beginning of this article and let him bumble on down the road. I see him three weeks and 2,000 miles on down the road at Carlsbad, where he volunteers to work for the AMA in order to get ideas for the Last Evel Knievel Snake River Canyon Motocross, which is also before this is written and after you read it. . . introduced Mike to my companion, Sandra, and say to her, “You remember me talking about the Uhls . . .” and Mike interrupts with “I’m the adopted one.” I am astonished to learn, and say, “I didn’t know you were adopted,” and Mike gives me that grin he’s learned so well from Herb. Punk got me again.
Back at the shop, Herb says, “It just turned out that Mike had a knack for this sort of thing. Look at this place. He’s got every accessory you can think of all laid out, and nearly every item he picks keeps moving.” I work the cash register that day to cover my room and board and learn where some of that grin comes from. A lot of Herb Uhl’s customers love doing nothing better than spending money with. Herb. His better customers get to retire into Herb’s office, take a bottle of Chianti out of the refrigerator, and tell stories for a while. A lot of funny stories get told.
Herb likes to tell about how he brought up his boys right, about how he made sure the first woman that came along with full-on charms wouldn’t snag either. At 22 and 24, Herb’s boys are wise beyond their years.
Right now Bill is settling down with a remarkable woman in her own right, Debbie. She is nine-and-a-half months pregnant when · I come to spend a few nights. She makes dinner, runs errands for the store, and never ever stops running around. Thursday she stays home weeding the garden while I mess around the shop with my Yamaha. Bill and Herb sell Mike’s parts and accessories, introduce me to chums, there’s always some party going on, except it’s mostly cash you see flowing instead of hooch. In this case, the cash is hooch.
Uhl’s shop is just an excuse for a bunch of motorbikers, many of whom don’t know one another, to stand around and talk bikes, talk women; talk talk. Every once in a while you buy something, sort of a dues for being there. Or maybe you buy something to stimulate further conversation.
At night Bill and I settle down in his nearby home to watch Star Trek on this incredibly old teevee. The picture goes flip . . . flip . . . flip every ten seconds or so, a state of perpetual horizontal flux. Of course, the teevee is more like background music while
Bill talks of how, after all, he’s been broke for a long time now, how he and Debbie went hitchhiking on their last vacation, and about the patch of land they are buying in the wilder ness. “It’s absolutely stone primitive,” says Bill. “There’s nothing. No gas, no phone, no electricity. Nothing.” Two days later we will sit on Can-Ams looking over an endless green valley. “See that?” He points. “That’s what our place is like.”
Friday morning Debbie fixes Bill his usual cup of herbs and us all a big breakfast. Since my arrival two days ago Debbie has been on the main jet. A more beautiful woman I’ve never seen. She gets’ on the phone, calls her doctor, describes her latest body signals, and tells Bill it’s time to go to the hospital and have the baby. Bill asks if I’ll help Herb with the shop, I say yes (what am I gonna do, say it’s my day off?), and proceed to put in another day at Uhl’s.
Somehow business is slower, although it’s a sunny day promising a brighter weekend. Herb asks if I’m going to stay the weekend, and I say, no, I’ve got to be back in LA first thing Monday and write literally many stories.
Herb snarls, “What do you mean, ‘you’re not staying.’ Here, I was going to take you on the nicest cow-trail you’ve ever seen and you’re going to leave. Simmer down, boy, you just got here.”
Bill Uhl, Ascot, 1969
I suggest I’ve got a woman to see. Sure enough, he backs down. Not leaving well enough alone, I say, “Be sides, who’s going to watch the store?”
This genuinely stuns Herb. He spreads out his hands. ”Now what kind of motorcycle store is it that stays open on Saturday?” He smiles, then waves out the windows. There are two other motorcycle shops within eyesight, 28 in all of Boise. “I let them have Saturdays. What good is life if you can’t go cow-trailing on weekends?”
That afternoon Bill pops in with the announcement of a new son and placed a secret-coded phone call with Lars Larsson: “It’s a funnel.” By the end of the week all the Trials riders would be saying, “Bill got his funnel, Debbie had her funnel.”
It was a joyful way to end the qualifying season, and a good way to ignore the problem of the three-way tie, a situation that has been occupying much of Bill’s time since Bad Rock.
He and Herb had already come up with a new and better scoring system for next year. They had also come up with several good ways of breaking the tie-most of them, of course, ending in Bill’s favor. Like Carl Cranke, “Bill wasn’t out to prove he is the better of the two, but more anxious to simply chose one of the three. Above all, Bill knows he’s done an incredible job for Can-Am when Can-Am has given him a bare minimum of support. Bill doesn’t want money, he needs money from Can-Am to continue racing. He wants recognition. He wants to work with a company in developing motorcycles.
Penton hadn’t given him the opportunity to be anything but a Gold Medal winning motorcycle rider. Now it looks more encouraging with Can Am, just a matter of time.
When Can-Am sent out press re leases with photos of Bill, you saw Bill wearing Gary Jones’ leathers and jerseys, sitting on Gary Jones’ bike. Today Can-Am is taking out full-page ads of Bill bragging about how reliable · the motorcycles are: “over 2500 miles of rugged . . . .”
Never mind. We get up early Saturday, fidget with three Can-Am 175s. Bill’s still has Bad Rock dirt all over it. He’s going to take his “Ram-Jet” fender off and ship it to Preston Petty for studying and maybe copying. Herb wants me to try Bill’s 175 with micro porting and clever rear suspension, and compare it to a stock Can-Am
175 motocrosser. (For the record, Bill’s motorcycle has the most outrageously flat power-band I’ve ever felt on any motorcycle, and his suspension works about as good as any LTR I’ve ever felt. No wonder he went so :fast all the time without falling down.) Bill also has his adjustable Can-Am frame raked out as far as the law allows, and I like them pretty much the opposite. It frightened me to have to lean the thing over like a road-racer.
The Uhls at their Idaho Bike Imports in Boise, Idaho, 1974
Herb decides to ride a Can-Am 175 enduro demonstrator, trials tires and all. Bill and Herb take me over bounteous country best left undescribed for the nonce. There is a lot of stopping for jive talk. Bill and Herb and Dick Malone, who rides an impeccable Hare Scrambler, know I have to be out of Boise with the noonday sun, this I’ve already explained, so I can meet my wretched bastard deadlines. And they keep me up in the hills above Boise, with the trails getting greener and funner all the time, until I was late, very late, and exhausted.
I left for Los Angeles not getting a chance to see the baby or say goodbye to Debbie, because I was late. And, of course, there were those grins again, behind the beards, taunting me as I had to leave. Shoot. Got me again, Herb. You just love to see us go back to the city.
The story of the origin of the ATV starts at Boise Idaho in 1960 where a local motorcycle dealer by the name of Herb Uhl redesigned a small 50cc Honda Cub. It had been built mainly for city transportation.
Herb redesigned it for use on mountain trails and for use on the farms and ranches that covered Idaho’s wide open spaces. As soon as he started converting Them they sold like hot cakes.
Surrounding the Boise area were thousands of acres of nearly road-less mountains and desert with very few fences. In those days you could climb on your motorcycle in town at your house and within a few minutes you could be on top of one of the foothills of the mountains next to Boise.
From there you could look out over the entire valley clear to the Owyhee Mountains to the west. Seldom did anyone in the area ride their motorcycles on the highway more than a few miles from town.
Most of the bikes were stripped down to short basic fenders & small lights and were equipped with knobby tires to get traction in the dirt. You could call them the beginning of the modern adventure bike.
That’s what it was like in 1950 when Herb Uhl moved to Idaho from Florida. Herb was a mechanic who’d started his career in a motorcycle shop several years before so he really liked motorcycles.
In Boise Herb was working in an automotive shop on automatic transmissions. There were three motorcycle shops in town at that time; Harley Davidson (Don Gamble) with a couple dirt riders, Triumph (Buzz Chaney) with a lot of fame as a racer with most of the dirt riders, and B.S.A. (Harlan Wood) just back from the service, he was the new dealer in town with a growing group of dirt riders.
Herb used to wander into the shops from time to time but no one had the kind of lightweight bike he wanted so he spent most of his spare time researching the magazines looking for his idea of a proper dirt bike.
He was working at the transmission shop one day when a customer traded in a nearly new All State motorcycle for some transmission work.
Herb’s wife Rosemary was riding the motorcycle one day when another lady in a car turned in front of her. Herb repaired the small damage To the bike and used most of the insurance money to go into the motorcycle business. That was early in 1955.
The brand he chose to handle was Maico. It was built by a German company and was better engineered than the English & American bikes that were available.
The first bikes presented by the US distributor were some surplus units that had been ordered by the Sweedish distributor who ran low on money before they could be delivered. They were perfect for Idaho dirt riders. The machines had been specially built for International off-road competition. All were light weight 250cc high performance 2-stroke machines with knobby tires, special tool kits (because in that type event the rider is required to do all their own maintenance), and even an air bottle (for refilling tires), and a four gallon fuel tank (handy on long trail rides).
It wasn’t long ‘til Nick Gray, the importer, put 10 bikes at a time with Herb on consignment, so the business moved right along. In 1959 Herb saw info in a cycle magazine about a motorcycle company called Honda who would ship bikes from Japan, so he ordered two of the off-road competition models shown in the magazine article.
Herb thought they would probably be pretty crude because the news in those days fed everyone a lot of anti-Japan propaganda. The bikes arrived in a couple of months and they were beautiful. A reorder was put in but they would only sell him production highway bikes and the factory couldn’t understand why he didn’t want them.
By 1960 Honda was opening a US branch on Sepulveda Boulevard in Los Angeles and Herb was the first US dealer to visit them.
He signed up for a regular dealership and got a few of their regular bikes to see if they would sell in Boise Idaho.
The people from Japan couldn’t fathom why Herb wanted, what to them were competition-only machines instead of bikes the public should want.
There was Herb with a bunch of bikes in stock that were designed for the city, and not for the rough country around Boise Idaho.
In the 1960s about the only way to get to any one of the numerous high mountain lakes for instance, was horses and pack animals or walking. Back yard tinkerers were putting lawn mower engines on a little rectangular framework with two small wheels, like a tiny crude scooter without suspension or shocks and a board with upholstery for a seat to try to make mountain travel a little easier.
Herb started looking at the little 50cc Honda Cub, model CA-100, from a different point of view. It had all the good stuff it takes to build an excellent all-terrain-vehicle. It was lightweight (about 140 lbs.) with 17 inch wheels like a small motorcycle for stability and the gas tank was under the seat like a scooter.
It had a great Engine a 3 speed transmission with an automatic clutch so no skill was required to ride it. There was a real seat and it sat low enough that almost everyone could touch the ground. The suspension rivaled many large motorcycles of the day with shocks and swing arm suspension both front and rear and finally it went a long way with a tank full of gas.
The first thing Herb did was order in knobby tires. While he awaited their arrival he had a large 72 tooth rear sprocket made that slipped right over and bolted to the original road sprocket to slow it down enough for trail, farm and ranch use.
Next, things were slimmed down so it would easily go between trees and rocks. A skid plate was built to protect the engine and a less bulky muffler was used. It worked really well all over the mountains around Boise.
Herb had converted and sold a couple of hundred machines when Jack McCormick national sales manager for American Honda noticed that Herb was selling more Honda Cubs than all the dealers in Los Angeles combined.
So there you have it the first ATVs had two wheels and were designed in the small town of Boise Idaho by Herb Uhl.
As soon as the other motorcycle manufacturers in Japan saw what Honda was doing they each came out with their own version of the two-wheeled ATV.
We’re all led to believe one person can’t make a difference.
Herb’s ability to think a little bit outside the box caused several hundred thousand practical fun machines to be sold all over the world. All this activity helped the Honda Cub become the largest selling vehicle ever made (over 26 million sold). A true Swiss Army knife of motorcycles.
A few years later came the 3-wheeled ATV followed closely by the 4-wheelers leading directly to today’s side by sides.
Most campers and hunters have an ATV or two, and now you see one model or another, and sometimes several on almost every farm and ranch all over the world.
The story of American Honda’s rise to prominence starts in Boise, Idaho, of all places, at a small Honda dealership that belonged to a fellow named Herb Uhl. It also involves Jack McCormack and the company’s most popular product at that time, the Honda 50. One night in 1960, while looking over the most recent sales records, McCormack spotted what he thought was an anomaly. At that time, Honda had six dealerships set up in Los Angeles, all of which were fairly successful operations. But according to the records on his desk, this one dealer in Podunk Boise was selling more 50s than all six of the L.A. dealers combined. The next morning McCormack called Uhl to investigate.
“I called Herb and said, ‘Herb, what are you doing with the Honda 50 up there that you’re selling so damn many?’ He told me how he was selling them as a trail bike, putting a cheater sprocket on the back and some knobby tires.”
McCormack asked Uhl to send one of his trail conversions down to California. Uhl did, and McCormack was impressed. “It was a brilliant little machine,” McCormack says about Uhl’s creation, “It worked so well because it was light, and with the automatic clutch you could climb logs. To do that on a big bike, you had to have a certain amount of skill.
On a 50, you didn’t get there real fast, but you had fun and you didn’t need to know much. I saw lots of possibility for something like Herb was doing, selling it as a bike that you could go in the woods and hunt or fish with. Sort of the earliest ATV.”
McCormack crated the bike back up and sent it to Japan, with a request that the company create a production version of Uhl’s creation. Honda responded to McCormack’s idea immediately. “It took no effort at all to get the trail bike,” he remembers. By March 1961 the CA100T Trail 50 was available to dealers. The new machine was an instant success. Cycle World’s praise was universal: “To you staunch, hairy-chested, full-size bike riders (and this includes us), to you trailing addicts (this also includes us), and to you new riders who have yet to experience the joys of trailing (and this includes our wives who rode the Trail 50 until they had to be pried off of it), we heartily recommend you go Trail Fiftying!” American buyers responded enthusiastically, and the trail 50, an idea hatched by a small dealer in relatively remote Idaho, was an unqualified success.
Source: Honda Motorcycles by Aaron P. Frank ISBN 0-7603-1077-7 pp 45
