“It’s a modern Sportsman’s best friend all the way!”
says Idaho sportsman, “Never, never… will I go hunting without my new Trail ’50’. Recently I packed out two strapping deer from Idaho’s toughest timberland and witnessed two more hunters bringing in four more – also on Trail ’50’s (one of them was a 5-point 250 lb, trophy buck). I was able to scout ten times as much hunting area as on foot, also used my ’50’ for hauling water, dragging firewood logs, and general around-camp errands.
“This year’s hunting was the best yet… thanks mainly to a little critter called a Honda Trail ’50’!”
Herb Uhl, President
Herco Engineering Co.
Boise, Idaho
Mr. Uhl’s enthusiasm is typical of the many hundreds of outdoorsmen who have purchased and hunted with a Honda Trail “50”.
Trail “50”s are sold in America by the American Honda MotorCo., Inc.
Bill Uhl, Evel Knievel and Mike Uhl prior to the Snake River jump in Twin Falls, Idaho
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.
says Idaho sportsman, “Never, never… will I go hunting without my new Trail ’50’. Recently I packed out two strapping deer from Idaho’s toughest timberland and witnessed two more hunters bringing in four more – also on Trail ’50’s (one of them was a 5-point 250 lb, trophy buck). I was able to scout ten times as much hunting area as on foot, also used my ’50’ for hauling water, dragging firewood logs, and general around-camp errands.
