Penton Motorcycles A legendary American brand
In 1966 Penton had become the Husqvarna East distributor, based in Ohio. “Edison Dye had the rights to the whole United States, and dad (John) signed a subcontract with Edison. Dad had started out on an old Harley, and that didn’t work at all. He rode some BSAs, and then had the opportunity to ride the 175 NSU,” Jack Penton explains.
The NSU quickly became John’s machine of choice. As with Bill Nilsson in Europe running the AJS 7R engine in his world championship winning machine, one would expect that there would be a similar NSU Supermax based high horsepower variant in use, but for John Penton that was not the case. “They didn’t do a lot with the motors in off-road, horsepower was less of an issue than the basics of keeping the bike together and running in the mud, which is why he ran the 175 and not the 250. Two of the really important things to us was that the NSU had a very high frame breather air intake and it also had a very reliable engine that was like a Swiss watch. In the woods, horsepower is almost irrelevant versus reliability and manoeuvrability. When NSU quit making motorcycles it forced him to change what he was racing,” Jack continued.
It was a very different world for the off-road racers of the West Coast where horsepower normally trumped everything else, which explains the concept behind the desert sled. “It is absolutely different trying to get one of those things across a desert or up a mountain. Back here we would run in a foot of mud or over a bunch of rocks that were slimy and covered with moss where horsepower wasn’t relevant. In 1962, Dad had gone to Europe for the Six Days with the BMW and been introduced to all sorts of exotic off-road motorcycles. “He’d seen the Zundapps, Gileras, all the custom Italian, Swedish and German machines, and was familiar with what could be
