The SOURCE
Jan 11, 2017
5 minutes
WORDS ALAN CATHCART PHOTOS KEVIN WING & RICH COX
“THIS IS NOT A COMFORTABLE BIKE AND GOOD LUCK PUTTING BOTH FEET DOWN AT A STOP LIGHT”
IF YOU have to ask who Mert Lawwill is, then you’ve never seen the best bike movie of all time, Bruce Brown’s On Any Sunday. For Lawwill, now 75, was AMA champion in 1969, and the movie chronicled his bid to defend his title. By the time he hung up his racing leathers in 1977, he’d amassed a total of 161 AMA Grand National race finishes, including 15 race wins and a second in the 1965 Daytona 200.
For almost all that time, Lawwill rode an XR750 Harley-Davidson, the most successful Harley race bike of all time and also one of the most distinctive, with twin carburettors mounted high on the right-hand side and gorgeous tuned-length headers on the other.
“People had been after me for 10 years
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