General manager Henry Koepka and other PABATCO employees decided they should design their own motorcycle and looked to Hodaka - the company that built motors for Yamaguchi - to help realize their vision by manufacturing the bikes. Keopka and his team set about improving the design of the Yamaguchi Scrambler, a lightweight trail bike, resulting in Hodaka's first model: the Ace 90. By 1963, however, Yamaguchi had gone out of business, leaving PABATCO high and dry. In the early '60s, The Pacific Basin Trading Company (PABATCO) in Athena, Oregon, began importing Yamaguchi motorcycles from Japan, hoping to establish a market for small trail bikes and spirit away some of Honda's burgeoning success. Bikes are short wheelbase, high ground clearance and run enduro tread pattern with sub-10PSI tire pressures for large contact patch/traction.WORDS Michael Hilton IMAGES Courtesy Octane Press Each time a competitor touches the ground with a foot, a “dab,” the penalty is one point. The course, several hundred feet in length, is carefully contrived to test the skill of the rider. The obstacles may be natural or constructed. Riding at very low speeds, one at a time a competitor navigates extreme obstacles in marked off course while attempting to avoid touching the ground with his feet. Ossa merged with Bultaco, but by 1982 the factory closed down. History shows that in 1967 Ossa entered two 175’s is the 24 Hours of Barcelona, and won first and second place!īut world wide distribution of good performing, less expensive Japanese motorcycles and a crippling strike in 1977 weakened the Ossa company.
Later working with his son in the company, entering races with his machines as they evolved helped him grow an international market.
Manuel Giro and a few engineers he gathered brought their first bike to market in Spain in 1949. But Ossa was originally formed in 1924 as a manufacturer of motion picture projection equipment, and the clover shaped logo is actually related to projector mechanisms. Much like Ducati, Ossa’s motorcycle production grew out of the imagination of a thoughtful person seeing the need for post-World War II transportation and jobs for his countrymen.
Jay did a complete restoration on the machine. He hung on to the Plonker for decades but, hoping to give it a new happy home, eventually gave it to Jay Gaard, its current owner. In the course of his general long held enthusiasm for motorcycles, Roy became part of a motorcycle club in Ottawa that held a variety of off-road events that Roy participated in sometimes riding this Plonker. Its original owner Roy Lanford, an Englishman trained to ride in the British military, emigrated to Canada. By the way, “plonking” is another word for trials riding riding hilly terrain at a careful slow pace, keeping one’s feet on the pegs, never touching down. Racing success with famed trials rider Mick Andrews suggested a Mick Andrews Replica, or MAR, which appeared in 1971. Between 19 the Plonker trials bike was their 250cc offering distinguished by a rich green and yellow paint scheme. The Spanish manufacturer Ossa made a wide range of machines for every form of competition, including observed trials, some street bikes as well.