Steel Tankers Waiting For A Home...

[sixdazed]

Wow,The photo on the home page is a knockout!!!

ric emmal

[paul]

No, I think its Heaven! TTP

[tacrac]

Kind of funny

I had the same feeling when I saw it also.

[Gavin Housh]

After a careful count I estimate 175 bikes. Do we now what year this picture was taken and where? Gavin

[Doug Wilford]

The Picture was taken at KTM in Austria. Year 69-70 Notice that some of the bikes have the long seat (late 69) and some have the short seat 68-69.  Also there are parts missing on some of the bikes.  It looks like a staging area before crating for shipment.
Have Fun!

[V1346]

I thought that looked like my bike.  It's in the back.

[Paul Danik]

A while back John Penton handed over a cardboard box pretty much filled with items and mentioned that possibly there might be some things of interest to the POG in the box. We had selected some of the obvious items from the box, such as pictures of early Pentons taken at KTM and sent to John showing updates to be included in the next production run, but we had never gone through the box piece by piece till a few weeks ago.

   The items include everything from his perfect attendance certificates from 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th and 9th grades at Amherst Public Schools, to many of the original telegrams and correspondences with BMW and others from John's record setting transcontintal run in 1959.

    Going through these items, a project that at first I figured may take most of the day, ended up taking most of 4 days, 4 very enjoyable days I must say.  Pretty much at the bottom of the box, under the pile of clippings and paperwork, was a small envelope with some film negatives in it. After trying to see what was on them with limited success, I took them and had them made into prints and was absolutely stunned by many of the pictures, one of them being the home page photo. If you look to the right in that picture it looks like many more machines were put into their shipping boxes and then stacked on the shelves till shipment. I have no idea if having this many machines waiting for shipment was normal, or if possibly the port was froze over, or was there a dock workers strike?

   Ed Youngblood used another of the recently found pictures, one showing Mr. Trunkenpolz in the KTM R & D department with a very interesting Steel Tank Penton, in his latest Motohistory update, along with an interesting story about the Josh McCoy Harescrambles that was run in conjunction with the Penton Dealer School each year that provides a view of Larry Maiers that not many folks have seen.
http://www.motohistory.net/news.html

   Going through these items was a very enjoyable, educational and exciting project. As time goes by many of the pictures and much of the information will be used in future newsletters and various other articles.  One of the more unusual items found was paperwork dated October 7, 1959 on CBS Television Network stationary, indicating that John Penton was being considered as a contestant on the " To Tell The Truth " TV show.

Paul

[cubfan1968]

It would be extremely cool to have a "coffee table" type book containing these type of Penton pictures. Just a picture and who it is and where it was taken.

It would be one of those books you could pick it up a 100 times and never tire of looking at it.

Rod Whitman
Omaha, Nebraska
1972 Six Day (Rider)
1972 Six Day (Project)