49 years ago today, they arrived....

[Paul Danik]

Greetings,

     On March 7th 1968 the first ten serial production Penton Sportcycles arrived by air freight to Cleveland, Ohio. Wally Wilford, Doug Wilford's dad, was sent to the airport to haul the precious cargo back to Amherst.

     In the John Penton book it states that on March 8th six of them were on their way to Georgia for the Stone Mountain National Enduro. I just checked and that was a Friday. I can just imagine the messages going back and forth to KTM from John wanting to know when they were going to ship the bikes...

    John and Tom Penton, Al Born, Leroy Winters, Larry Maiers and Dave Mungenast were the riders. Tom and Al won their classes, Leroy and John got second and third in their class. There is no mention as to how Dave and Larry did.

Paul

[Kip Kern]

I remember Al Born telling me the story of receiving the bikes and looking for tail lights to put on them for the event as the bikes had none.  He had some really cool personal photos of the bikes at Stone Mountain during the event that came in handy while trying to assemble number 3 for him.  Bike was interesting as the exhaust was chrome, had no steering stops but a Ceriani tension adjustor on the steering stem like a street bike.  I also remember a tale of Leroy taking a hacksaw to the air box as it wouldn't breath on the first models. Really cool stuff!