How were the 1st Pentons introduced?

[cubfan1968]

How did John Penton introduce the first batch of Pentons to the buying public? Obviously he did'nt have a million dollar advertising campaign to get the bike launched. How did he get it done?  [?]

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

[Larry Perkins]

Doug, Paul, and Dane can tell you the exacts but the short story is they took them to National enduros and won with them.  The coverage was then free in the cycle papers and mags.

Larry P

[Doug Wilford]

In a nut shell Larry has it right.   The first ten were flown in so they could be ridden and shown at Daytona.   Of course there was a National Enduro in Georgia the Sunday before Daytona "The Stone Mountain National" and if my memories are correct 9 of the ten were raced in that event plus the Alligator Enduro at Daytona.  The one that wasn't ridden was kept for display at the motor cycle show in the Daytona Amoury.
Have Fun!

[Paul Danik]

Rod,

    The proto model was built first and shipped to the states for approval by John and Ted Penton. Then the first 10 serial production Pentons were built, these bikes were air shipped to Cleveland, Ohio.  The bikes arrived on March 7th, 1968, on March 8th 6 of them were on their way to the Stone Mountain National Enduro in Georgia.  The first Penton race team was made up of Dave Mungenast, Leroy Winters, Tom Penton, Larry Maiers, Al Born and John Penton. After the Stone Mountain event the team headed to the Alligator Enduro which is run during the Daytona bike week.  

   While in Daytona the Penton sportcycle was displayed at the Dayton Motorcycle Show, Leroy Winters dragged in a pile of rocks to display the new Penton upon and it sure drew a lot of attention.

    I used the John Penton book for reference in giving some of the above information, obviously I wasn't there. An interesting fact is that John Penton and the Penton family bet alot of what they had in this endever, and they put all of their cards on the table by heading out to these major events with their untried motorcycle with John Penton's name on it.

Paul

 After I posted I saw that Uncle Doug had responded ahead of me, man I can never get ahead of that guy!