THE KING SLAYER

Dirt-track racing—on mile and half-mile ovals plus TT—is uniquely American. It comes to us from the earliest days of motoring, when the horse tracks of county fairgrounds were the natural place to race motorcycles from Harley-Davidson, Indian, Reading-Standard, and others. Dirt track survived competition from the super-fast and dangerous banked board tracks of 1910 to 1925, and it is having a rebirth today.

Why does a motorcycle manufacturer go racing? Harley keeps at it because, having been there forever, it would be seriously strange to stop, like a beautiful smile spoiled by a missing front tooth. Indian jumped in two years ago. Why?