1975 Honda CR125 Elsinore - Tom White's Museum

When the floodgates opened in 1974, they really opened. The Honda 125 came ashore in huge numbers. It was very bad news for companies like Penton, Bultaco and Hodaka, which had made their names producing small-displacement two-strokes. The Honda CR125M was the beginning of the end for all three of those makes. Yamaha came out with the YZ125 that same year but didn’t pull the trigger on production in the same quantity as Honda. The same was true for Suzuki and Kawasaki. In 1974, motocross exploded as America’s biggest boom sport. Tracks were appearing everywhere, and half of the participants were riding Honda 125s. It was the best example in motorcycle history of guessing right. Honda anticipated the demand perfectly. Through most of those years, the Honda sold very well. Sometimes it would top the 125 class in both performance and sales; sometimes it wouldn’t. It was a dogfight that would last 30 years.