The Unrideables is a documentary I’ve been meaning to feature for quite a while, it’s a look back at the glory days of late-80s 500cc two-stroke motorcycle racing from the men who made it great – Eddie Lawson, Wayne Gardner, Kevin Schwantz, Wayne Rainey, Randy Mamola and, of course, Kenny Roberts.
Some of us were just kids when the two-stroke era was in full swing so we missed much of what was going on, and I’m sure that many of you reading this were merely a twinkle in your father’s eye in ’88, ’89 and ’90.
The motorcycles being ridden during this period were 500cc two-strokes producing somewhere in the region of 150-160hp at the rear wheel. There was no traction control or ABS and the powerband was a narrow strip on the rev counter that required extreme throttle control to use effectively – grabbing a millimetre too much on the exit of a corner would result in the bike high-siding and the rider being thrown to the height of a second-storey balcony.
If you’d like to see the film you can buy the DVD here, watch it on Amazon here or grab it from iTunes here.
Articles that Ben has written have been covered on CNN, Popular Mechanics, Smithsonian Magazine, Road & Track Magazine, the official Pinterest blog, the official eBay Motors blog, BuzzFeed, Autoweek Magazine, Wired Magazine, Autoblog, Gear Patrol, Jalopnik, The Verge, and many more.
Silodrome was founded by Ben back in 2010, in the years since the site has grown to become a world leader in the alternative and vintage motoring sector, with well over a million monthly readers from around the world and many hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.
