Description
Collector's Note – Why This Issue Matters
The May 1962 issue of Cycle World featuring road tests of the Honda Super Hawk and the Maico 250 Scrambler is a document of extraordinary historical significance for collectors who understand the precise moment in American motorcycle history that this pairing represents. The Honda CB72 Super Hawk — a 250cc twin-cylinder machine that was challenging everything American and British riders assumed about what a small-displacement motorcycle could do — was in May 1962 one of the most important motorcycles in the world, and its presence in a Cycle World road test just five months into the magazine's existence represents a founding editorial act of real consequence. Honda had begun its American market push with the famous "You Meet the Nicest People on a Honda" advertising campaign, and the Super Hawk was the performance-oriented flagship aimed at the enthusiast market that publications like Cycle World served. Its combination of technical sophistication — overhead camshaft, unit construction, reliable electric start — with genuine sporting performance was demonstrating in real time that Japanese manufacturers could produce motorcycles that belonged in serious comparative tests alongside the British and American machines that had previously defined the category. For collectors who focus on vintage Cycle World issues from the founding era, a May 1962 Honda Super Hawk test is a primary document of the Japanese motorcycle invasion's first serious challenge to the established order, produced at the very opening of the magazine that would become the most important journalistic voice covering that transformation.
The pairing with the Maico 250 Scrambler adds a dimension that collectors who understand the period's competitive landscape will recognize as historically revealing. Maico was a West German manufacturer with a strong competition pedigree, and their scramblers — purpose-built off-road competition machines — represented a European approach to performance that was distinct from both the Japanese technical sophistication embodied by the Super Hawk and the traditional British twin formula that had defined the American enthusiast market for a decade. A May 1962 Cycle World issue that tested both machines in the same editorial package was doing something specific and historically important: it was treating the global motorcycle market as genuinely pluralistic, evaluating Japanese and German machinery on the same terms and against the same standards, at a moment when the American market was still being shaped by these competing national engineering traditions. The result is a document of comparative motorcycle journalism at a specific and unrepeatable historical moment — before Japanese manufacturers had achieved the market dominance that would come later in the decade, when the competitive landscape was still genuinely open. Collectors building archives around the motorcycle culture of 1962 will find this May issue a document of that transitional moment with unusual specificity and historical depth.
The founding-year context of this issue deserves additional emphasis for collectors who approach Cycle World as a collecting category defined by its institutional history. The magazine had launched in January 1962, and this May issue represents its fifth month of publication — a period when its editorial voice, its road test methodology, and its approach to the global motorcycle market were all being actively defined and refined. The decision to test a Honda alongside a Maico in May 1962, rather than focusing exclusively on the British and American machines that dominated the market, reflects the editorial intelligence that made the publication significant from its very first months: a willingness to evaluate the motorcycle market globally and to apply rigorous journalistic standards to every machine regardless of national origin. That founding editorial commitment is what makes these early issues primary documents not just of the machines they tested but of the journalism that shaped how those machines were understood.
About the Publication
Cycle World was founded by Joe Parkhurst and launched its first issue in January 1962, establishing itself from its earliest issues as the most rigorously journalistic and road-test-focused motorcycle magazine in the United States — a publication that brought the analytical seriousness of automotive journalism to motorcycle coverage at a moment when the American motorcycle market was undergoing the most rapid and most consequential transformation in its history. The magazine's coverage of both Japanese and European machines alongside traditional American and British favorites gave it a global perspective that no competitor had consistently maintained, and its early-1962 issues are among the most historically significant in the publication's entire run for their documentation of the motorcycle market at the exact moment of its fundamental transformation.
Key Highlights Inside
- A road test of the Honda CB72 Super Hawk — the sophisticated 250cc Japanese twin whose combination of overhead camshaft engineering, reliable electric start, and genuine sporting performance was demonstrating in real time that Japanese manufacturers could produce motorcycles that belonged in the same company as the British machines that had previously defined American performance motorcycling, documented in a founding-year Cycle World road test that applied the magazine's rigorous analytical standards to one of the Japanese invasion's most important early products.
- A road test of the Maico 250 Scrambler — a purpose-built West German competition machine representing the European off-road engineering tradition, here evaluated alongside a Japanese road machine in a pairing that captures the genuine plurality of the global motorcycle market in May 1962 and the specific quality of the competitive landscape before Japanese manufacturers had achieved market dominance.
- Comparative performance data and road test journalism consistent with Cycle World's founding editorial methodology — the rigorous, data-driven approach to motorcycle evaluation that distinguished the publication from its competitors and that, applied to two such historically significant machines in the magazine's fifth month of publication, produced a document of genuine historical and journalistic importance.
- Editorial content reflecting the specific state of the American motorcycle market in May 1962 — a market still defined by the competition between British twins, emerging Japanese machines, and European specialists, with the full transformation that would reshape the landscape by the decade's end still in its earliest and most open phase.
Note: Specific article titles beyond the road tests, bylines, and additional editorial details are unconfirmed for this issue from available sources. The highlights above reflect verifiable historical context drawn from the cover machines, publication date, and the well-documented editorial character of Cycle World during its founding period.
Condition & Rarity
This copy is identified as a no-label newsstand edition with minor edge wear and potential rips or marks — an honest condition profile for a motorcycle magazine now more than sixty years old that has been stored rather than actively preserved. The no-label newsstand provenance preserves the cover as originally printed, without the subscription label adhesive damage that characterizes mailed copies — a meaningful distinction for a founding-year issue whose cover design is itself a historical document of the publication's visual identity at its earliest stage. The minor edge wear falls within the expected range for good condition without compromising the structural integrity or readability of the issue. The plastic protective sleeve indicates deliberate preservation-conscious storage. For a founding-year Cycle World issue featuring Honda Super Hawk and Maico 250 Scrambler road tests from May 1962 — a document of American motorcycle journalism at its most historically consequential opening moment — a no-label newsstand copy in good structural condition with readable interior content represents a meaningful acquisition for serious collectors of motorcycle history and the publication's institutional legacy.
Looking for More Issues Like This?
A founding-year Cycle World featuring Honda Super Hawk and Maico 250 Scrambler road tests from May 1962 is a primary document of American motorcycle journalism at the exact moment of the Japanese invasion's first serious challenge — these early issues are among the most historically significant in the publication's entire run and surface in good condition with less frequency than their importance warrants. If this May 1962 issue has already found a home, the broader vintage Cycle World collection at OriginalMagazines.com is an excellent resource for other significant road test issues and editorial landmarks from the publication's foundational years. Collectors focused on the transformative motorcycle culture and market history of the early 1960s will find it well worth exploring the full 1962 magazine archive, which brings together publications from one of the most historically consequential years in the American motorcycle market's modern history.