When Superbike mechanic Mike Velasco passed away, a huge part of Yoshimura’s history went with him. Velasco, a rookie mechanic on the late 1970s and early ’80s Yoshimura Suzuki team, had a gift for remembering names, events, dates — and endless stories laced with obscure Yosh trivia. ("That's the year the box van’s differential blew up in Texas and we were stuck there for a week. We actually left early for Daytona that year but still got there really late, as usual...").

Wes Cooley Jr. and Marcel Fortney are gone now, too. But some key figures from that early Yoshimura era remain: Don Sakakura, Dave Wolman, Suehiro "Nabe" Watanabe, Sean Alexander, John Ulrich, and many others. Sakakura, now retired, always claimed he had no memory of the early days — though when pressed, he’d just raise his eyebrows, leaving it unclear whether it was true amnesia or selective memory of days you'd rather not recount. Working at "Yosh" before 1990 was a thankless grind, closer to life at a family-run muffler shop than a glamorous race team.

The short version of Yoshimura’s long story goes like this: Pops Yoshimura, a veteran of the Japanese Air Force in WWII, started a race shop after the war. He became a favorite tuner for early Honda motorcycles raced in the barely paved circuits of 1950s and ’60s Japan — enough of a rival to Mr. Honda himself that the old man wasn't thrilled when Yosh-tuned bikes beat the factory entries. American servicemen were drawn to Pops' talent for squeezing speed out of engines, and before long he was in the U.S., tuning racebikes for riders like the late Gary Fischer. In the early ’70s, Pops set up shop under the Yoshimura Racing name. That first American effort eventually folded, and Pops joined a new project bankrolled by Americans called Dale Starr Engineering — basically a re-badged Yoshimura operation. It ended, predictably, in bad blood, hurt feelings, and lawyers. Pops regrouped, re-formed Yoshimura, and built it into a Superbike powerhouse with riders like Yvon DuHamel, Wes Cooley, and David Aldana.

Through it all, "Yosh" stayed a family affair. But it would never have survived without Pops' son, Fujio Yoshimura, who turned the operation from a glorified backyard race shop into a real business. Where Pops’ first instinct was often to solve problems with the "gas axe" (an oxy-acetylene torch), Fujio brought organization, processes, and stability. As with many of his baby-boomer generation, he found himself fighting to push modern technology past a father reluctant to change.

If anyone ever writes a proper book about Yoshimura, almost an entire chapter could be devoted to just the fires Pops accidentally started — one of which burned the original Yosh race shop to the ground. He wore burn scars almost as a badge of honor.

Like a lot of family businesses, Yoshimura had its fractures. Fujio’s sister Namiko split off and, with her husband and ex-Yosh mechanic Mamoru Moriwaki, started Moriwaki Engineering--a direct competitor to Yoshimura. For years, it was said that mentioning Moriwaki inside Yoshimura’s walls was strictly forbidden.

Want to guess a rider’s age? Listen to what they call a Yoshimura. Under 25? It’s probably just "a Yoshi" — any old exhaust. Old-timer? They’ll say "Yosh" with the quiet respect that comes from knowing the real story.

Again, there are a million Pops Yoshimura stories out there. But it's Fujio Yoshimura who deserves more credit for saving the company while so many rivals faded away. Russ Collins and RC Engineering are long gone. Kerker and SuperTrapp survive only as leftover stock sold on eBay. These days, Yoshimura is said to pull in about $28 million a year.

Pops Yoshimura had the battle-hardened mentality of a man who saw too many kids welded into their Kamikaze planes in WWII, he could solve most problems with a hand grinder and the torch. But Yoshimura is still here — and that’s because of Fujio.