Hey Kevin,
Describe the circumstances that relegated the Daytona 200 from a world class event to what is basically a watered down national event with no Superbikes ...

-- Al in New Hampshire

As you likely know, before 1970 the AMA’s engine displacement formula was 750 cc for flatheads (aka side-valve), 500 cc for overhead valve. No sooner did Triumph’s Meriden research come up with wins in the Daytona 200 (1966, 1967) than an accidental assembly of people at C.R. Axtell’s shop came up with increased power for Harley’s KR750. This was power that put Triumph’s 500 parallel twin out of the game.

Accordingly, a meeting of the Competition Committee was called for December, 1968. Triumph, having in production its (rather antiquated) 650, proposed engine displacement be elevated to that level. Harley countered with 750.

There’s some even deeper background that came first. As with all race sanctioning bodies, there was a faction calling for reduced displacement for safety reasons. Harley at the time was importing the 350 Aer Macchi from Italy. Sorry, Yamaha decided to produce a race kit for its new 350 two-stroke, and two such kitted bikes finished 2nd and 3rd behind Calvin Rayborn’s factory KR750 in the 1968 200. So much for that idea.

This primed Committee members to accept enough displacement to keep the little Yamahas in their two-stroke place. BSA and Triumph in 1969 released their overdue and somewhat lashed-up 750 pushrod Triples.

At the same time, the US motorcycle market was the world’s largest. Therefore a 750 displacement limit was set, without restrictions as to pushrods, side-valves, two-stroke or four-stroke. This rule would take effect for 1970.

Whammo! Honda entered the 1970 Daytona 200 with an international team of CB750-based bikes. One by one they dropped out, but the remaining bike, ridden by Dick Mann and looked after by former G-50 specialist Bob Hansen, emerged as winner. For 1971, it was Dick Mann the enduring, this time on a BSA-badged pushrod Triple. Daytona was emerging as a springtime key to unlock stronger motorcycle sales. Everyone had to be there.

For 1972 Suzuki and Kawasaki brought two-stroke Triples. While those super-fast 100 hp novelties ate tires, here came Don Emde on a little 350 Yam to win.

In this way, the AMA was suddenly gifted with the fastest bikes in the world, ridden by the fastest international riders (including Mike Hailwood, Paul Smart, and soon Giacomo Agostini) on the fastest track in the world. Irresistible.

In 1974 Yamaha brought their TZ750A and a contest between Kenny Roberts and Agostini. Daytona was now a giant spectacle, managed by people from Ohio.
That went on until 1985, when the long and uninterrupted dominance of Yamaha was ended by switching the 200-Miler to four-stroke Superbikes. The Superbike class had been added in the mid-1970s but gussied-up 1000 cc streetsters needed professional-level re-engineering to make them able to go 50 miles at speed. A second generation of powerful bikes from Japan brought the qualities needed to become the AMA’s premier class.

AMA Superbike was sit-up liter-bikes 1977-1982, after which the formula became 750 cc fours, 1000 cc twins.

Then some time in the first decade of the new century, International Speedway Corporation’s lawyers determined that no vehicle should run over 180 mph at Daytona. The danger of high liability judgments was seen as a real threat.

When a new group was put in charge of what had been AMA road racing, it decided the 200 would henceforth be a safely slowed 600 event. The Great Recession was upon us, deeply cutting motorcycle sales.

Years before, the venue of International motorcycle racing in the US had shifted, first to the Laguna Seca USGP, and later to World Superbike. Daytona management did not care to be part of anyone else’s series.

The US was not to be the major motorcycle market forever – change was arriving in the form of attractive new models that would not be imported into the US. Japan switched their marketing to where new middle classes were coming into being – Southeast Asia.

For many years the late Don Brown forecast the motorcycle market by looking at what young men, aged 16-25, with good-paying industrial jobs, were up to. In the 1980s the number of such jobs dwindled. In their place—for a time—came the “born-again motorcyclist” – people who had ridden in the great sales years of the late 1960s and ‘70s, but had given it up for career and family. Now many of these former riders returned to the sport – with increased ability to pay.

Dealers are now struggling against the Internet’s easy access to parts and even to whole motorcycles. Around 2020 the Japanese importers began to find their California headquarters too expensive for their now-modest income. Off they went to wherever rents and wages were cheaper.

That’s where the matter rests.