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Feisty strokers
Bridgestone 350 – mini profile
(Guy 'Guido' Allen, June 2025)
Lots of us ride on
their tyres, but when was the last time you rode a
Bridgestone motorcycle? The marque had much promise
It's 1967 and Illinois (USA) company Rockford has become the importer for Bridgestone at a time when the American market was seen as critical if a maker wanted profitable volume sales.
Rockford's connection with Japanese industry came though
importing sewing machines.
The premium if short-lived 350s were fast, claiming 37
horses from the rotary-valve two-stroke twin, good enough
for 95mph (152kph). They had an usually sophisticated
transmission offering six gears with the facility to
relatively easily change the side you shifted from left to
right.
However a bugbear was the location of neutral between first and top in the 'rotary' or 'progressive' transmission, rather than between first and second. For the unwary, it could lead to a sudden and alarming shift from sixth to first.
The GTR was soon accompanied by the GTO (above) with high
scrambler-style exhaust pipes. Those two models
represented the pinnacle of what was offered by marque.
The company proved, over its brief motorcycle
manufacturing life, to be innovative. That was helped by
picking up key staff when they became available, such as
the engineers from the failing and
equally innovative Marusho concern.
Bridgestone famously stepped back from motorcycle
manufacture in part because the emerging big four in the
industry – Honda, Yamaha, Kawasaki and Suzuki – did not
appreciate the competition. More importantly, all four
were volume customers for Bridgestone's burgeoning tyre
division which was probably far more profitable. In
essence, the maker was told "if you want to sell us tyres,
you have to stop making motorcycles".
In retrospect it was a bit of a shame but a perfectly
good business decision.
See the
Bridgestone 350 GTR feature at Old Bike mag
Plus the
contemporary road test at Cycle World
Bridgestone Skew – a
private historical resource worth visiting
Bridgestone
Motorcycles Australia Facebook group
Vintage Bridgestone Motorcycle Club via Facebook
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