レーシングマシンについての記事は「その他」にもあります。
The story of Barry Sheene's RS67-2 By Ray Battersby, 2021
In 1978, I visited Sheene's latest home, Charlwood Manor at Charlwood near Gatwick airport. Barry showed me around his home and workshops and led me inside one of his private workshops. I noticed a very dilapidated RS67 engine standing inside a wooden crate beneath a workbench. It was the first time that I had seen this motor other than in photographs. Sheene dragged it out and I photographed it from all sides*.
I asked Sheene how he had obtained the engine. He told me that at the end of 1977, he had visited the Suzuki race-shop at Hamamatsu to test the 1978 race machines. During this visit he stayed at the Grand Hotel in Hamamatsu as do all of Suzuki's guests and visitors. He was having a drink in the Grand Hotel Skyline Bar one evening when he met Suzuki's European Sales Manager. During their chat, Sheene asked him what had happened to Suzuki's famous old racing machines.
The next day, Barry was taken to a small store-room at the Suzuki factory, somewhere near the lakes used by Suzuki to test their outboard engines. Inside that small store-room were many old experimental racing machines (such as RF750) and amongst these old machines, Sheene found a small wooden shipping crate. He lifted its lid and found the RS67 125 V4 engine inside. Sheene pestered his Suzuki contacts to let him have the engine and eventually they agreed. After all, Sheene was Suzuki's first 500cc World Champion.
The engine was shipped in its original shipping crate to Heron Suzuki GB's race-shop at Beddington Lane, Croydon amongst the 1978 racing machinery. It was not fitted with carburettors, magneto or expansion chambers. Eventually, Sheene and his father Franco Sheene, removed the engine and took it to their own workshops at Charlwood Manor. Soon afterwards, I visited Charlwood Manor on other business and saw the engine in its crate beneath Barry Sheene's work-bench.
It is possible that Sheene's original idea was to build this engine into a modern racing chassis but if that was his idea, he never found the time to do it. It is believed that Sammy Miller may have visited Charlwood, possibly to buy another Sheene racing machine for his museum, and saw the RS-67-2 engine there. A price was agreed and the engine went to Sammy Miller's museum workshop at Christchurch in Hampshire, England.
To complete the engine, Sammy Miller must have bought the carburettors and magneto elsewhere and had new expansion chambers made in the UK. Miller apparently ordered a replica RS67 racing chassis to be made in the UK by a company that used original photographs as a guide for its design, dimensions and shape. Some people believe the replica chassis itself is made of steel tubing, not aluminium alloy as used by Suzuki in 1967.
It is not known whether the power unit is in running order or whether this machine has ever been ridden.
日本から流出したことは残念ですが、結果的にスクラップになるエンジンが一つ減ったと思えば、これでよかったのかもしれません。
