Tony Murphy made a major contribution to motorcycle racing, only much of his work was behind the scenes and his efforts have largely gone unheralded. It’s not that Murphy toiled in obscurity, far from it. Tony was the King of Willow Springs Raceway for the better part of a decade, he was a factory road racer, he won the very first motorcycle race at Loudon, was a multi-time champion in various series and came a hair’s breadth away from become a full-time factory Grand Prix racer in the mid-1960s. Perhaps Murphy’s biggest accomplishment was done in without fanfare. Thanks in large part to Murphy’s hundreds of hours of testing; Yamaha’s two-stroke 250 racing bikes became a dominant force in 250 Grand Prix road racing for over 40 years.
Tony Murphy (No. 3) launches his Yamaha at the start of the first big national-level race at the new Loudon road race circuit in 1965. Murphy went on to win the AMA Lightweight race. Getting the jump at the start is Gary Nixon (9). Also on the front row is Bultaco mounted Jody Nicolas (58). Also visible in the photo are Jess Thomas (28), Anson Holley (56), Mert Lawwill (18) William Lloyd (64) and Dick Mann (2).
Murphy’s father died in World War II and he moved from Great Britain to America with his mother when he was 10 years old. Murphy became a fan of motorcycle racing as a boy when he was still in England, having watched the very popular British League Speedway racing.
While going to high school in New York young Murphy got a summer job working at BSA’s American headquarters in Nutley, New Jersey. There he met top racers that would stop by on occasion – riders like Dick Mann and Al Gunter. Murphy’s first bike was a Norton 500T trials bike, a rarity that Murphy says he wished he still owned today.
Tony Murphy overcame a pop-up rainstorm to win the first national race at Loudon.
Murphy’s family moved to Los Angeles in 1958 and a few years later he started road racing with the AFM. At first Murphy raced Ducatis chasing around Norris Rancourt’s famously speedy Parilla. In 1963 Murphy rode a factory Honda four-cylinder 250 to the AFM Championship. He also won the 500cc title on a Manx Norton. That same year the AMA moved closer to traditional European-style road racing when it announced the Lightweight 250cc class would run alongside the Grand National bikes at road race nationals. Murphy was well positioned to participate in the new class having honed his road racing skills on the West Coast.
By 1964 Murphy went to work for Yamaha and part of his job was to test its racing machines. “Yamaha had the TD1A and it was winning some races, but was unreliable,” Murphy recalls. “I took one of the first improved versions, the TD1B, to the Dodge City road race n ‘64. Yamaha had figured out the problematic cranks. I qualified on the pole, but something else on the bike broke after three or four laps.”
The Dodge City road course (actually in Garden City, Kansas) was at an old military airport and was typical of the hodgepodge of racing circuits riders had to contend with in the early 1960s. “We raced wherever they’d let us,” Murphy remembers of the formatives days of the sport in America.
Murphy tirelessly tested Yamaha’s race bike and with his essential input the bikes rapidly improved. The Yamaha TDs got so good that at Daytona in 1965 everyone was just blown away by the speed of the bikes.
Dick Mann (with helmet), Tony Murphy and two other riders seek shade under the starter's bridge on a hot day at Loudon.
“We were hitting 130 mph around the banking and people were shocked,” Murphy remembers. “Roger Reiman’s father came over to me and said it took them until Friday of Bike Week that year to get their Harley-Davidson 750 to run as fast as our 250.”
Murphy qualified on the pole for the Daytona Lightweight race. “I think in part it was because I was testing that bike all winter,” Murphy said. “It was like going to work.” He was running second in the race when things went awry. “We came into some lapped riders and Larry Schafer moved over, we tangled and I went down. I picked the bike up and still finished 10th. I held it against Larry for years after that, but we’re friends now. It was just one of those accidents that happen in racing.”
Murphy recovered from the Daytona disappointment and broke through to win the Loudon 250cc race in 1965. It made him the first winner of a motorcycle race at the freshly completed circuit that replaced the historic Laconia course. In order to win at Loudon Murphy had to overcome a poor start and a massive downpour.
“I was used to push starts and all the AMA regulars who raced flat track all the time used to smoke me off the line,” Murphy admits. “After we got going I worked my way up to second. Something happened to {Gary} Nixon and he was out. Jody Nicholas was riding a Bultaco with disc brakes and was leading. I started catching glimpses of him. Then it started raining and I couldn’t see him or much of anything anymore. After a few more laps I came around a corner and there was Jody on the ground. The rest of the race was trouble free.”
It was a big victory at arguably the second biggest race on the AMA calendar. Tony says he thinks he won $1500 for winning Loudon. “That’s what made racing great back then,” Murphy says. “You could buy a racebike for $1000 and take home $1500 for winning a race. All these years later the purse hasn’t gone up much and you have to have a $30,000 motorcycle to have a chance to win.”
Tony Murphy helped develop the factory Yamaha GP that Phil Read won the world championship on. Much of the testing was done at Willow Springs Raceway and track owner Bill Huth wanted to advertise that fact, but as this note from Huth to Murphy shows, Yamaha was not eager to let people know where to come out and watch its 250 Grand Prix machine being tested.
Murphy reputation after winning Loudon reached an all-time high. He was setting poles, winning races and helping Yamaha gain valuable testing data that was translating to a growing number of victories. Tony even tested Yamaha’s GP bikes at Willow. He said the GP version of Yamaha 250 road racer, called the RD56, was amazing to ride.
“It was top secret that I was regularly testing the GP bike at Willow Springs,” Murphy recalls. “If someone showed up the engineers would quickly put the bike away. I remember Joe Parkhurst of Cycle World snuck in and got some photos of me on the bike. Yamaha really had to do some arm twisting to keep him from running the photo.
“The GP bike was a rotary valve with a seven-speed gearbox and was 20 miles per hour quicker than the production model I was racing here,” Murphy said. “I’d go three to four seconds per lap faster around Willow on that bike.”
Murphy’s stock was so high that when Mike Duff was injured in Japan, Yamaha wanted to put Murphy in the GPs to team with Phil Read, but according to Murphy, Read and the European contingent of the team wanted Bill Ivy, so Murphy just missed out on his dream ride.
“A Grand Prix ride was what I was shooting for,” Murphy said. “I figured if I didn’t get the ride then it was never going to happen for me.”
Shortly afterwards Murphy was drafted into the Army and his racing days were for the most part over.
Years later he became friends with Michelle Duff (formerly Mike Duff before sexual reassignment) and when Michelle found out about Murphy’s racing in the States she told him he was lucky he didn’t get the Yamaha GP ride.
“Duff told me he and Read were driving to the races and sleeping in the back of a Thames van,” Murphy said. “Here I was flying to the races, staying in hotels, driving rent cars. Apparently being the big GP star wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.”
After returning from the Army Murphy briefly worked as Yamaha’s racing manager. He found the transition from racer to team manager difficult. “You get used to that adrenaline rush and instead of encouraging Gary Nixon to go out and do well, I wanted to be out there yourself.”
Speaking of Nixon, Murphy said he was the best all-around racer of his era. “He could win on anything,” Murphy says. “I had thousands of laps around Willow Springs and they wanted me to show Gary around the track the first time he was there. Something needed to be adjusted on my bike and I pulled into the pits. When I came back out I was behind Nixon and it was all I could do just to stay with him. He’d learned the track that quickly.”
Murphy went on to work for Motorcyclist in 1968, working his way up to editor. After a management change cost him that job he went on to become representative for all the small motorcycle makers in the MIC. Through that position he established a great relationship with Rotax and eventually became the U.S. importer of Rotax engines. Now at 70 Murphy is still importing, but now it’s mainly parts for Rotax restorations, sort of a soft retirement. He’s also the father-in-law of former AMA 250 Grand Prix racer Andy Leisner, so he stays up to date with the sport. Tony also has a fleet of vintage motorcycles; including the Norton Manx he won his AFM title on and a Manx that Buddy Parriott raced at Daytona in the early 1960s, where he scored what might be the first Grand Prix World Championship points by an American rider.
Murphy’s work with Yamaha’s early GP bikes help guide them on a path of success that lasted for 40 years.
