Man’s best friend doesn’t have two wheels; this is clear every time we publish an article about motorcycles on ViaRETRO. I personally have enjoyed them a lot and, deep down, I still think it’s a smart way to get around.
Most of us probably think we may have seen everything there is to see in motor racing, with all kinds of machinery competing. Well … perhaps not quite. There was a kind of motor sport that is now extinct, but which was extremely popular in the 1920s and 1930s: racing carriages pulled by motorcycles – a twentieth-century version of the chariot racing in the Roman Circus Maximus.
According to pictures taken around that time in countries such as Australia, New Zealand, the United States and some parts of Europe, this unique sport took place with people riding carriages pulled by motorcycles, instead of horses as they used to do in the Formula 1 of the Roman era – not that the Romans had the option of motorcycles anyway, of course.
According to Popular Mechanics magazine, these “modern” carraiages were not made of steel, but of wine barrels. Then a set of car wheels would be attached to them, and connected with tow bars and leashes, motorcycles were placed in front. In the early 1920s, riders sat on the motorcycles to control both speed and steering, with the “charioteer” riding in the barrel. It was retro, it was fun, and that’s how you wanted that sport.
As the sport evolved, more than one motorcycle was attached to the wagon, and the entire equipage was controlled from the barrel by the charioteer himself , instead of the motorcycle rider. It must have required a bizarre and challenging technique to control the entire set-up using only a pair of bridles, apparently made of leather.
I’ve written about technologies that have disappeared over time, and this is another example. It seems almost miraculous that one could control two – sometimes more – heavy iron motorcycles with a couple of thin rods and some ropes. One method must have been to attach each bridle to each motorcycle so that the Charioteer could steer around the track by controlling both motorcycles simultaneously at different speeds. In any case, there was some genuine inventiveness going on!
Of course, there were some charioteers who took even more daring risks by driving – as can be seen in the pictures below, while dressed in period costume – with three and even four motorcycles attached to the carriage!
This bizarre, but certainly immensely entertaining, sport virtually died out during the 1940s, and since then, little has been heard about it except from a few Harley Davidson riders. I doubt it will ever be a popular sport again. It has everything against it: poor clothing style, unhealthy working conditions for the charioteers – especially when dealing with the exhaust gases and the noise, not to mention death and injury by crashing. No, it will probably remain one of those temporarily popular crazes, but it looks like it was fun while it lasted.