“I rode through high school and was a regional fast guy,” Young recalls, “but without much support and college approaching, I sold my racers. Justin Young giving the classic Bultaco thumb’s up.Justin Young is a connoisseur of iconic dirt bikes, and a racer since he was 10. The Bultaco M146, better known as the Astro 360 built from 1974 to 1976, is the granddaddy of them all. The Bultaco Astro adopted its name from the Houston Astrodome, where it was successful on the dirt track built on the domed stadium floor that also hosted TT Nationals.By 1975, Ossa had thrown in the dirt-track towel, leaving Bultaco as the sole surviving builder of showroom racers on the genre-a 250 and a 360. The Astro was the racebike of choice for non-Japanese factory riders competing in the Grand National Championship when their brands-Harley-Davidson, BSA, Triumph-stopped offering a suitable short-track platform. It, too, blew up with monotonous regularity.” With a close-ratio transmission to best exploit the narrowed powerband, these were undiluted competition motorcycles. “ made a hot version of the MX model, much like the Bultaco Astro, called the TT Stiletto. “Faster than a speeding bullet, the 1971 through 1973 Astros had a lifespan about equal to a gnat trying to bench press a hippo,” according to Dirt Bike founder Rick “Super Hunky” Sieman. Dirt Bike magazine attempted a shootout between the Astro and Stiletto TT, but was never able to keep them running simultaneously. The Spanish took torquey motocross powerplants and tuned them to within an inch of their lives, and often beyond. The notoriously high-strung temperamental pair were the Bultaco Astro and the Ossa Stiletto TT, both based on successful 250cc motocross racers. Two of the most unusual motorcycles of the early 1970s came from Spain to America with an unexpected mission-to win short-track racing everywhere from local races to the Grand National Championship Series.
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January 2023
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