3. Bultaco
Despite the fact that it never won a world motocross championship, Spanish manufacturer Bultaco has resonated with Americans on the strength of nostalgia for the fast and sexy dirtbikes of the 1960s and 1970s and also because two American motorcycle racing legends are tied to them. The first is the late, great Jim Pomeroy, who became the first American ever to win an FIM Motocross Grand Prix. The second is America’s only FIM World Trials Champion in the history of the sport, Bernie Schreiber, who won the title in 1979 when Bultaco was one of the top brands in the genre. On the motocross front, the Bultaco Pursang was capable of winning against any other brand. In flat track racing, Bultaco Astros dominated bullring-style short track and TT competition. Bultaco’s Sherpa T trials machines were world-class, and its Alpina enduro models sold well too.
Although not as rapidly as some of its peers on this list, Bultaco continued to fade from the limelight as the long-travel revolution of the mid-1970s took place in the dirtbike world. The company briefly went under in 1979 but came back again before closing again in 1983. In the late 1990s a new company resurrected the Bultaco name on its Sherco trials bike, signaling a potential return to prominence, but hassles over ownership of the name in America eventually forced the company just stick call itself Sherco. Today, Sherco build world-class trials and off-road motorcycles while the Bultaco brand name and logo currently adorns a series of electric-powered bicycles in Europe. What a shame.
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