Floyd Clymer, a pioneer in the sport of motorcycling, was a racer, a motorcycle dealer and distributor, a magazine publisher, a racing promoter, an author, and a motorcycle manufacturer. He was inducted into the Motorcycle Hall of Fame in 1998, and was recently inducted into the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America.
Early Years
Floyd Clymer was a natural salesman, and became the youngest Ford dealer in the USA at age 14, in Greeley Colorado. He began racing motorcycles in the 1910s, and was very successful though the 1920s, winning the National Sidecar Championship in 1920, the Pikes Peak Hillclimb, and several other Hillclimb Championships. He was involved in motorcycle racing throughout his life, including race promotion and organization. He owned a Harley-Davidson and Excelsior motorcycle dealership in the 1920s in Greeley. Clymer began publishing in his 20s, among other commercial ventures, including advertising his services as an advisor to inventors in the back pages of American Motorcycle Association Magazine. He was convicted of mail fraud, and could have avoided jail time if he admitted wrongdoing and refunded any funds received, but Clymer refused to admit guilt, and thus spent a year in Leavenworth prison as a felon. He was apparently a model prisoner, and was given privileges including conjugal visits with his wife Meryl, and ran his businesses while in prison.
Publishing
The Clymer name is best known for his publishing business. His first publication, Motorcycle Topics, was published in the late 1910s, and he resumed publishing magazines and books in earnest after WW2. He published the popular Clymer repair manuals for cars, motorcycles, and powersports vehicles in a standardized format to step-by-step disassembly and reassembly of the complete vehicle, illustrated with photographs. The 'Clymer manual became shorthand among home mechanics as a useful guide to vehicle maintenance and repair. In 2013 the Clymer manual business became part of the Haynes Group, and are still published under the Clymer name. Clymer also published dozens of books on cars and motorcycles, and was among the first to assemble historical surveys of the car and motorcycle industries with his Treasury of Early American Motorcycle, Treasury of Early American Automobile, Those Wonderful Old Automobiles, Henry's Wonderful Model T, and Historical Motor Scrapbooks from the 1950s. He also published an annual yearbook for the Indianapolis 500 from 1946-1968, as well as collections of British car and motorcycle magazine road tests. Clymer purchased Cycle Magazine from Petersen Publishing in July 1957, which had a circulation of several hundred thousand during his tenure through 1966. It was said of Clymer that "He never met a motorcycle he didn't like", and some criticized Cycle for failing to prompt improvements in motorcycle design through journalistic feedback.
Motorcycle Manufacturer
Clymer attempted to purchase the Indian motorcycle brand in the 1950s, and was successful in buying it in the early 1960s. By 1967 he had begun distribution of Indian-branded minicycles, featuring Jawa, Morini Franco and Morini Minarelli engines and Chassis components using names such as Papoose, Ponybike and Boy Racer. The success of these small machines lead to the design and small-run assembly of the IndianVelo 500 from a mix of British drivetrain components from Velocette, Royal Enfield, and Norton, in a specially commissioned Italian chassis. The Chassises included frames by Italjet, forks by Marzocchi, and wheels by Grimeca. He also sought to promote the Münch motorcycle as an Indian, and commissioned Friedl Münch to create a motorcycle using a sidevalveIndian ChiefV-twin motor in a Münch chassis. While his minicycle line would continue, and expand, into the seventies, the realization of these full-sized indian cycles would came to a halt when Floyd Clymer died of a heart attack in 1970, at age 74.
