Danny Chandler’s 1979 Maico 250 Magnum II

While writing for Cycle magazine in the late 1970s and early 1980s, I sometimes marveled that Maico stuck with air-cooled, piston-port engines and dual shocks while Japanese motorcycle manufacturers moved to liquid-cooled, reed-valve engines and monoshocks.

For a few years, at least, this holdout strategy worked in the pro ranks, in large part due to the talents of riders like AMA Motorcycle Hall of Famer Danny Chandler (1959-2010). In 1979, Chandler stunned the motocross community by flying his Maico downhill at California’s Saddleback Park in a bounding leap that was two parts Robbie Maddison and 10 parts Superman. Like James Stewart and his “Bubba Scrub” decades later, “Magoo” simply operated on another level.

Success came early for the Northern California native. He turned Expert at 14, but his burgeoning talent would have to wait for unleashing in the AMA pro ranks when he turned 16. By 1978, Chandler would score three Top-10 finishes, including one in the AMA 125 Nationals at Trabuco Canyon, Calif. The young star then signed with Maico for the 1979 AMA 250 Motocross Championship, a relationship that lasted two glorious years.

The Maico 250 Magnum II displayed in the AMA Motorcycle Hall of Fame is a re-creation of one of Chandler’s rides from the 1979-80 AMA series. For the original race bike, mechanic Bill DaPrato modified the bike especially for Chandler by lightening the piston, crankshaft and clutch basket so the engine would rev quicker, a perfect upgrade for the cat-quick youngster. An aluminum swingarm replaced the Magnum’s standard chrome-moly unit, and a Fox fork and air shocks replaced the stock suspension.

The breathtaking leaps Chandler performed on the Maico—flying over the heads of his competitors and sometimes suffering huge crashes—earned him his “Magoo” nickname and a host of hardcore fans. The lad simply held nothing back.

Chandler left Maico for the 1981 season, won the 1982 500cc U.S. Grand Prix, plus ABC-TV’s “The Superbikers” event, both at Carlsbad, Calif., for American Honda, and later traveled to Europe, where his career ended in 1986.

Fortunately, DaPrato kept copious notes on Chandler’s Maico, built one just like it and then lent that bike to the museum in Pickerington, Ohio, for display. If you visit, imagine yourself in an AMA 250 motocross race, riding your fastest at the front of a crowded pack, hearing a screaming engine and sensing a shadow overhead, and then seeing the bottom of a bike’s engine cradle and some boot soles flying past. That was no jetliner. It was Magoo and his Maico.