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.
11 Facts About Floyd Clymer
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Floyd Clymer was inducted into the Motorcycle Hall of Fame in 1998 and into the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America on March 17,2020.
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Floyd Clymer 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 hill climb championships.
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Floyd Clymer was involved in motorcycle racing throughout his life, including race promotion and organization.
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Floyd Clymer owned a Harley-Davidson and Excelsior motorcycle dealership in the 1920s in Greeley.
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Floyd Clymer 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.
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The Floyd Clymer manual became shorthand among home mechanics as a useful guide to vehicle maintenance and repair.
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Floyd Clymer 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 Motorcycles, Treasury of Early American Automobiles, Those Wonderful Old Automobiles, Henry's Wonderful Model T and Historical Motor Scrapbooks from the 1950s.
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Floyd Clymer published an annual yearbook for the Indianapolis 500 from 1946 to 1968, as well as collections of British car and motorcycle magazine road tests.
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Floyd Clymer purchased Cycle magazine from Petersen Publishing in July 1957, which had a circulation of several hundred thousand during his tenure to 1966.
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Floyd Clymer attempted to purchase the Indian motorcycle brand in the 1950s, and was successful in buying it in the early 1960s.