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Terry (right), Byron (left) and V&H tech Joe Pace with one of their Suzuki GS racebikes back in the day.

LAST PAGE TERRY & BYRON: THE WAY THEY WERE

From racing buddies to drag-race champions to team owners to aftermarket powerhouses to industry legends, Terry Vance and Byron Hines go back a ways…

With Vance & Hines Suzuki’s Angelle Sampey blowing up this month’s cover (and leaving burnout darkies on a bunch of pages inside the issue), it made sense to focus a little attention on the guys who launched that Santa Fe Springs, Calif., racing powerhouse way back when — AMA Hall of Famers Terry Vance and Byron Hines.

The pair met at a So Cal’s Lions Drag Strip (shocker!) in early ’71, Vance running his dad’s CB750 Honda and Byron a Suzuki X6 Hustler and, later, another 750 Four he purchased after serving 18 months in Vietnam as a helicopter mechanic.

“Byron was working for Russ Collins and just back from Vietnam,” Vance remembers. “I’d gotten my own CB750 by that point, and Byron and I got to be friendly. After a while Russ asked me to ride his bikes, ones Byron was building.”

“Right away he was two or three tenths faster than me,” says Hines, “so I started helping him with his bike, and we started having some fun.” Eventually, Vance joined Hines at Collins’ shop, which now had a name: RC Engineering. The trio meshed, things were busy, and business was good — right up until the duo split from Collins to launch Vance & Hines in 1979.

And the rest, as they say, is history: Drag racing dominance on Suzukis; roadracing successes with Yamaha and Ducati; massive aftermarket prominence; and, more recently, Pro Stock successes with HarleyDavidson and, now, Suzuki. Full circle, indeed. Look for an indepth V&H feature in the coming months.