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THE MEANEST MINI EVER?

That’d be the vaunted Mini Elsinore of the 1970s, the trickest, fastest, lightest and most expensive mini racer available

If you say the words “Mini Elsinore” to most enthusiasts, a majority will probably flash on Honda’s miniature MR50, a 50cc two-stroke minicycle Honda produced and sold in 1974 and ’75 that was super cute but definitely more pitbike/playbike than racer.

A few, though, will have a very different understanding of the term, and it’s an understanding about as far removed from the words “pitbike” and “playbike” as one can get.

In a nutshell, the JWRP Mini Elsinore, which was originally developed, built and sold by Jeff Ward and his father Jack who made up Jeff Ward Racing Products out of Santa Ana, Calif., was a custom-framed, semi-long-travel minicycle racer powered by a sleevedto-100cc Honda CR125 engine.

And if you’re thinking that specific combination of parts could lay waste to all the built XR75s and YZ80s and Alsport Steen Hodaka 100s out there, you’d be exactly right — especially with “The Flying Freckle” Ward at the controls.

It all started with a custom-built C&J frame and swingarm crafted from 4130 chromoly steel, which housed a sleeved, ported and polished CR125 engine that inhaled through a 30mm Keihin carb and exhaled via a low pipe. The leading-axle fork was also CR125-spec, though shortened a bit, with CR hubs laced to mini-classlegal 17-inch (f) and 16-inch (r) rims via beefy spokes. Shocks were 12.5inch Boge/Mulholland units laid down at about 45 degrees.

Relative to the production-based

Wardy in flight on the Mini Elsinore in the mid-’70s.

minis lined up at most Sunday starting gates, a Mini Elsinore might as well have been a works Honda tossed into the mix. The reputation from those who raced them is probably best summed up by this quote attributed to So Cal legend Jimmy Holley: “It hauled ass, but was hard to ride.”

Of course, they weren’t cheap. The frame kit alone cost nearly $500 in ’75, (about $3,000 in today’s dollars), with an entire bike going for $2,000, about $1,500 more than an out-thedoor XR or YZ, and about $12,000 in 2022 dollars.

For a while, Ward’s Mini Elsinore racer was on display at Troy Lee Designs HQ, its trick swingarm, laiddown shocks, radical FMF porcupine head and exhaust, and custom-made C&J frame looking as good as the day the bike shrieked off the line back in the day. “My dad built and sold a few of those things,” Wardy told us. “I’m not sure how many, but that thing ran and handled like nobody’s business.”