Don Emde
2020 Grand Marshal
We are honored to announce Don Emde as the Grand Marshal for the 16th Annual Barber Vintage Festival October 9-11, 2020.
Don Emde does not fall into any traditional motorcycling typecasts. He is most famous for winning the Daytona 200 in 1972. This win made him and his father Floyd the first (and only) father and son to win America’s most prestigious motorcycle race. His ride aboard a privately entered Yamaha TR3 is considered a major upset in Daytona history. “I just had it in my head that I was going to win the race, that’s all there was to it,” Emde says many years later. Don Emde is much more than a Daytona 200 winner.
Don Emde was born into a California motorcycling family. His grandparents, parents, brothers and sister all have interesting motorcycle ties and histories. His racing career began with scrambles, now known as motocross. Shortly thereafter, Emde began dirt track racing on area short track and half-mile circuits. Still a teenager, Emde began participating in local club road racing events log serious logging miles on the weekends, shuttling back and forth between scrambles, dirt track and road racing events. Emde became one of the top racers in Southern California in the late 1960s. He won an amateur national on the dirt half-mile in Oklahoma City and a slew of Southern California races, establishing himself as one of the true up-and-coming riders on the national level. In 1970 Emde had a unique situation of having a split AMA racing license. Due to his impressive road racing resume, Emde was given an expert road racing license, despite still being classified as an amateur in dirt-track events. In his rookie season, Emde had some impressive outings earning his very first AMA national podium finish when he took third at the road race in Loudon, New Hampshire. Emde was riding even stronger in the 250cc class and at Talladega, he won the 250 Grand Prix beating Gary Nixon and Cal Rayborn in one of the closest races of that season.
The Daytona 200 victory was the pinnacle of Emde’s racing career. It had been his dream since childhood and now he had won it. He ran the ’72 season without much success and, after finishing seventh on a Suzuki at Daytona in 1973, Emde retired from racing. After his racing career, Emde continued to work in the family motorcycle business and eventually took his connections, knowledge and experience and went to work in marketing, first for Bell Helmets then later he became publisher of the industry magazine, Dealer News. His collecting of motorcycle photography and great regard for preservation of motorcycle history drove him to publish The Daytona 200 in1990. Now in its second printing, it is THE reference for the race. Soon after finishing the book, he joined the Board of Trustees of the American Motorcycle Heritage Foundation, and later became its Chairman. In 1999 he was inducted into the Motorcycle Hall of Fame. Emde currently publishes a monthly dealer magazine for motorcycle parts distributor Parts Unlimited called PartsMag.
Emde’s business deals with diverse projects from historical preservation of motorcycling to publishing to racing sponsorship. A recent adventure was deep in American motorcycling history. He led a ride from San Diego, California to Manhattan, New York that retraced the 1914 transcontinental ride of Erwin “Cannon Ball” aboard a 1914 Indian. This led to Finding Cannonball’s Trail. In 2019, his latest book was published, The Speed Kings – The Rise and Fall of Motordrome. Don Emde also serves as the current President of the TrailBlazers, an organization was founded in 1936 by A.F. Van Order, a Los Angeles area motorcycling enthusiast. The original requirement was that you have ridden motorcycles for at least 20 years which he has and has done with quite panache.
