On The Pegs May 2020 - Volume 5 - Issue 5 | Page 102

On The Pegs
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pension. A few weeks later, the Husqvarna engineer Ruben Helmin brought new
rubber, but said, “If you’re going to race with this machine, you have to blame
yourself. The Silver Arrow is not made for racing.” Consequently, in the middle of
the 50s, people at Husqvarna did not realize what potential they had in the Silver-
pilen to be a competitive racer.
“Our first title came in 1959 when Rolf Tibblin won the European championship
(later world championship as of 1962) with our 250cc machine,” said Jaurén. “It
was a proud moment. Then we had constant success for more than 20 years until
Hakan Carlqvist won the 250 world title in 1979. Between these two remarkable
achievements, there were another twelve titles from riders like the Swedes Bill
Nilsson, Torsten Hallman, Bengt Aberg and the Finn Heikki Mikkola who all won
several titles, as did Tibblin.”
Husqvarna’s success resulted in good sales. In 1961, 10,500cc four-strokes were
made in the factory workshop, intended for sale. They immediately caught the
eye of customers. The first 250cc mx replicas came in 1962 when the factory
churned out 10 machines. Then, in 1963, a further 100 replicas were manufac-
tured for sale. A little over 60% of these 250s went to domestic riders, while 40%
of this batch mostly went to Finland and Norway. Bror Jaurén was an emotional
man. It happened that he would support a rider with spare parts because he liked
him, rather than considering his talent. Jaurén’s favourite machine over his mx