Hodaka motorcycles were given names like Combat Wombat, Super Rat, Dirt Squirt, Road Toad, and Thunderdog, printed on side panels and advertised with cartoons of a wombat in a crash helmet. For many American teenagers in the 1960s and 1970s, those names were the gateway to their first real motorcycle. The bike was affordable, with the Ace 90 selling for $379, a price that a teenager could reach through paper routes, lawn mowing, and saved birthday money. It was street legal and trail ready, and for the first time, many young riders could buy a motorcycle with their own earnings rather than relying on parental gifts.
The story began with an unusual corporate chain of events. A company called Farm Chemicals of Oregon created a side business called Pabatco, the Pacific Basin Trading Company, in the early 1960s to import Japanese goods. They initially sold small bikes from a company called Yamaguchi, but when Yamaguchi went bankrupt in 1963, Pabatco was left with 480 dealers and no product to sell. According to the account, Pabatco’s general manager Hank Kuepke and retired Harley-Davidson dealer Ad Schwindt met at the Green Lantern Tavern in Athena, Oregon, and sketched a motorcycle on a bar napkin.
They designed bikes for American riders based on their own riding experience, and a Japanese engine company named Hodaka agreed to build them. The first model, the Ace 90, shipped in June 1964. Pabatco sold all 759 bikes produced that year. Within four years, sales reached 17,000 units, and the company was eventually selling 15,000 bikes annually.
Over 15 years, approximately 150,000 Hodakas were sold. The company’s achievements were notable. Service manager Harry Taylor won the 100 cc class at Daytona in 1968 on a Hodaka. In 1973, American rider Jim Pomeroy won the Portugal motocross Grand Prix on a Hodaka, becoming the first American to win a European motocross Grand Prix.
The brand’s popularity was rooted in its identity. The bikes were cheaper than comparable Hondas or Yamahas, and riders developed a sense of loyalty to the underdog brand. The Super Rat model was particularly successful, with Hodaka selling twice as many units in 1970 as Honda sold CR250s three decades later. The company’s fate changed when Shell Chemical acquired Farm Chemicals of Oregon in 1965, inheriting Pabatco in the process.
Shell allowed the motorcycle operation to continue as long as it was profitable. By the late 1970s, the dollar’s decline against the yen made Japanese production more expensive, and larger competitors like Honda, Yamaha, Suzuki, and Kawasaki poured resources into newer machines. In 1978, Shell closed Pabatco. The company offered to buy the Hodaka factory in Japan, but Hodaka refused.
Shell then shut the operation down without negotiation or an attempt to find a buyer. The tooling was sold to a Korean company called Daalim, dealers received a letter, and the Athena facility closed. Despite the company’s end, the brand has retained a devoted following. Every year in the last week of June, hundreds of riders bring vintage Hodakas to Athena, Oregon.
They camp in the surrounding fields and ride the same trails where prototypes were tested decades ago. Former Pabatco employees attend, meeting the riders who own the bikes they helped build. The Hodaka Club has roughly 2,000 members worldwide, and restored models have appreciated in value, with Super Rats selling for around $8,000 and Combat Wombats for about $10,000. Hemmings, a classic car publication, has described them as blue-chip investments.
For many attendees, the annual gathering is not about investment but about the bikes they bought as teenagers with hard-earned savings. The machines, weighing about 155 pounds and powered by two-stroke engines, still evoke strong memories for riders in their 60s and 70s. The names Combat Wombat, Super Rat, Dirt Squirt, Road Toad, and Thunderdog remain familiar to those who rode the bikes or wanted to.
The brand’s legacy is one of an affordable motorcycle designed by riders in a small Oregon town, built by a Japanese engine company, and eventually discontinued by a corporate parent that never fully embraced the motorcycle business.