I was working on a project online when I ran across this 1975 advertisement for AMI - American Motorcycle Institute. AMI was a motorcycle repair school located in Florida in the 1970's. I'm not real familiar with the school's history, but at some point they were bought out by Wyotech, which is no longer teaching motorcycle repair. Anyway, what I found interesting about the AMI ad was the advertisement for a rotary engine lab. The school must have thought the rotary engine had a future in motorcycle transportation, or they were taking advantage of all the hype, but as we all know, production vehicles powered by a rotary engine fizzled out by the 1980's. The only big name production motorcycle I can think of that was powered by a rotary engine was the Suzuki RE5. The RE5 was manufactured from 1974 to 1976. The RE5's rotary engine was interesting, to say the least, but what I found even more interesting was it's crazy looking instrument cluster. It looked like something out of a 1970's Sci-Fi movie, but I guess that was the whole point.
I've include an advertisement for the Suzuki RE5, which you can see below. I also included a picture of the futuristic instrument cluster used on the RE5. Some pages are cropped poorly, but I have no control over that.
1975 AMI American Motorcycle Institute advertisement
1975 Suzuki RE5 advertisement. Page 1
1975 Suzuki RE5 advertisement. Page 2
1975 Suzuki RE5 advertisement. Page 3
1975 Suzuki RE5 advertisement. Page 4
1975 Suzuki RE5 advertisement. Page 5
1975 Suzuki RE5 advertisement. Page 6
Instrument cluster on a 1975 Suzuki RE5. I think this is the weirdest motorcycle instrument cluster I have ever seen.
