One of the many great things about Mr. Hansen was that he wasn't at all bitter that he was probably the single most important figure outside Japan in truly "selling" the CB750. Speaking as someone who was planning on buying a Trident (one of the best things I never did...) his pretesting of the road CB750 and his prescience at Daytona in rebuilding the CR motor with a new (crappy but barely adequate..) cam chain tensioner put the CB750 front and center in a way Honda never could have done on their own. They came to Daytona thinking "We know everything". Bob proved they were wrong.
And his previous work with the CR450 was just as good. If he had "overruled" the Honda reps and flattened the damn pipes (after Jim Odom highsided his CR in the Junior race after the pipes ate up all the ground clearance..) he could've won that one too. Then again, we've seen it any number of times: being "right" with a Japanese company isn't usually the way to a long career with them. Please see Rob Muzzy for a more recent example.
A great man, from his days with those beautiful Matchless G50's through his Honda foray and then making the Kawasaki Triple an actually acceptable road race machine - and making international stars of Dick Mann, Yvon DuHamel, Gary Nixon, Art Baumann et al.
Spirit
