Yamaha XT 500 and HL 500

Gert Tholes Yamaha XT and HL 500

First love

"When I saw the first photos of the XT 500 in MOTORRAD at the beginning of 1976, it was immediately clear: that one and no other."

I.Back then, I learned the reports by heart and scraped together every penny as a student, only to get hold of one of the first officially offered machines in Germany in the spring of 1977.

Gert Tholes Yamaha XT and HL 500

First love

€ 2.00

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The XT was awesome: 500 cc four-stroke, but with reliable Japanese technology, a robust off-road machine – and it just looked fantastic. Right at the beginning there was a moment of shock: at a traffic light the front wheel jerked up, I did an impressive wheelie across the intersection. Looked cool, but was completely out of control. Okay, well gone, backflip avoided, I was impressed by this sheer violence.

From today’s point of view, of course, you judge it differently, but back then the XT with its high-torque two-valve engine was something very special. I immediately wrapped my XT around the terrain: rough Metzeler Six Days, long Bilstein dampers, Tweesmann exhaust, plastic fenders; superfluous nonsense went in the bin.

Already at the end of 1977 the XT was pretty much overworked in off-road use, I switched to the Crosser HL 500. I raced with it for a few years. And I have remained loyal to HL to this day. Every now and then she still gets a run, in September the steam hammer will be allowed to shoot out of its megaphone again at the Classic Cross in Wietstock.

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