Sidecar Racers

Sidecar Racers is a 1975 Australian film about an Australian motorcycle rider John Clayton who teams up with an American surfer Ben Murphy.

Producer Richard Irving was a vicepresident at Universal. He said he got the idea for making the film after attending a side car race in Sydney. He thought the sport captured the Australian spirit . . . the sense of fun, a certain recklessness, energy and the desire to win and wanted to make a film with the sport as a backdrop.Novelist Jon Cleary was hired to write the script, an original for the screen. He says Universal were keen to make lower budgeted films aimed at the youth audience in the wake of the success of American Graffiti 1973 although he remains unsure why they picked him to write the script since he was in his fifties at the time. Cleary decided to make the lead character a former surfboard rider because of the aerobatic skills needed to be a sidecar racer. ........

Source: Wikipedia