You obviously haven't heard of or seen any AMA dirt track racing. Very real bikes, very ridable bikes. They are short wheel base because that is what is needed on the track.
This may or may not be the same bike in the AMA Museum, but it is one of the bikes run. Real people, real bikes!
Go to a flat track race, you'll love it:
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Here is my SR in mock up, it is now in pieces and I'm working to get it built this spring. Have to get the frame soda blasted and am taking it today. Part of the plan is that there is a track in eastern Ohio that has open track days on their short track and I want to play a bit. No racing, just sideways. The engine has a 528cc 9.5:1 Wiseco piston, a Megacycle track grind cam, 38 Mikuni, and a one-off high pipe we built about twenty years ago. It is built with the late 60s look, no tail section, just a fender and seat. No lights yet, but minimal and out of the way with LEDs behind the side plates and 2" driving lights for headlights to be fitted in a front plate. Racer first, road second. Those are soft tie straps on the forks and there is only a seat pan on the bike in the shots. It was roughed out and now time to paint the frame and all. Nothing trick, Rustoleum silver, a throw back to my Bultaco short tracker. I even like the semi-gloss red primer, so that's the color there with some graphics to come.
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it started out more like this guy's bike when I got it twenty years ago:
As for the clubman stuff, it is pretty neat stuff. We were all trying to do something like that back in 1975-80, but when the true sportbikes came out it kind of made it a moot point.
It is now a kind of fun hobby for a lot of riders and breathed new life into all the kind of drab early twins and fours from Honda and the rest. The ties to vintage roadracing make it a lot more interesting these days. The AMA and AHRMA doing vintage races makes it really interesting. A friend of mine is racing a pretty tricked out, but not overdone, clubman style Honda CB350, I caught him at his first race on the bike at Mid Ohio this last summer. He's done some racing in the past and is a fairly fast amateur. His friend won with the similar bike, but Jerry was closing fast in third.
The bike may not look as flashy as some of the overdone clubman bikes, but I will tell you any bike like that will pull my attention away from flashy paint on a less functional bike any day. For a lot of us it is in the detail and the function.
It can, like street/trackers, get stupid expensive when the bikes are diverted from function to form. I find the bikes built in the true spirit of both types to be far more interesting than the ones built with "break the bank, blow the budget" attitudes, going beyond what a racer would do when building a bike to race. There is a point where billet bits are BS.
The high buck clubman and street/trackers built would never turn a wheel on a track, because they cost too much to build them, should they be damaged, or they aren't actually built with any sort of race set up in mind to start. It's like when there are non-functional things used, like clubman bikes with huge fat tires for looks rather than functional good handling tires or when some chrome "screen door stopper" is used for shocks rather than a decent aftermarket set that would actually work. It gets to be all about the look and not the function. Kind of like some of the custom chopper stuff, but they retain most of the function which the choppers sometimes don't. Those like Indian Larry built, did retain function.
Ridable/raceable first, looks second.
