Nicest One Left? 1976 Hodaka Thunderdog 250ED

Most of you vintage motorcycle fanatics have heard of Hodaka, a Japanese company with a distributorship in Oregon that made several fantastic dirt bikes. You may not have heard of this very rare model, one of the last ones from this once-famous company. This 1976 Hodaka Thunderdog 250ED can be found here on Facebook Marketplace in Bluffton, South Carolina, and they’re asking $4,300. Here is the original listing, and thanks to PRA4SNW for the tip!

Athena, Oregon was home to the company that distributed Hodaka’s small but serious off-road motorcycles with fun names around the world. The bikes had names such as Road Toad, Dirt Squirt, Super Rat, Combat Wombat, and others. Hodaka, named for the mountain near the Japanese factory, made motorcycles from 1964 until 1978 or so, and before that they made Yamagushi motorcycle engines. The Pacific Basin Trading Company (PABATCO) in Athena, OR, distributed Hodakas, and in another unusual ingredient for this company’s soup, Shell Oil Company owned Hodaka for most of its existence.

So the name Hodaka makes more sense now, with its Japanese roots. Founded by the two Oishi brothers, they took a trip to Europe in the late 1950s and brought around 50 motorcycles from various manufacturers back to Japan with them to study. They made engines for Yamagushi and started their own line of dirt bikes in 1964. This was the era when trail bikes were becoming popular in the U.S., and some give Hodaka credit for being one of the first to jump on that bandwagon.

The 250, sometimes seen as 250ED and sometimes with its other name attached, the Thunderdog, is one of the last models offered by Hodaka and was their biggest effort. Much as Rokon’s unusual dirt bike, the RT340, came at the worst possible time and pretty much bankrupted the company, such is the case for Hodaka’s 250. By the early 1970s, the tiiiiimes, they were’a chaangin’ as far as the economy, gas crisis, Vietnam War, and the climate also shifted enough to put several dozen snowmobile companies out of business. Hodaka invested a ton of money into their 250, and sadly it never paid off. Only 1,800 examples of the 250ED were made, and the seller lists this frame number as 1,351 and the engine as 1,381.

The engine is a Hodaka 246-cc two-stroke single-cylinder with oil injection and around 18 horsepower. Unfortunately, this one has had the oil injection system bypassed by a previous owner, so they mix gas and oil the old-fashioned way: in a can and dump it in the tank. Speaking of that, they say the tank has been replaced as well. The transmission is a 5-speed manual, and the seller says it starts, idles, shifts, and runs great, and they’ve owned it since 2005, storing it inside when it isn’t being ridden. These are very rare motorcycles, but even with that, Hagerty is only at $2,800 on the high end of the scale, so I’m not sure if the seller will find anyone willing to pay $4,300. Have any of you heard of this unusual Hodaka 250?