One for the Ages

STORY BY ANTHONY CONROY

Cafe Racer Magazine

There's a certain irony in the name
Rob Iannucci gave to his vintage
motorcycle and racing effort. By dubbing
it Team Obsolete, Iannucci was having
a bit of fun without revealing just how
hard he fought to ensure the team he
owned, the motorcycles he loved and

the racers who rode them did not

become irrelevant and forgotten.

​

Iannucci, 80, a patriarch in the world
of vintage motorcycle racing and its
most outspoken — and oftentimes most
controversial — advocate, died on
Dec. 7 in the hospital not long after
canceling a popular holiday party due
to an undisclosed illness.

In addition to colleagues, friends and
family, Iannucci leaves behind his wife
and business partner, Sonia Ewers,
a stepson and a collection of
motorcycles that is the envy of the
vintage racing world.

"A lot of us came to love him. He was
controversial, but you cannot discount
that he dedicated a lot of his life to this
sport, and the time, effort and money he
put into it," said Daniel May, executive
director at the American Historic Racing Motorcycle Association. "Rob went out and owns the pedigree bikes that raced at the Isle of Man, that [Italian racer Giacomo] Agostini raced, that Cal Rayborn raced, that Dick Mann raced. He sought out the rarest of the rare and kept those things alive, and that takes a lot of dedication to do."

It's easy to see why many considered Iannucci so likable. He was passionate and romantic about the motorcycles he loved, talkative, gregarious, boisterous, funny. His outsized personality fit his outsized frame. A talented tuner, mechanic and street rider, he once joked he couldn't make it as a racer mostly because, "I was on the heavy side and my talents were elsewhere."

It's also easy to see why Iannucci rubbed some the wrong way. He could be argumentative, demanding, intimidating and obsessive. "Really, he was a perfectionist," said Seth Rosko, Team Obsolete's head technician and mechanic. 

Rosko, a bicycle frame maker who began working for Team Obsolete roughly 12 years ago, first met his future boss around 2005, during the height of a years-long dispute between Iannucci and AHRMA. "He had a reputation for, at least before I knew him, being sort of a tyrant," Rosko said. "He knows what he wants and what he's doing, and he didn't suffer fools. But once you get a rapport with someone like that, it became a very good relationship. He was a really, chill, happy guy to be around."

Team Obsolete rider, mechanic, associate, and friend David Roper met Iannucci in 1978 at a race in Bridgehampton on Long Island and the two have worked together — at the track and in the shop — ever since. "We always had a good idea of what the other was thinking," said Roper. "I knew him very well and he knew me very well. Each of us tried to push the other in certain directions and made a lot of compromises. We sure made a lot of things happen together."

Iannucci was a storyteller, which means he loved to talk — in the shop, at the track, on the street, at lunch. He loved a nice meal, especially Italian, a good cigar, and a lively conversation.

"Everywhere we went, he'd see a friend or seemed to know someone," said Rosko. "He could interact with just about anyone. We'd go to the steakhouse or a restaurant and he'd always know the waiter and the maître d'. Like he had all these secret hotspots, which was really cool. He'd say, 'Oh, there's this 100-year-old focacceria around the corner that we gotta check out.' "

Roper said Iannucci's persistence and persuasiveness were among his largest attributes, like when at a race at Donnington Park in 1981, Iannucci was able to secure a new rocker arm that busted on the team's Harley-Davidson XR750 during practice.

The broken rocker was sent to a local welder, but "we were skeptical" that it would be good for racing, said Roper. So Iannucci shifted to a Plan B, and after using a pay phone to call every number he could find in the phone book, Roper said, "he found the only person in England that owned an XR750."

"It was some local Harley importer and Rob talked him into taking the rocker box off of it," said Roper. "They didn't even own the bike. It was one of the customers. But he talked him into it and had someone ride it to Donnington Park. The whole thing seemed fantastic. And later this guy comes flying into the paddock, locking up the brakes and everything, and hands the rocker box over."

FINDING HIS TALENTS

To say Iannucci lived an interesting life would be understating his roles as a former assistant district attorney in New York City, a member of the Peace Corps who served in Jamaica and Barbados, a real estate developer whose team is headquartered in a Brooklyn clocktower he rescued, and a restorer of naval ships, particularly World War II-era patrol torpedo (PT) boats. But before all of that, before his eventual prominence as race team owner and becoming AHRMA's founder, Iannucci, who was born in New York and raised in New Jersey, loved to figure out how things worked.

"The earliest period of my life — even when I was five years old — I was a mechanic," Iannucci said in a 2021 interview. "I always had a talent for mechanical things," he said. When he was 10, he built his first motorcycle — "well, really, it was a scooter" — with a lawnmower engine.

In the Peace Corps, he helped set up repair stations to teach the locals how to maintain marine engines. It was during this time, he said, when he really learned how to ride a motorcycle.

"It opened up a whole new world for me," he said. "Before you knew it, I had a Norton Commando. It was the only Norton Commando in Jamaica or Barbados, and we used to do street racing. I was taught to ride by people who had no fear. We would race around the whole island of Jamaica. How the hell I didn't get killed I don't know."

That blue Commando is, of course, still in the vast collection of Team Obsolete's nearly 100 motorcycles and was recently restored. Seth Rosko said Iannucci regularly rode to work in Brooklyn on a Honda Hawk NT650 — his daily commuter — but rode the Commando whenever he could around the reservoirs near his home in Kingston, N.Y.

THE VINTAGE RACING SCENE

After returning to the U.S. and working as an assistant district attorney, Iannucci began seeking more information about bikes — both in the U.S. and U.K. — and bike culture. Eventually, he became obsessed with owning a Matchless G50 racing single. That, he said, is when he "turned his passion into a calling." His first G50 — serial No. 1709 purchased off of late racer, engineer and mechanic Albert Gunter — was the same 500cc single that Roper would later ride to win the 1984 Historic TT at the Isle of Man.

"I think I borrowed money from three different people to buy it," said Iannucci. "I was still kind of a penniless assistant district attorney here in Brooklyn and wasn't making any money. That bike came along, and I wasn't going to let it pass me by, you know?"

By 1978, Iannucci was already rising as a leading figure in vintage racing and founded Team Obsolete to showcase bikes that, by that time, hadn't been heard racing in anger in decades. Racing to win and sharing the experience were always paramount.

"You'd think a guy with a million dollar bike would be unapproachable," said Rosko, "but Rob was more than happy to have an 8-year-old come sit on the bike and get a picture with his dad. He wanted to make it approachable and fun and spread the enthusiasm to other people."

"When it boils down to it, all of it was just a tool to sort of build this community," Rosko said. "After the races at the end of the day, he loved sitting in the paddock with a bunch of people, maybe having a beer, having some food. He was always beaming. He loved that. He thought it was so cool and he was always so thankful to everybody, and I think that's what it was all about for him."

Iannucci took the community-building to a new level after founding AHRMA in 1986. At the time, vintage racing was gaining in popularity, and Iannucci, after seeing similar organizations in Europe, recognized a need for a domestic body that could provide organization, continuity and consistency in rules and procedures for vintage racing.

And that's where the story gets complicated.

IANNUCCI vs. AHRMA vs. AMA

From the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, the sport gained steam and enjoyed modest success, but by the '90s, the relationship between Iannucci and AHRMA leadership began to sour. In 1993, Iannucci was upset over a proposed AHRMA rule change that would allow it to terminate any individual's membership without providing cause to the rest of the association. 

The one that really got under Iannucci's skin, Roper said, was a dispute that occurred a year later when Team Obsolete protested another team's win. Iannucci discovered that a rival motorcycle was fitted with illegal carburetors. He and Roper protested, and AHRMA agreed. The protest was upheld, Roper said, "but, the rider (for rival team Barber Dairies) still got the points," thus robbing Roper of the championship.

With relations continuing to spiral, the membership rule — the one Iannucci protested in 1993 — was enforced, and the organization's founder was out the door. It was 1997 and Iannucci seethed.

In '98, AHRMA fought back with its own salvo and sued Iannucci and Team Obsolete over a copyright infringement issue, eventually winning the case.

Around the same time, AHRMA began denying entry to Team Obsolete's riders — "they weren't even allowed to have Team Obsolete on their leathers," said Rosko — and Iannucci, a litigator by trade, took AHRMA and the AMA to court.

"I think he was distraught about it all," said Rosko. "That was his baby. He loved the bikes, he loved the show, he loved finding the riders and pairing them up with the bikes again — like getting Agostini to ride in Daytona — and making a whole spectacle of it. When that wasn't happening anymore, I think he grew a bit bitter, and rightfully so."

Iannucci tapped into his legal expertise and proceeded to drown AHRMA in court paperwork and motion filings, hoping to bankrupt the very organization he once started.

In 2006, he succeeded. AHRMA's insurance carrier went belly up and forced the racing body into Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Though AHRMA's court-ordered reorganization was successful, part of a settlement stipulated that AHRMA could no longer work with the AMA and other similar organizations. That had a crippling effect on AHRMA's three divisions: roadracing, off-road, and flat-track.

"The off-road contingency of AHRMA was very upset," said May, AHRMA's chief, "because they felt like, 'Hey, 'this doesn't have anything to do with us. This is a roadrace issue, yet we're not allowed to do off-road at AMA events anymore, and neither can flat track.' So there certainly was some resentment among the AHRMA members that this had gone down."

When May took control in the fall of 2023, long after the fighting began, he did so with a mandate from the organization's board of trustees: "Get this done and work out a deal," said May.

Iannucci saw May as someone who was willing to find a compromise. So in July 2024, after a year of informal discussions and meetings, including at Team Obsolete's Brooklyn headquarters, Iannucci relented and released AHRMA from its AMA restriction.

It was a victory for all sides, but after decades of rancor, would reconciliation even be possible?

"Yes," May said. "It went on way too long. But eventually (Iannucci) was persuaded to make peace, and I think he was happy with the agreement."

THE COLLECTION

That leaves the biggest question of all: What happens to Team Obsolete and Iannucci's assemblage of vintage motorbikes?

The team's history includes more than 1,800 races around the world and riding partnerships with legends like Roper, Agostini, Phil Read, Jim Redman, Dick Mann, Don Vesco, and Kenny Roberts. Still, its most tangible legacy is the nearly 100 machines, most of them historically significant, museum-quality Grand Prix models. They include:

• An Agostini-raced 1976 four-cylinder MV Agusta 350.

• A 1967 MV Agusta 350 triple.

• A rare 1964 Honda RC165 raced by Redman.

• A 1954 AJS E95 Porcupine.

• The Isle of Man-winning 1958 Matchless G50.

• A 1973 Harley-Davidson XRTT raced by Cal Rayborn.

• The 1966 350cc, four-cylinder, seven-speed Benelli ridden by Renzo Pasolini in the 1968-69 season.

• The "Lightweight One" AJS 7R, developed by Mann.

While everything will be owned and operated by Iannucci's wife, Sonia, Rosko said he will manage the collection and Team Obsolete's day-to-day operations. "I talked to (Iannucci) about this a bit," Rosko said. "It's a bit morbid talking to somebody while they're alive about this, but I know he wanted to keep the bikes on the track. I also know he understood that probably some of the bikes would have to be sold and things would change. But I know his intention was for things to carry on in some capacity.

"Obviously as everything unfolds more will become apparent, but for right now, the dictate from upstairs is to just keep doing what we're doing," he said. "I'm planning for the season, I have projects lined up, I have bikes I'm finishing, I have bikes that are in the queue to be done next, and I have a race schedule."

Until then, in the shop that breathes new life into old things inside a building saved from abandonment and disrepair, the work Iannucci started so many years ago will go on — without his larger-than-life presence, but far from becoming obsolete.

​