Obituary by Honda enthusiast, Jean Caillou

The former American Honda trials team manager, Bob Nickelsen has passed away on Saturday 30 August 2025, aged 84 years.

Born in the February of 1941, Bob Nickelsen followed his father in his Navy assignments, moving from place to place every two years. After high school in Washington, D.C. where he ‘learned toughness’, he himself enlisted to travel round the world. He finally landed in California, starting trials in the late 1960s. This was on a Bultaco, winning the Southern California championship, he then finished second to the late Lane Leavitt in the pioneering North American trials championship in 1972.

The following year, he bought an early model Honda TL125, which would soon be bored out to 150 cc, and decided to enter the Saddleback National, where the most famous European riders were invited for the first time. This was two years before the European championship became the World championship. The muddy event saw most foreign riders excluded on time, when Bob managed to finish in tenth place on the diminutive 4-stroke machine, only to be noticed by representatives of the Honda factory, who immediately asked him to organise a Honda trials team to compete at the AMA championship.

It was a one-man team to start with, before Bob hired a 17 year-old George Smith III to ride the little TL, now a 163 cc. The following year, they received pre-production TL250s, these were still too heavy, but shortly afterwards, three state-of-the-art 305cc prototypes arrived from Japan, sporting frames based on Sammy Miller’s development work in England. This prompted Bob to hire three more riders, two from California, Marland Whaley, then aged 16 and Mark Eggar, 17 and one from the Washington state, Joe Guglielmelli. Montesa mounted, Marland had been second to Leavitt the previous year, but under Bob’s coaching he easily won three championships in a row, 1975-77, while his team mates generally scored top ten finishes.

Not only was Bob Nickelsen a fine manager, he was also a good mechanic and tuner, and the first minder in America, probably second to Sammy Miller in the world.

After Whaley left him to return to Montesa and to win two more championships, Bob remained with Honda for another twenty-three years, mostly as an Automotive Senior Engineer Specialist, visiting dealerships across the country. He also started to race mountain bikes and ride fast trail bikes for fun, but health intervened and being prone to heart attacks he had to quit racing after the 16th.

Bob was inducted to the North American Trials Council ‘Hall of Fame’ in 2011.

He retired to Arizona in 1996 with his partner Janice, where he enjoyed riding UTVs in the mountains until very recently. He was very generous to his friends, and tough to himself. His goal was to have fun every day. He will be sadly missed.

This obituary was prepared for Trials Guru by Jean Caillou, France.