10424 Burbank Blvd. North Hollywood, CA. 91601 - Please Call For Sales Information
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10424 Burbank Blvd. North Hollywood, CA. 91601 - Please Call For Sales Information |
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About Us
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Moto Carrera 2006© |
I'm Doug Johnson, the owner of Moto Carrera. I
was brought up on an apple orchard in Yakima, WA., at the base of the
rugged Cascade mountains. I was just a
poor farm kid who had a love for dirt bikes and snowmobiles thanks to
my dad who got me started at 10. I learned basic mechanics at a
young age working on the farm vehicles and I soon experimented by
applying tuning and hop-up tricks learned from magazines to my brother
& my Yamaha mx bikes. Bored with racing each other on the gravel roads and tracks layed out in the orchard, I talked my parents into
letting us go to the
track and do it right. I started racing motocross in 1974 on a 2 yr old LT2
100MX, that with a year of intense porting and carb
changes, was as
fast as the venerable CR125 Hondas. I was inspired by the fame of
local heroes & good friends, Jim & Ron Pomeroy, as well as
some of the best tuners in the area. I followed roadracing for two
years working in the pits for my friend's highly-modified twin-carb Yamaha 100MX
single which was faster than many TA125 twins. He won 3 championships
with that bike while weighing nearly 220 lbs, much more than the bike! I continued honing my
tuning skills on 250's as well as snowmobiles and my '65 GTO hotrod.
Making a living selling motorcycles for 2 years, I was inspired to 'get
out of Dodge' by the Mount
St. Helens eruption. After shoveling volcanic ash for 2 weeks (over 4"
had fallen on Yakima), I packed up and moved to where I'd always dreamed
of living, southern California. 
I
instantly got hooked on canyon riding and between bike-selling gigs, I
got a job at the ever-popular motorcycle accessory store, Racers Supply. It was road racing heaven.
I began building a highly modified RD400 for the track with my discount
on all those exotic parts.
Before the project was finished, a friend loaned me a TZ250 chassis and
I was stoked! I got my racing license and spent the next three years as
well as every paycheck racing ARRA races at both Willow Springs and
Riverside. While roadracing I had amassed a huge inventory of parts and
would often have people lined up at my garage on friday & saturday
nights waiting for me to get home & sell them RD goodies. It seemed like
at the time it was just me & SpecII taking care of these guys' needs
& most of them would only deal with me. I had a growing clientele but
didn't think of it as that big of a deal. I got tired of living in the
valley, as well as the financial grind of racing and decided to move to
the beach and chase girls. Unfortunately garage space was non-existent &
I had to sell all of my motorcycle parts & most of my bikes. I remember
getting $1900. for three bikes and 5 or 6 pickup loads of mostly wheels,
motors & frames, a fraction of what it was worth, but I couldn't take it
with me. Shortly thereafter I was head-hunted out of the bike biz and
was offered a 
job as
promotional director for a large collector car auction company. I helped
sell some of the most valuable cars in the world & dealt with some of
the wealthiest of the wealthy. I did this for a couple of years followed
by, believe it or not, a year & a half as a fine art consultant at a
gallery in Beverly Hills. Tiring quickly of the
finicky, plastic, hoity-toity crowd, I went back to selling
bikes at one of my favorite shops, Honda N Hollywood, and I really felt back at home with
familiar motorcycle people. I had just turned 31, was making great money again
selling bikes and decided to buy a house that just went up for sale
down the street from the shop. I secured it with a deposit on Friday
and planned to meet with his attorney the following Tuesday. It was a happy weekend that included
the purchase of some new Goodyear GT's for my Chevy smallblock powered
Jaguar XJS, a landmark round of golf, as well as a cocktail party with friends
at the famous Sagebrush Cantina. The celebrating didn't last long. I didn't even get those tires scuffed
in before my playboy lifestyle was abruptly ended. The next day at Monday night judo class I broke my
neck in a sparring accident. I was left paralyzed from the chest down, a C-5
quadriplegic. After 6 months of rehab I finally came home. Life was
coming at me fast and the adjustment had to be made quickly or I'd be
in a nursing home. The pile of
bills was huge and not being able to go back to selling bikes, I had to
come up with a plan that would enable me to not only pay the bills that
this 50yr-old house was generating, but I now had to pay for a nurse to help
me daily for the rest of my life. On top of an obscene mortgage, the
utilities, plumbing problems, pool maintenance, painting, yard work,
vacant bedrooms, etc. were eating me alive. My expenses were now about
triple what they had ever been before. It was daily financial
desperation as well as a great deal of stress from nurses who would
leave me in bed, or in my chair for days, sometimes stealing whatever
they could before flaking out. One of them fell in love with my
physical therapist one afternoon, and never returned. As I was told, they
went to the desert, took a few hits of acid and never looked back. I was
left in my bed for two days before I found another nurse. Or, when a couple of roomates
were falling months behind on rent, both of them went on a
wall-to-wall stealing spree, taking all my good stuff before moving
out the next morning owing lots of cash, honking their horn as they
left. Aahh...the life of a quadriplegic landlord! In
one respect I was lucky, life was way too chaotic for depression to
set in! 
Thanks
to my dad, I was able to live rent-free as well as utilize an 80x120'
warehouse for my parts business. I incorporated the business and with
profits from parts sales, I bought every used R5 & RD I could find in
central Washington. My inventory grew quickly, as well as my renewed
hatred for the long, cold Yakima winters. I built a snowmobile that I
controlled with a mouthpiece throttle but I couldn't handle the cold
like I used to. I owned a Nascar late model car with a buddy of mine who
drove. We spent a lot of money to have a winning car, in fact it ended
up costing a little over a dollar a second! After only four times
out we won the last race of the season and ninth place for the 22 race
season. It was a great experience but once winter began to set in, my
aching bones made me restless. I yearned for the weather and the
year-round marketplace that southern California naturally offered.
Yakima is where I was born, but after 21 years in L.A. I feel like it's my
home. After 2 1/2 years, and the
second "100 year winter" in a row, I bought an L.A. Times & began
looking for a building. I scoured the San Fernando valley & came across a building on
December 28th. A friend of mine had a shop next to it & I was familiar
with the property. After talking to the owner on the phone that evening,
I had him Fedex some photos. 2 days later I viewed the photos, called
the owner & sent a deposit. The next call was to U-Haul to rent a truck.
The next call was to laborers for moving help & we began packing within
a couple of hours. We were fully loaded & ready to pull out on January
3. My father still hadn't accepted that I was leaving. I had just told
him a few days ago & here we were, ready to pull out of the driveway, my
nurse with her husband & 3 vehicles including a 28ft U-Haul truck packed
with 30,000lbs of RD parts, my brother & I with our van pulling one of
the cars. It was quite a caravan. When we left, there was 10" of ice
with deep ruts in the driveway, covered with about a foot of fresh snow.
It was cold & ugly, however, 30 miles south of Yakima the roads were
bare & dry & I haven't seen the snow since! We arrived in N. Hollywood
at our new shop on January 7, 1997. We were unpacked & back in business
in a couple of weeks. It seems like it wasn't anywhere near that long
ago. I'm still paralyzed and have had the same nurse now for nearly 4
years. We have had as many
as seven employees both full & part-time. We currently have 3, with 2
independent contractors and will soon be hiring another. With such great
support from our loyal clientele, I feel quite lucky being able to make
a living doing something I really love.
Steve Fuentes
