In the smaller 250 cc category companies with two-stroke motorcycles came into their own. In 1962 a 250 cc world championship was established. In 1957 it was upgraded to World Championship status. In 1952 the FIM, motorcycling’s international governing body, set up an individual European Championship using a 500 cc engine displacement formula. BSA riders dominated international competitions throughout the 1940s. The period after World War II was dominated by BSA, which had become the largest motorcycle company in the world. Rigid frames gave way to suspensions by the early 1930s, and swinging fork rear suspension appeared by the early 1950s, several years before manufacturers incorporated it in the majority of production street bikes. The intense competition over rugged terrain led to technical improvements in motorcycles. Off-road bikes from that era differed little from those used on the street. During the 1930s the sport grew in popularity, especially in Britain where teams from the Birmingham Small Arms Company (BSA), Norton, Matchless, Rudge, and AJS competed in the events. The first known scramble race took place at Camberley, Surrey in 1924. Though known as scrambles racing (or just scrambles) in the United Kingdom, the sport grew in popularity and the competitions became known internationally as “motocross racing”, by combining the French word for motorcycle, motocyclette, or moto for short, into a portmanteau with “cross country”. When organisers dispensed with delicate balancing and strict scoring of trials in favour of a race to become the fastest rider to the finish, the activity became known as “hare scrambles”, said to have originated in the phrase, “a rare old scramble” describing one such early race. Motocross first evolved in Britain from motorcycle trials competitions, such as the Auto-Cycle Clubs’s first quarterly trial in 1909 and the Scottish Six Days Trial that began in 1912.
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