Three years ago, having written off my 125 on the aforesaid Porsche and with fingers crossed over the imminent test, I decided to look for a new bike. With the vast sum of £200 of the bank manager's money burning a hole in my pocket and a wife who was convinced that I was some form of latter-day Kamikaze pilot, I decided that I wanted something to hack to work on, occasionally take the wife or one of the kids for a bit of a spin and even more occasionally disappear for fairly vast distances.
A 250 was my first thought but most of these were crap, more or less, then I spotted the good old CD200. I can hear you all groaning but from my point of view it had a great deal in its favour. They only wanted £200 for a start off, it was fairly recent (W reg) and only boasted 4800 miles on the clock. It was only averagely tatty for a Honda, just the usual problems like big chunks of paint missing, exhausts terminally rotten and seat ripped, it was simple enough to be maintained by a complete mechanical cretin such as yours truly and wasn't going to cost much to keep on the road (insurance £18). And so it was that I became owner of one of the most slagged off, put down and generally reviled bikes that I have ever come across.
Now we must ask ourselves the question that naturally arises from the above: Why is this the case? And, if it is so, is this justifiable? Well, it certainly does have its bad points. I would not try to deny this and perhaps it might be profitable to work our way through these first.
The main thing that people seem to criticize is the styling. I will agree that it is pretty awful, only marginally better than those other beauties I have owned, the BSA C15 and AJS 250, but it does grow on you after a while and is nowhere near as horrible as the CM200 or the CZ125 or the MZ125.
Handling, such as it is, suffers from rear suspension which is very soft and non-adjustable, which means cornering at any speed over 50mph on a road any less smooth than a snooker table is pretty hair raising. With every successive bump the bike progresses crabwise towards the centre of the road until you are fortunate to exit that particular bend on. the tight side of the road. This can also be alarming on the straight, especially if you live in the Fens with its long, straight and extremely uneven roads, as at speeds around 60mph the bike bucks and leaps quite alarmingly as it encounters potholes and sections of sunken road and doesn't like railway level crossings either. With a 16 stone rider, the suspension constantly bottoms out and there is very little that can be done to stop it.
Two up, the handling improves considerably - with the rear tyre pressure boosted to 40psi (Ever heard of Hunter S Thompson? - Ed) and a teenage daughter gluing the back end to the road, the ride is much smoother and the bike has a more solid feel. The softness of the suspension and my weight have led to one or two problems with broken back wheel spokes and a disintegrated sprocket carrier bearing but they can be quite easily solved by investing in a pair of decent shocks but I'm not prepared to spend: the book value of the bike on such frills.
Speed is similar to the earlier CD175 and 185, somewhere in the low to mid seventies, unless backed up by a gale. I find this perfectly adequate most of the time. On ordinary roads, very little seems to pass me at any great rate of knots and I steer clear of motorways and dual carriageways because at CD speeds they become very boring and conductive to slumber while driving. So I tend to stick to the slower, interesting and pretty roads where the bike is able to cope at its happiest speed of 60 to 65mph, which it will sustain without great effort for very long periods, up hill and down dale.
The four speed gearbox is very usable, especially third gear which has a range of speed from 15 to 55mph and pretty smart acceleration. The bike makes 60mph easily but beyond that it's a case of holding on and counting off the minutes, it'll get there eventually. This probably sounds excruciatingly painful but please recall (smug smile) that 60mph is the legal limit on most of our highways.
The brakes, both drums, are just about adequate, the front one being by far the better of the two. They both seem to require an inordinate amount of maintenance, needing stripping about four times a year to grease and oil the spindle through the drum which gets completely clogged with crap very quickly. The highly advanced lube system of an external felt washer and an oilway cut in the spindle is totally useless.
The cycle parts are pathetic, but nevertheless of general Honda standard. There appears to have been no primer applied to the frame so most of the black paint has long since disappeared, replaced by Hammerite. The tank has several large scabs of missing paint and other parts are wearing thin. The plastic headlamp casing is cracked, the mudguards have terminal rot, the chrome is absolutely laughable and the original exhausts have probably crumbled back to earth by now. The plastic side panels are almost devoid of paint and their press-on studs are worn out, resulting in regular loss of these valuable parts if the wind is in the right quarter - you soon learn how to position your feet on the footrests to avoid this.
Leaning the bike over more than 5° either scrapes the silencer or pivots the bike on the centre stand, so awful is the ground clearance. The electrics, while actually very reliable and trouble free, are only six volt so batteries are soon drained, especially if using the electric starter with any frequency or riding on full lights. Cold starting with the electric starter is not recommended. It can be a noisy, lengthy and worrying operation and usually one good kick is enough to fire her up even in the coldest weather, although plenty of choke is needed in winter - a good quality clothes peg is an indispensable part of the choke mechanism.
You might be forgiven for thinking that this sort of write up is pretty damning. The machine sounds absolutely dreadful. Add to all these other faults the fact that it is so small you can trip over it in the dark, it eats back tyres every 4500 miles and a chain every 7000 miles (at least since I lost the bottom half of the chain case) and it is painted in that awful Honda Blue, to deduce that surely no-one with any sense will touch it.
So why, three years on, am I still riding it and why have I since bought my wife a bike of the same type, age and purchase price? Well, for one thing, I'm still skint and it averages 70mpg around town and 80mpg in the country, with 65mpg possible two up. So, it's very cheap to run, while tax and insurance have only slightly increased over the past three years. The bike has now done over eighteen grand and, apart from tappet rattle (take no notice), the engine sounds just as good as when purchased.
The only times it's broken down have been caused by a snapped chain and blitzed battery. I have ridden it over a brick at 65mph, into a dyke at 45mph and smacked it into a parked Renault 18 - total repair bill, £20. So far this year I've spent a total of 55 pence for a new rear light bulb. Parts are quite cheap, available from breakers and often interchangeable with other models such as the newer CB125s.
I enjoy riding the machine. Except on its limits there is very little vibration and the riding position is very comfortable. The seat is wide, well padded and contoured. My longest trip was 367 miles in one day and was completed with only minor shoulder and bum aches. It is certainly much more comfortable than a BSA, MZ or many other Jap bikes of similar size. Being a big bloke on a small bike, I find it can be thrown around easily and handling was rather improved when the top box, full of 50lb of frozen meat, fell off.
Regular, routine maintenance is minimal and can be handled by anyone familiar with Mr Haynes using a cheap tool kit. The bike's now seven years old, unsaleable, worth practically nothing and will be kept and ridden to destruction, either from fatigue or neglect or sheer bloody incompetence. In terms of value for money I have never owned such a good machine and it is certainly better than most of the horrible old British bikes I've owned in the past.
Paul Johnson