The other strain is one of horror at the build quality of modern motorcycles. Legion are the stories of disc brakes seizing, exhausts rusting through, paint falling off, suspension going loose after a couple of years, pathetic fuel economy, outrageous consumption of consumables, etc. etc. So ingrained have these traits become in modern motorcycles that the UMG alone amid a sea of mindless consumption maintains a fairly constant whinging. This irritates the hell out of those in the trade who just want people to turn over bikes every few years but seems reasonable enough to me given the massive discontent amidst those who want to go motorcycling without being ripped off all the time by car driving jerks who haven't a clue to what's really going down.
Unlike most children involved in this game I’m not overwhelmed by the sheer excesses of power, but totally enraged by both the back wrecking race replicas and the Paris Dakar imitators which have the aerodynamics of a fridge and horrible lumps of plastic over the front end that go berserk in heavy winds. Why the hell can’t these people make proper motorcycles without all the garbage... the only time they make naked bikes is when they try to replicate some seventies four, ending up with a massively overweight horror with an engine detuned so stupidly that the economy's unbelievably bad and the only thing they have going for them is reliable motors; something Honda sorted out in the sixties.
And, I’m old enough to recall when motorcycles were both reasonably fast and very cheap to run, a combination that existed right up to the end of the sixties before the universality of the straight four wove its mixture of magic and sheer stupidity within the motorcycle community. The joys of a relative tack of vibration obscured every other facet of the experience, subsumed the fact that early fours were overweight, ill-handling brutes that only had engines that lasted so long because the riders kept falling off, spending more time in hospital than on the bike.
That something has gone seriously wrong can be seen in the way, much to the joy of the importers, the motorcycle market has skewed towards the large race replica and mature rider. Honda, who should know better after years in the wilderness, dominating sales with devices like the CBR600 and 900 - and quite rightly, too, because they do go incredibly well. Profit margins are large in this area, which keeps everyone in the trade happy.
Various figures in the trade come up with all kinds of amazing ideas to save the rest of the industry from oblivion. One of the most amusing was the import of yet more odd commuters from the third world. I say yet more because many of the Jap commuters up to 125cc are already made in the third world where they are sold for as little as a half of their cost in the dear old UK. Poor old Japan Inc has been knocked out of the low end game because of the strength of the yen, which has also had an effect on the grey import market.
It’s a little bit sad, in 1995, trying to off-load such bikes on to either learners or first time commuters. They come with cheap tyres, small drum brakes, little lights, suspension lacking in sophistication and a lack of finesse. Fine for some peasant who's desperate to move on from the indignities of a pushbike in a third world country where broiling heat makes breathing all but impossible let alone cycling, but in the UK even mundane cars have reached a certain level of sophistication.
Place one of these drivers on such devices and he'll probably go running to the nearest car dealer looking for another tin sandwich. It takes a little bit of time to become used to two wheels on our chaotic roads, and the average cager needs a maximum of coddling and minimum of horror in the first few weeks. Any bike that needs even a little skill to compensate for its lack of ability is a bit of a dead end, reinforcing whatever negative impressions the cager started out with.
There are some reasonable cycles out of the mass of these doubtful imports for those into very low level commuting, but for anyone with a little youth left in their veins forget it - and don't think I don't know what I’m talking about, I’ve ridden the damn things on their home turf, three up with sod all braking and no working electrics. Just for kicks, you understand, sometimes it’s fun to live on the edge on some minor, ageing commuter.
No, what your average cager demands is the agility of a motorcycle with some of the comfort, safety and sophistication of his car. That means total weather protection, automatic gearbox and maintenance free running, all of which is just a matter of good design rather than trying to flog pale copies of already disregarded Japanese commuters. It’s much more likely that the manufacturers of scooters, for all their inherent terrors, will get their act together than any of the Japanese big four, so pathetically has the motorcycle scene evolved.
Looking at new bikes, if you don't want to ruin your back and bank balance on some race replica there's hardly anything worth buying. It'd be down to seeing if I could get hold of a derestricted Suzuki 125 Wolf or converting some pseudo trail bike into road spec, an idea I’ve been toying with ever since the old SP370 turned up, back god knows when.
I feel really cheated by the fact that, for instance, we don't get the 200cc version of the Suzuki Wolf, which as well as giving out 35 horses, weighs the same as the 125 and I don’t see why the hell it should cost even a pound more than the already overpriced 125. That would work out as almost good value.
Big trail bikes and Paris Dakar replicas have some of the basic appeal of the old Brits, with their big thumper engines, tubular frames and wire wheels. Throw all the plastic away, lose three inches from the excessive suspension travel, add proper road tyres to a nice pair of sixties wheels with drum brakes, and maybe knock on an old Ajay Model 16 petrol tank and minimal but well padded seat. Then, you'd end up with a water-cooled 50 horsepower 600 or 650cc engine with classic looks and less than 300lbs of mass it'd go like hell and confuse the shit out of the civilians.
Bill Fowler