Issue #240 Deja Vu, All Over Again | Bike, Much, Now, Those, Old

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Issue #240 Deja Vu, All Over Again

Written by Robert Smith
Thursday, 27 March 2008
Ah, nostalgia: it ain’t what it used to be. When I started writing this column—around the time Moses was in short pants—if you wanted the old bike experience, you pretty much had to buy an old bike. Only the men from Milwaukee were making machines that looked and worked much the same way they had 30 years before. For those of us with a yen to re-experience the British, European or Japanese bikes of our youth, the answer was simple: buy one. That’s the plan many of us embarked on, of course (and which led to the now fully developed, mature market for old two-wheeled iron). We got the experience we wanted, too—both the positive and negative. The good news was the cachet of riding around on a relatively exotic and exclusive motorcycle; the inevitable “nice bike; what year is it?” conversations at the coffee shop; and the camaraderie of the old bike clubs. There was (and still is) the satisfaction of restoring and fettling something much closer to a living, breathing machine in a time when all that seems to be under the hood of your car is a black plastic sheet with a brand name on it. The bad news: pushing your broken-down bike home; oil-drenched boots and jeans; being tailgated by nouveau-riche oiks in 300-hp SUV’s; and the heart-stopping moments when you needed to brake in a hurry. Then Triumph realized, after the relative success of the 1995 Thunderbird, that there might be a bigger market for a retro-styled “modern classic” motorcycle and launched a new version of the iconic Bonneville (a name they’d no doubt been saving for just such an occasion) in 2001. It looked, sounded, and even rode much like a late-model 750 Meriden Bonnie—but with much better brakes! Kawasaki’s cheeky W650 Bonnie-inspired Twin perhaps came even closer to the essence of earlier British biking, but, of course, it had the wrong name on the gas tank. However, the W650 was significant in another way: it suggested that Japan Inc. could play at the retro game too. THE MARKET FOR MOTORCYCLES, LIKE THOSE FOR MANY CONSUMER goods, is heavily influenced by demographics. You don’t need me to explain the post-WWII baby boom and its effects on consumption trends. Suffice it to say that those on the leading edge of this population swell are now over 60, the bulk in their mid-50s, and the youngest at least forty-four. If we assume that the bikes now firing the nostalgia neurons in a 55-year-old’s brain are likely the machines he (and possibly she) rode or lusted after in their late teens, that takes us back to 1969-70. Two very significant motorcycles were launched in those years. If you can’t name the first one you haven’t been paying attention; the second, almost as ground breaking, was Yamaha’s XS-1 650 Twin. These bikes, though, were important for two very different reasons: Honda’s 750-Four was—as Triumph’s 1938 Speed Twin had been—the archetype of a whole generation, ushering in Universal Japanese Motorcycles—all those air-cooled, OHC across-the-frame fours. And while the XS-1 intended to be the better Bonneville—encapsulating the best of the British Twins, but with Japanese reliability—it succumbed, in spite of its wide success, to the big parallel Twin’s inevitable bugbear in pre-balance shaft days: vibration. WHY THIS STORY AND WHY NOW? AT THE FALL 2007 motorcycle show in Tokyo, two of Japan’s biggest bikemakers showed prototypes of models we can expect to see here in the near future, tailored as they are to the retro passions of teary-eyed, North American baby-boom bikers. Honda’s CB1100F picks up multiple styling cues from the CB750 and is clearly intended to strongly resemble it, though it lacks the period wire wheels, something the other new-again contender does have. The Yamaha XS-V1 Sakura looks for all the world like the XS-1 except that the two-banger lump has its cylinders in a narrow-angle vee, not side-by-side. One could argue (and I will) that the V-Twin is truer to the spirit of the XS-1 if not its realization. The XS-1 incorporated the predominant engine layout of the day, just as the XS-V1 does now. The hole in my demography theory, if you haven’t yet worked it out, is the wild success of Ducati’s SportClassics range, which echo a period five years or so later, but are apparently bought predominantly by younger riders. The difference, I think, is that, while the SportClassics’ styling evokes Ducati’s mid-’70s competition success, they give nothing away to other modern sportbikes in performance terms. The Paul Smart Replica 1000, for example, uses an engine identical to that found in the 1000DS Supersport. This is designer retro, not nostalgia retro. What’s next? Let’s just say I hope the trend dies before we get to sissy bars and king-and-queen seats … Comments (0) Subscribe to this comment's feed Write comment You must be logged in to a comment. Please register if you do not have an account yet.