Ten Best Bikes
TEN BEST BIKES
Unless you’re a motorcycle enthusiast with iron self-control and the compulsion to read everything in proper order, you’re not reading this introduction first. More likely you looked at the cover and picked out the various winners, then turned to the winner in the class you ride. If your bike won, you said something along the lines of “Too Right, Chaps.’’ If yours wasn't there, you decided the judges wouldn’t know a Best Bike if one used them for traction. Then, the important parts having been taken care of you've turned to the introduction to find out what all this is about.
This is not to criticize. When we guess as to what you did, we re telling you what we did.
The Ten Best Bikes is something of a celebration. You see, the people who invented the curse “May You Live In Interesting Times,’’ believed it to be a curse. We don’t agree. We motorcycle enthusiasts live in interesting times. And that’s good because it has created a banner year. There have been new models in virtually every category. We ’ve seen stronger engines, improved suspensions, better brakes and seats and all manner of clever devices. While sales haven ’t been as good as the factories and dealers would like, the soft market for them translates into a buyer’s market for us, that is, the ordinary rider can visit any agency and drive a hard bargain for a good machine.
Fine. During the course of the model year the staff reports on new bikes and enjoys the normal routine of standard tests, comparison tests and such. All to the good and (we assume> useful to all of you who truly enjoy motorcycles.
Comes now the end of the year. It is fitting and proper, we decided, to honor our subject with some opinions. If no homage is paid, the folks who bring us all these keen machines may not know the public appreciates their efforts. Unless we draw some lines and become as fair and objective as possible, perhaps neither we nor you will know as much about our sport as we should, or even as much as we think we know.
The first parameter drawn was one we didn ’t draw: Price. True, just about every buyer worries about the cost, the monthly payment and so forth. We haggle. We tell ourselves the good reasons for spending as much as it takes to get the bike we want. At the same time, the range between the low-priced massproduced models and the topline bike with everything isn 't all that great. Further, when we get into class, say the best of the middleweight roadsters, we’re working with asking prices that vary more from dealer to dealer than from brand to brand. Rule One, therefore, was not to worry about price.
The first actual consideration was simply availability. In theory there are some super machines out there somewhere. We read about them, we see the pictures, but neither the press nor the biking public can actually find some makes outside a tiny area. There’s no point urging you to look at a terrific motorcycle unless you have a good chance of being able to follow the advice. As an extension of availability, we include production; that is, to be considered as a potential Best In Class, a model had to be in production. Not recently taken off the market, not due to arrive any day now, but actually being built at this writing. Perhaps one or two brands, say Norton and Triumph, come to mind? Yes and we re sorry bout that, but unless we could count on the general public being able to buya production bike and have parts and such coming down the line, we struck those models from the list.
From here on we worked with variations on a theme, namely does the bike do what its owner expects? Does it give him a fair return for his investment in time, money and emotion?
To measure this, we were backed into the class system. The most obvious division is street vs. dirt. When we make that distinction we make another: in general, street bikes are for fun and transportation, while dirt bikes are for fun and competition. Only a small percentage of road riders are road racers, while most of the dirt crowd competes in enduros, motocross, trials, desert racing, etc.
On this basis an excellent roadster need not be the quickest bike for its displacement, and a 250 MX bike which cannot be raced successfully by a private owner cannot be rated as a good machine. The same goes for trialers, tourers and so forth. This distinction can be continued indefinitely, as in an overhaul each 100 miles is fine for motocross, intolerable for street.
Having divided the market into street and dirt, and having agreed that the dirt machines should be judged with a view to competition and the street bikes fneedn't be, the other classes fell readily to form. Most motorcycle fans are accustomed to thinking about 750cc roadsters, 500cc roadsters, etc. And naturally our motocross classes are based on popular engine displacement.
Touring has a separate class. Anybody who’s owned as manyas one motorcycle knows that being good at one form of use doesn’t mean the machine is good at others. The touring rider is a different rider and needs different virtues than the roadster rider. Size of the engine matters, but not that much. Sheer power, displacement, etc., has only a secondary value.
At the other end of the list, enduro and trials machines are designed for competition, no question. But displacement isn’t vital. Indeed, power isn’t vital. We can quickly make a list of small motors better suited for enduros than some large motors are, so there is one class for enduro, one for trials.
Now we get into the subjective element.
While motorcycle testers are fond of numbers, and while we use numbers to draw this conclusion or that, numbers are more useful for defending judgments than for making them.
This factor appeared early on, during debate over which classes to worry about. "What about playbikes?” argued the staffer whose favorite machine is a playbike. What about all of us who may engage in a spot of competition now and then but who ride for the joy of it? What about rockets? Seeing as how quarter-mile times are prime material for discussion, and seeing that World’s Quickest Bike is always good for strong words and reference to test reports, why not a special mention for the Super Bike?
In order, the majority decided that there will be no playbike class because play is too broad afield. A camper on a step-through is at play. So is a neurosurgeon on an Electra-Glide. As for the talent. Sure, we all like to roll it on. Sure, my bike’s quicker than your bike, but one strong point isn’t enough.
The practical among us may discern a shortness of attention given to homely qualities, i.e., there is no category for small bikes, nothing for the mythical commuter who so far has not become a motorcyclist in the face of rising fuel prices, dumb motor cars and the like. The press continues to eypect this, while it continues not to happen. People buy motorcycles because they like motorcycles. When that no longer happens, when the motorcycle becomes an appliance like a stove, we will all be the poorer for it. Ergo, practicality has no place in our honor roll.
Here we are at the crunch. After all these words, all the reasons for having a Ten Best Bikes section, all the philosophy and rationalizing, the only thing which truly matters is simply.. . Why these ten bikes? How did CYCLE WORLD decide which is best?
For a final defense, the winners are not our bikes. In total the CW staff owns, well, more motorcycles than we can count, something like 30 or 40. Inhouse viewpoints begin with the man who believes Soichiro Honda invented the motorcycle to the man who refuses to admit Honda knows what a motorcycle is. We like motorcycles, we ride them, tinker with them, improve them, race them. And when all the votes were in, we hadn 't chosen our personal choices, if thats not too confusing a phrase.
What we did was this: We set down logical classes, we ruled out models the average rider can't buy, and we voted on the basis of which model gives its owner what he wants and eypects.
Is your motorcycle on the list? Good. If it isn’t, you needn’t agree with our choice. We don’t ask that. We do suggest that you take a look at the winner. You may thank us yet.
may thank us yet.
