The Pursuit of Quality
THE PURSUIT OF QUALITY
UP FRONT
Allan Girdler
As is well known by anybody who ever wrote a letter to this magazine, I am terribly slow, always behind in my correspondence, a character flaw mentioned here because I am thinking about something inspired by letters inspired by material that appeared in this magazine so long ago that the reader may have forgotten.
The subject. though. is always new to all of us: how many ways can we measure quality, and do we have to do it? And if so. why?
Back to the letters. One came from a man who was puzzled by our delight in the Laverda 500. He wondered at our ap proval. seeing as how the Laverda is classi fied with the Honda CX500 and the Suzuki GS550. both of which have more power and more speed and sell for a lot less.
He picked two fine examples. As will appear later in this month's parade. we've just completed the longterm test of the GS550 and the only comfort to be taken in its return is that we have on order a CX500. Good machines, both of them.
Even so. The second letter looks at the same thing from a different place. Man has an old. uh. make that older. Honda. a CB200 and he's wondering. Should he buy a new bike, should he keep the present one and will the CB200 ever become a collector's item. i.e., will it be worth money some day~
Speaking asa man who sold for $50 the exact model Harley later to be known as the finest Harley of all, a certified treasure now darn near worth its weight in gold, I am the last man on earth to guess about that. I don't even care. I have lost money by selling too soon and made money by not selling, except that I made the money on paper because I haven't sold at all. I'd rather have the machine than the money and it's my hope to persuade would-be investors not to do it.
Meanwhile, back to the sporting mid dieweights.
Baseline here is that motorcycles are different. Notjust from cars and trucks and boats and bicycles and airplanes. but from each other. Due to my good fortune in working here I get to ride all manner of motorcycles and I never fail to be im pressed anew with how different they are. The 750 group test last year (which didn't come off quite the way I'd hoped but never mind that) was a case in point. Just be cause it's a 750 doesn't mean it's like all the other 750s. Each model has its own charac ter and feel.
What we do in the test procedures and with our wonderful new on-board com puter is collect facts. We can determine how fast each one is to 60 and for the quarter mile and so forth. We can do a reasonably accurate job of reporting how many miles per gallon. what the bike weighs. etc.. and we list all the specs and how much.
That's only part of it. We intend with the words in each test to talk about the rest of it: what the bike is supposed to do. how the various engineers tackled the problems and what those problems were. Well and good.
But. There is no way to put an objecti* value on what amounts to the perceived quality of a motorcycle. If you want speed and low maintenance, the GS550 is it. The CX500. though. has water cooling and~ shaft drive and sits like your favorite chaij and bristles with engineering.
The Laverda looks nice. The engine is~ delight to the eye. To sit in the saddle is to picture Imola. Laguna Seca. Louden.4 Crouching over the bars is enough to add 10 percent to your confidence in your skill. -I Is there value in having the fastest? Sure. Is it fun to talk about all the modern touche~, your bike has? Sure. Is there a reward p having a machine nobody else has aiTd which all the other riders want to look at4 and talk about? Darn right.
Even in the office, we don't have the.4 same values. Steve and John like big, powerful motorcycles. So John has ii GS 1000 Suzuki and Steve has an 850 Moto Guzzi. which are about as different as t~o big powerful bikes can be. I have a 20-bhp brain and ride off-road with the primar~ in tent of Not Falling Down. Ron figures a~ 500cc dirt bike is fine until somebody comes out with a stroker kit and what yt*rl do off-road is open the throttle until you flash past the checkered flag. Never miiid that I still fall down and he still doesn't finish races. When we say the tests are collective opinion that means we have shouting matches and pare down eac~ other's superlatives until we have the view~ point of a bike nut survey.
This collecting thing is another matt~. For some reason money is important. I don't know any human activity you ca~'t~ defend on the grounds you get paid for it. And try to explain that you do anything fo~ fun.
In consequence we have begun to make excuses. i.e.. I am gonna keep this bikffi. ecause some day it will be worth a lot. Counter-productive. I think. If you ke~p a machine because it’s going to make you rich, and it doesn’t, you've lost both mon^y and the enjoyment of the bike. Further, when somebody buys a motorcycle as am investment, he drives up the prices for the rest of us. However, if you keep the bike1 because vou like it. and then it becomes valuable, you can justify having the thing and when it gets crowded out. you’ve h^d your fun and been paid for it. too.
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Or you can just enjoy. When we wer^ planning our B-to-V ride, also deeper in this month’s forest. I was talking with aladv whose immediate family includes nine dirt bikes for four people. She was preparing her 10-year-old Kawasaki 125, this for a 140-mile ride through sand and snow. Why? Because she’s had the thin" for nine years and it’s always started on one kick and never stopped of its own, accord and she likes it.
Alternatively, you can find the old bikeli good home. When my 16-year-old was 10 we bought him an Indian 50. Good beginner bike. He rode it for a year without laying a wrench on it. No compression, sc? we blew $ 12 on a new piston with rings and it went another year. When the kids outgrew it. it was parked in a corner of tl^p barn. Joe and 1 got it out every so often and fired it up. Didn't ride it. but couldn’t be*r to throw it out. Finally a friend with a young daughter paid us $50. the bike having been left in the barn for too long to run at first kick. His daughter loves it and if some day the Indian Museum offers thou-^ sands of dollars for an original Juniorcross 54. the money I don’t get will be counterg¿1 by the knowledge that the Indian spent its useful life doing what it was supposedéodo: help kids enjoy motorcycling.
Henry has gone me one better on this*
He has room for only six bikes in his
garage. When he gets another, as he just"
did. a KSS Velocette in a basket, he do-
*
nates a previous machine to the local school district. Honest. There’s even a t^x write-off. I believe. The high school motorcvcle shop class rebuilds the donate« equipment and—I know this for a fact— Henry goes to the shop and visits his* former wheels.
What’s the point of all this? Other than being a slippery way to apologize for being behind in my letters. I mean?
This. Everv motorcycle is different* Every rider is different. If we weren't we'd all be out there in cars. We each have ;v right to march to our own drumbeat. The choice between E.T. and shaft drivé, ground clearance and load capacity, street legality and wheel travel, is a choice we each get to make for ourselves and let hear it for the free enterprise system and no trade barriers.
When you pick out your bike.
Get what you like.
