Up Front
UP FRONT
Allan Girdler
LOOKING OUT FOR NUMBER ONE
Ben Franklin must have known I was on the way. When he wrote that “Experience keeps a dear school, but a fool will learn at no other”, Ben surely had me in mind. What he didn’t say is how rewarding it is for us fools who learn the hard way when the lesson pays off next time:
Ten years ago, when motorcycles were my hobby and writing about cars was my business, I was keeping my eyes open and spotted a trend before it took place. There were back then acclaimed classic cars of great value, every example of which had been restored and appraised and priced beyond the reach of the average car nut. There were new cars, nice ones but the top models were also high ticket. Off in corners and parked beneath dusty tarps, though, were outmoded racers and highperformance jobs that were not, and had not, appreciated. Few products are as outmoded as last season’s racers.
When I was a reporter, I thought as a reporter. Instantly I discovered this, I did research and compiled a list of bargains. I won’t bore you with the details, except that there were really good machines, scores of them, for less than 1000 1971 dollars.
Then I wrote a story, telling everybody about how terrific these cars were, and that not too far in the future people would be buying them and restoring them and racing them and generally having a super time.
Boy, was I ever right! I bought a 1949 MG for $900 in 1955 and sold it for $900 in 1969 and thought I was too clever for words. At this writing, I could get one like it for $10,000. My 1963 Lotus cost me $ 1800 in 1965, I sold it in 1973 for $2200 and gloated all the way to the bank. Replacement price in 1981 is maybe $7500, if you find a sucker.
You got it. I was so busy reporting and being smart that I left myself out of the equation. There’s no way I’m ever going to own one of those treasures.
That won’t happen again. With the arrival of the modern motorcycle, the bike that runs year after year, and with the development of the sophisticated racing motorcycle, stupendous power from tiny engines and crankshafts with lifespans measured in hours, has come recognition of other, older bikes, the kind that bellow and seep and handle funny and don’t win races and won’t always get you where you intended to go.
I am not totally lacking in scruple. When vintage bikes first began to appear, you read about it here first. Editors do have some obligation, just as financial writers mustn’t get too cozy with the brokerage houses.
What I didn’t report was that I have for years had a secret ambition.
Ever since Harley-Davidson fought back against the rules changes that were supposed to lure other factories into big time racing, I have yearned for an XR-750. They’ve been winning for better than 10 years now and if outmoded racers
go cheap, so does it follow that competitive racers keep their value. Weekly searches through the want ads have never turned up anything except XRs with fresh everything, better than new, ready to win nationals. They might be, I am not.
But one day I saw an ad for a roller chassis, an XR frame and everything minus engine. Too expensive, though. And then, later, when I complained to the former owner he said Oh, you could have gotten it for less than that, why didn’t you make an offer?
Because, for the second time, I have to learn the hard way. So I told him next time one crossed his path, call me.
Several weeks ago, he did.
The call came at the perfect time. We, that is, the magazine staff, last summer decided that what the world needs now is a really good introductory book about motorcycles, just the sort of book we’d like to produce. We took the idea to our parent company’s special project division and they approved it. (Speaking of conflict of interest, the title is “Cycle World’s Introduction To Motorcycling”, price $2.50, on newstands and in better bookstores by the time you read this.)
Our company does things right. We did the book on our own time, with our own ideas and got paid for it, which gave me some mad money ... at the perfect time.
My vintage dealer pal called. “I have an XR coming in trade. It’s a ’72, not complete but” “I’ll take it”
“I don’t know what’s missing.” “I don’t care.” “I don’t know how much it’ll be.” “I’ll buy it anyway,”
Which I have, sort of, in a way. When the dealer got the baskets it turned out the frame is a 1970, not a 1972, with some modifications that may or may not have improved the handling. The engine is old style, with iron barrels, Offenhauser pistons, kick start, provision for generator drive, no heads, no ignition. There’s also no brakes, no axles and 1 don’t know what else not.
And—brace yourself—Jay Springsteen rode it. This was back before he got his factory ride, so I reckon my—what a nice sound that has, my XR—is the Harley that made Jay Springsteen famous.
Never mind for the moment that Springer doesn’t actually remember much about the bike, and that it’s original like Abe Lincoln’s axe, just as Abe used it except for the two new heads and three new handles.
The dealer. Buzz Walneck and that’s all the unpaid advertising 1 can get away with in one month, sent me a snapshot of my XR, taken sometime after Springsteen and before all the various missing bits went missing. I haven’t yet seen the bike, all the parts aren’t in yet and I still don’t know what the price of the boxes will be and even when they all arrive and 1 can spread them out on the floor I not only don’t know what to get, I don’t know where to get it and 1 have never actually built a Harley engine anyway and Red Rooster was intact and familiar and that project took me a year.
Trifles.
Before preaching the moral lesson for today, another prediction: Vintage motorcycles aren't going the way of vintage cars.
Cars have snob appeal. The general public admires fancy cars, so people who seek admiration buy such cars and that drives up the price, beyond what normal nuts can pay. The only people who like motorcycles, though, are other bikers. Whirl up the drive of the country club in a Maserati and you’ll be envied. Whirl up the same drive on an MV America and you won’t be allowed to park. The Cobra that sold for $6000 in 1971 sells for $60,000 in 1981, but today’s TD-1 Yamaha or BSA Gold Star for $1000 won’t be 10 times that tomorrow.
What it will be, is rare. Right this minute Kenny Roberts’ old Yamaha 750 tracker is for sale. So is the Aermacchi 350 Springer rode and a whole bunch of Ducati 250s and 450 Desmos and Rickman Triumphs and clean Z-ls and Guzzis. Them as don’t learn from the past are liable to not have a chance to repeat it.
And them as learn from their own mistakes will be riding around on our tracker Harleys.
