Power Struggle

Power Struggle

EDITORIAL

THEY WERE UNFORGETTABLE EXPERIences, one and all. My first encounter with the powerful FJ1100 Yamaha, so civilized, yet one of the fastest vehicles on the planet: the fierce GS1100/1150 Suzukis, motorcycles that could accelerate with more sheer force at low rpm than most other bikes could at any engine speed; the way a 900 Ninja delivered the feel and the sound of a big-bore roadrace machine, its Cosworth-inspired engine barely changing pitch as the tach nudged redline in all six close-ratio gears; the soul-stirring thunder of a V-Max lunging down the road at light-speed as its engine pounded out power like two banks of howitzers firing in quick-time.

These are just a few of the many vivid memories I have of my experiences on countless late-model motorcycles. And although not all of these fond recollections concern themselves with ultra-high-horsepower machinery, a great many of them do. But if some people have their way, there will be no new memorable experiences like these, either for me or for anyone else, because the kinds of motorcycles that provide them will no longer be built.

These people are the ones who. for some time, have been proposing that motorcycle manufacturers strap an official upper limit on the horsepower output of all streetbikes. Fm not talking about the usual anti-motorcycle stereotypes—the self-righteous politician, the mindless bureaucrat. the uninformed bike-hater; Fm talking about well-meaning people in various areas of the motorcycle business who want the industry voluntarily to put a ceiling on horsepower. They argue that if we don't, the government will, and that our limit would be more rational and palatable than Big Brother’s.

An interesting concept, but one that’s based on a line of thinking Fm unable to follow. Because in effect, it proposes that the best way to avoid horsepower restrictions is to ... to restrict horsepower.

Maybe you can make a lot of sense out of that, but I can't. In my mind, that's about as logical as preventing your home from catching on fire by burning it down.

Besides, there’s no guarantee that “our” horsepower limit would be higher than “theirs.” Smart money says that the industry would most likely settle on a 100-horsepower ceiling for the U.S., mostly because that’s also the limit for motorcycles in some European markets. It’s an easy solution using a number the bikemakers are already accustomed to dealing with. And if it’s the feds who decide to set a limit, they, too, might simply follow the precedent set in Europe and put a 100-horsepower law into effect. Either way, the limit would be the same.

On the other hand, the feds might ignore how it's done in Europe and come up with their own limit. If so, they most likely would fix the limit by first determining what the maximum horsepower numbers are for existing motorcycles, and then deciding how far to drop those numbers. Meaning that the higher the horsepower ceiling before government gets involved, the higher the federal limit is likely to be, and vice versa.

That speaks strongly against a selfimposed cap on horsepower. There’s no guarantee that, just because the industry is regulating itself, government still won’t step in and impose limits of its own. We might have decided that 100 horsepower is well within the boundaries of safety and social responsibility, but that doesn’t mean they would agree. And if they didn’t, all we would have accomplished with our self-imposed regulation is to give the feds a lower existing ceiling on which to base their limit.

This probably wouldn't bother pro-restriction activists, most of whom believe that a lower-powered motorcycle is a safer motorcycle. But accident statistics —the ones I’ve seen, at least—don't support the argument that large-displacement, highpowered motorcycles are significantly more dangerous than smaller, less-powerful ones. Certain types of bikes are more prone to being involved in accidents than others, but their susceptibility doesn’t seem tied directly to size.

Indeed, despite their mammoth power outputs, today’s high-performance bikes are inherently much safer than their counterparts of 10 years ago. The tremendous progress made in tires, brakes and chassis technology over the last decade has helped contemporary superbikes become much more agile and forgiving than those of the mid-Seventies, even though many of them now have to harness about 50 percent more horsepower than the most powerful machines of that era. Truth is, those great leaps in power are, more than any other single cause, what has forced such quantum advances in the rest of the motorcycle.

Superbike-class motorcycles are, however, becoming ever-more difficult and expensive to insure—a fact that proponents of a power limit are quick to point out. They also feel that high-powered bikes are too cheap and too readily available to too many who are too inexperienced. And that may be true. But if the choices for a solution are either to limit the power output of all motorcycles or to make high-performance machines so difficult to obtain and legally use that only the most deeply committed will buy them, the latter gets my vote.

A multi-tiered rider-licensing system, like Japan's very effective system based on engine displacement, would go a long way toward the attainment of that goal. And so would high insurance rates and inflated retail prices, as unfair as they might seem. Naturally, these tactics would reduce the volume of high-performance bike sales; but just as some exotic-car manufacturers and importers do, the bikemakers could simply adjust the prices of these machines accordingly to maintain the needed margin of profitability.

It's not a perfect solution, I’ll admit, but it’s better than the alternative. And I hope I’m not alone in my thinking: I still have lots of memories to manufacture. —Paul Dean