Letters

LETTERS

Ladies loving bikes

I have to disagree with Paul Dean's April Editorial, "No bikes, m'lady?" when he says that "most women don't like motorcycles at all." The majority of women I know and associate with love their men on motorcycles.

I don't know where you cycle magazines get your info from, but if you would have done some research over my way, you would have soon found out that some of us women get turned on by seeing our men straddling their bikes in a nice set of leathers.

De Ann Bostick Moreno Valley, California

Bring back the CB750

Your test, “The motorcycle that wouldn’t die,” on the re-introduced BMW R1OORS (May, 1988) was a well-covered, nicely done study. However, you’re lucky I even read it! By the end of the first paragraph I was so furious I almost didn’t continue.

You wrote,“What if Honda were to take a 1977 sohc CB750, update the suspension and running gear slightly, then put this machine back in production? Would anybody possibly buy one? Can you imagine a Japanese company even considering such a move?” It seems to me that mentality is one of the things wrong with the sagging bike market. There are lots of us out here who do not dream of roadracing, don’t have an escape-reality complex as depicted

in Easy Rider and are not interested in riding to Yellowstone Park and back in six days each summer. We have stopped browsing through showrooms because there just isn’t anything being manufactured which fits our needs.

Let Honda or anyone else re-introduce the likeness of a CB750 with updated suspension, chassis and gearing, and I’ll bet you the sagging bike market would get a good, lifting kick in the right direction. Hurray for BMW for understanding and responding to its riders. Now let’s see the Japanese get in touch with reality before we spend our dollars in Germany.

Larry Kinser Damascus, Ohio

I would choose the “old” CB750 over any of the Ninja-types in a heartbeat, and I suspect I’m not

alone. My 750K3 was one of the best bikes I’ve owned. The lack of simple, reliable, usable bikes like the sohc 750 Honda coming from the Big Four is what drove me to my present preferences. I don’t want to go 165 mph tucked into an ass-up pseudo-racer, but it is obvious the Japanese manufacturers think I do, as evidenced by the bikes currently sitting in the showrooms.

Where did the Big Four get these ideas? From you guys! If the cycling media would focus its attention on bringing back more sensible bikes in the same manner that it caused the emergence of the modern sportbikes (Don’t deny it; every cycle magazine in the ’70s said the same thing: “. . . and if the riding position were more bent over and tucked in, and the pegs set more to the rear . . . maybe add a quarter fairing and clip-ons . . .”), then motorcycling would become as popular and fun as it once was.

C.S. Jones

Oviedo, Florida

Let 's get one thing straight: You 've never read anything like that written by anyone who currently is at this magazine. We do like sportbikes, admittedly, but we have never advised the manufacturers to transform a standard into a hardcore sport machine, particularly if it meant the demise of the standard. We, in fact, have been highly vocal advocates of standard-style bikes, and have mourned their near-passing just as much as anyone else. 0

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