Thirtysomethings
THIRTYSOMETHINGS
PLANNED OBSOLESCENCE MEETS MALE MENOPAUUSE.
JOHN BURNS
RIDING THESE THREE 30-YEAR-old plugs is proof positive that the motorcycle is a male instrument. Whether man or machine, by the third decade, most of the real excitement is over. At these bikes' age, the thrill of the open road is forgotten and a warm garage is the most important thing.
A lot of journalists ar~und this of fice happen to be upon the same cusp as these bikes: We were given life about the same time they were. But I didn't really begin to be aware of mo torcycles until these machines were at least 10 years old, and the first streetbike that I actually lusted after was much later. The first Kawasaki GPz55O, way back in 1981.
I could niaybe see the utility of holding onto a 1963 Honda Super Hawk or a 1965 Triumph Bonneville or a 1965 Harley Electra Glide if I were, say. living in Laos in a bamboo house on stilts and couldn't get any thing else. But why any red-blooded American consumer would keep one of these-and even lavish attention and cash upon it-escapes me.
Actually, the Triumph's not half bad. It's even pretty, especially if you liked those early bikinis with the na vel-high bottoms, if you could relate to Wally Cleaver's problems, if you wore bell-bottoms or if you knew how to work a slide rule.
For the first years of Cycle World's existence, a Bonneville was the bike to have. Its 6 50cc Twin made it just about the fastest thing on the mar ket-even though its engine was first laiddownin 1938.
This `65 model fires up easily enough after a few kicks, with a mel low, really pleasant rumble. It goes and stops and turns in a polished, po lite way, but it just doesn't do for me what it does for some (older) guys. David Dewhurst, our transplanted Brit photographer, got so misty-eyed I feared he wouldn't be able to focus his camera. Noticing the unauthentic stainless steel spokes on the bike
Our borrowed `65 Harley, in all honesty, doesn't feel qualitatively different from the way a `92 Dyna Daytona will feel in 2020, and not
much different from the way one feels now. Harley people love to talk about how advanced and high-tech the Evolution engine is, but as far as sound and feel and powerband are concerned, I wouldn't be able to dis tinguish one from this Panhead in a blind taste test.
The H-D is an unrestored bike (as is the Honda) with a lot of miles and a John Wayne-way of shambling down the road sort of sideways. It'll go straight, but would prefer to turn left if you let go of the bars for a second. That may be because somebody put whitewalls off a Buick Eight on it. The thing is big, bigger than new Har leys. Its big headlight cover stirs up associations with that time when all the hot actresses were "full-figured" and wore Saturn V brassieres, when guys called each other Mac, nobody wasted time "working out" and alco hol-free beer was a joke everybody got. The Harley's floorboards are covered with bootsole leather, hob nailed, instead of rubber.
Just like American cars of the same era, not much consideration seems to have been given to going around curves. But, hey, it's a big, direct country, and if you had to go to Texas or Montana or somewhere, you could do it on this thing tomor row, maybe, in reasonable comfort. Wonder why they ever gave up on the sprung seat? It's much better than what's on most new Harleys.
Editors Brian Catterson and Don Canet and myself took the bikes out in the country to ride some curves. I rode the Honda first, which is light and athletic and generally not bad,
and then I hopped on the Harley. Coming up to the first turn, it felt for a long second like the thing just was not going to roll over on its whitewalls for me, like it was just gonna run straight off the road.
Har1e~ was rubber-mounting han dlebars even then, and the front end of this bike feels like something con cocted by Spanky and Alfalfa with some technical assistance from Buck wheat. Catterson says the front brake has good feel, though it contributes nothing toward stopping the bike.
But then you get used to it and learn that the old Hog will actually get around corners pretty well if the rider is judicious and allows for slack in the steering ropes. It helps, too, if he's a man's man like you had to be to own one of these babies in 1965. Now, they'll let anybody ride a big Harley.
And the Honda feels like a Honda. Controls and levers are all light and in the right places. While Catterson and Canet heaved themselves up and down upon kickstarters, I pressed the Super Hawk's starter button and fired it up.
Even though the Honda is, or was, the most advanced design and most functional of the three, it's the one we liked least. Where the Harley has its western swagger, and the Triumph has a genteel sophistication we used to attribute to the British, the Honda takes us back to the time when things Japanese were cheap and shoddynot that the Hawk is. In fact, early `60s Hondas were probably the first products to change the way the world thought about "made in Japan." Ac cording to one source, Honda im ported two bikes to the U.S. in 1958-and over 65,000 in 1962. But the bike seems just too practical and it has the look of having been mass produced in a hurry, with a big seam right up the spine of its gas tank.
Buying one in 1962 was a good move. It was a lot of motorcycle for the buck then. Again, it's a perfectly functional little motorcycle, but it strikes me as the type of thing you'd ride if you were a 53-year-old asexual county clerk/stamp collector living with Aunt Bea, who needed cheap transportation, and who drinks warm milk before putting on two-piece pa jamas and "retiring" right after Law rence Welk. (In fairness, the old Hawk is faster than a new Honda Nighthawk 250.)
The thing the owners of these three bikes have in common is that they're all 10 or 20 years older than their bikes. My theory is: About the time our eyes snap open as adolescents and we begin to realize there's more to life than Oreos, we notice things like motorcycles and the enemy sex simultaneously. And, if it's true that the human male reaches sexual cre scendo at the age of 19 years and pro ceeds downhill ever after, then re gaining that excitement, the afflicted believes subconsciously, should be a simple matter of recreating the era mechanically. Ergo, the clapped-out Harley/Triu mph/Honda.
It's a strictly male phenomenon. I have not yet seen a woman expend ing her golden years rummaging around through rat-holed swap-meet boxes in search of the proper horn button to ressurrect something better off dead.
Riding along behind the Harley and the Triumph on the Hawk, I'm suddenly engulfed by dark smoke and crackling flames from the Tri umph's exhausts; every time Canet rolls its throttle on, it puts on the same display. Figuring that the owner
might be displeased if we were to blow up his engine, we pull over. Dewhurst pulls up, too, and fixes the problem by tightening the sparkplug leads into the caps-one of those things you know to do after it hap pens enough times. Why not put on leads that don't come loose? Or would that not be authentic?
Also, the Harley is increasingly un willing to shift gears, something that can't be really classified as a break down since Buckwheat seems to have designed its linkage to make shifting difficult: "Zu reashes down wiz you HAN ta shiff, you HAAN!"
While these things are tended to, the Honda patiently sits, the way thousands, nay. millions, of other Su per Hawks just like it around the world have been sitting patiently for the last 30 years while friends on Brit ish and American bikes make repairs. Natural selection at work.
Why not let these things slip away gracefully into the mists of time? You'll not regain youth whether you use the right spokes or not. Go to your dealer now, before it's too late, and check out a new CBR600F2 Honda or a GSX-R750 Suzuki.
Of course. I did see an `81 GPz55O for sale the other day for a song. Red. remember? With the silver and blue stripes. Man, I wanted one so bad, but couldn't scrape up the bucks at the time. My buddy John Greene had one just like it back when he was go ing out with Jennifer Whatzerface with the big eyes. Course, the bike's kind of long in the tooth now, but finding a few new parts shouldn't be too tough. See, now this is a inotorci' cle. not a relic. They don't make `em like this anymore. Twin shocks, an engine you can see. Dang. I think I'm gonna hop in the Chevelle and go look at it again.
