Leanings
LEANINGS
Growth industry
Peter Egan
IT WAS THE FIRST REALLY WARM, BALMY evening of the summer and I was too lazy to work on my Triumph, so I did the only other thing possible, which was to jump on my Harley and ride 25 miles into Madison to see if Border’s or Pic-A-Book had the new copy of Hemmings Motor News in stock.
“Why don’t you call first and ask if they have it?” Barb suggested.
I feigned confusion: “What fun would that be?”
Lovely evening, deer everywhere, moth-like bugs corkscrewing out of the soft dusk and zeroing in on the windshield like dim-witted tracer rounds, bats and bam swallows dipping over the road. “And so life returns to the tundra,” I said in my best nature film narrator voice.
By the time I got into Madison, Pica-Book was closed and Border’s did not yet have the new copy of Hemmings. Now I’d have to make the same trip another night. Hard luck.
On the way out of town, riding through the UW campus, I came up behind another motorcycle slowing for a stoplight. A very small bike with two young people on it, probably boyfriend and girlfriend. Slim, tall couple, in cafe-racer garb and real motorcycle boots, rather hip-looking.
I take a certain amount of senseless professional pride in being able to identify bikes from the back, but I had a little trouble with this one in the semi-darkness. Tapered aftermarket mufflers, chain drive, skinny old-fashioned rear tire, narrow dual seat. I guessed maybe an old Honda CB160.
But no. When I pulled up alongside I saw the distinctive tank and dual-carb cylinder head of a Triumph Bonneville.
The rider looked at my green Road King. “When I grow up, I want one of those!” he shouted over our mutual exhaust clatter.
“Nice Bonneville,” I said. As the light turned green and we took off, he gave me the thumbs-up.
A pleasant exchange, but I was somewhat taken aback. How could I have pegged a Triumph Bonneville as a Honda 160? Back when I had a Honda CB160 (on these very streets, with my own girlfriend on the back), I perceived a Bonneville as a great big high-performance bike. And now it looked so...small.
But this has been happening to me a lot lately. Over and over.
A few weeks ago, I went on a sportbike ride and a guy showed up on a nicely weather-beaten, unrestored Norton Atlas. Here was another bike I imagined, back in the Sixties, to be a fire-breathing roadburner of outsized proportions, yet in a parking lot full of modern sportbikes (i.e. next to my Ducati 900SS) it looked low and small as a cobbler’s bench with wheels.
On a similar note, I’ve been looking at Panheads over the past year or so, with a mind to eventually buy an early hardtail. I’ve had a chance in recent weeks to ride two later Pans, both full-dress DuoGlides. They are a little larger and heavier than the bike I’m looking for, but even these feel surprisingly small, especially when I’ve just stepped off my Road King.
Now, a full-dress Duo-Glide is the first motorcycle I ever rode on as a passenger (at the tender age of 13) and at that time a Harley Pan was the ne plus ultra of hugeness. The thing had car tires, for God’s sake (or so we thought) and looked like a homecoming float coming down the road. That’s why we called them Hogs. And now it feels small?
Yes it does. Well, not quite Honda 50 small, but smaller than a new Big Twin and half a dozen other modern cruisers.
Strange business. Why are bikes getting so big? Humans have grown a little larger, to be sure, yet I have ridden those old Triumphs, Nortons and Harleys and found them to fit my 6-foot-1 frame just fine, with comfortable seats, good handlebar reach and plenty of legroom.
My friend Bruce Finlay son may have part of the answer. He recently finished a light restoration on a Honda 305 Superhawk, and has been marveling at how much fun it is to have a light, nimble bike again, especially for running around town and short road trips. He confesses that the Superhawk is getting more daily use than either his R1100RS or his pair of Ducati bevel-drive Twins. i “When I sit at a light on the 305 and look at the other bikes around me,” Bruce says, “I realize that the only reason for a bike to be larger than the Honda-unless you are taking a very long road trip with two people and luggage-is vanity.
“Not that there’s anything wrong with vanity,” he adds, laughing. “It produces some great bikes.”
Indeed. My own four current bikes probably have an average vanity content of about 60 percent, with the rest left over for usefulness. Without vanity, we’d all be riding around on former East German two-stroke commuter bikes with canvas fairings, so it’s not all bad.
Still, as a modest proposal, we might suggest that manufacturers look into this size thing as they work on their next generation of bikes.
Harley, for instance, is always searching for more horsepower without messing up the look and sound of their traditional V-Twins. Yet it seems to me they have part of the answer in their own museum in Milwaukee: the 1948 Panhead. It’s shorter, narrower and about 140 pounds lighter than my 1997 Road King.
In fairness, of course, the Road King is faster, smoother, more durable and better handling than that 1948 Pan-and probably about as fuel efficient-so we haven’t exactly paid a heartbreaking penalty for its gradual growth. But 140 pounds is still a substantial chunk of weight, like giving a lift to an unseen passenger. While I love riding the Road King, I certainly wouldn’t object if it were a little lighter and trimmer.
Maybe our Bonneville friend at the stoplight doesn’t so much need a Road King when he grows up, as Harley needs to build an FL from its own youth, but with modern materials and technology. Ditto Triumph, BMW, Honda and others.
We have lots of retro-look motorcycles right now, but hardly anyone’s doing retro-mass. □
