War of the Retros
WAR OF THE RETROS
Harley-Davidson 883C Sportster Kawasaki 800 Drifter Kawasaki W650 Triumph Bonneville
Now that the past lies before us...
PETER EGAN
FROM DOWN THROUGH THE DECADES HAS COME THE CRY OF THE BRITISH BIKE ENTHUSIast: “Why doesn’t someone build a light, simple, aesthetically 'correct' vertical-Twin that sounds good and looks good, combining the sublime virtues of old Triumphs and BSAs with modem engineering, to eradicate their famous faults and failings?” Well, someone was listening. Last year Kawasaki introduced its surprisingly accurate tribute to the British Twin, the W650, and keepers of the Britbike flame found much to like, with little to carp about.
it into a comparison test with the W650 and, while we were at it, add a little flavor to the mix with the direct descendant of that other Sixties icon, the Harley 883 Sportster. To round off the test with a fourth bike (the theme of this issue, after all) we brought along another retro bike, the Kawasaki Vulcan 800 Drifter, which takes an Indian Chief as its styling mentor.
To evaluate all four bikes, we rode them on weekends, commuted to work and then took them on a two-day flog over the mountains to Southern
to Southern California’s Anza Borrego Desert, with lots of seat time on every kind of road.
In our little band of brothers we had two certi-
fled Anglophiles who currently own one or more old British Twins (Editor David Edwards and yours truly), one pro visional closet Anglophile who is probably going to buy a new Bonneville but likes big V-Twin cruisers (Beau Allen Pacheco) and one life-long Harley Sporister owner and XR racer (Allan Girdler). Many miles were trav eled and much Mexican food was eaten as we worked out numerous pros and several cons. Here's what we con cluded, starting with the newest bike in the group.
The new/old Kawasaki had all the right visual cues: wire wheels with Akront-style alloy rims, exposed twin instruments, bench seat, kickstarter and teardrop-shaped tank with rubber knee pads and tastefully restrained paint.
It also had a lovely 360-degree counterbalanced engine that, rather than being slavishly imitative, seemed to draw on the best shapes from the English past, mixing BSA with Triumph themes and adding an elegantly polished bevel drive for the overhead camshaft, shades of the Manx Norton.
And, for an added note of authenticity, Kawasaki even had a little piece of its own history to draw on, the midSixties W1 650, which had been Kawasaki’s first big fourstroke, a bike based on a Maguro copy of a BSA A7.
Okay, it’s a copy of a copy of a copy, but at least Kawasaki has a vertical-Twin of its own in the bloodline. Some folks we know ran right out and bought W650s, liberated at last. Other potential buyers were slower to move.
Wasn’t Triumph working on a new version of its celebrated Bonneville? Triumph insiders hinted the new Bonnie would be “a dead-ringer” for the old one, but built with the proven stamina of the new-generation bikes. “Perhaps we should hold off,” some cautioned, “and see what the neoBonneville looks like. After all, it’s British, and history, however diabolical, counts for something, eh what?”
Well, the new Bonneville is finally here.
To confront the inevitable questions, we decided to throw
H-D 883 SPORTSTER CUSTOM
The real thing, from way back Clean, uncluttered design Excellent chassis `~owns r Needs more ponies r Handlebar buzz at 70 mph-plus r Low seat for the long of leg
$6695
Triumph Bonneville
Now that the curtain has finally been raised on this bike, it must be said that some Triumph traditionalists are slightly nonpiused. The bike is nice looking enough and generally suggests an old Triumph in general shape, but it's hardly a dead-ringer for, say, a 1970 Bonneville.
iviost notaoly, tne pipes nave an odd bend in tl-iem, JUSt before the mufflers, completely at odds with the streak-ofspeed look of the old pipes. Others complain of the pressed seam around the bottom of the tank, no fork gaiters, kick starter, tach, knee pads (optional) or centerstand (optional), and an engine with rather tall architecture that looks more like a twin-cam version of a Royal Enfield Interceptor than anything from the Meriden factory. Clearly, Triumph was not trying to build a perfect copy of an early Bonneville, but a modem bike in the visual and dynamic spirit of the old girl-what the Bonneville might
have become, had it stayed in production all these years, with
sensible updates-while keeping the price reasonable.
And how have they succeeded?
Pretty well, actually.
First, your $6999 buys you a 477pound bike-about 85 lbs. heavier than a mid-Sixties Bonneville-that is, nevertheless, quite compact by modem standards, easy to park and roll around your
garage. The riding position is roomy and the handlebars give a slight forward lean into the wind. That, combined with a long, flat, amply padded seat that allows you to move around, made the Triumph the easy] long-distance comfort champ in this group as the miles wore on. It also has the largest gas tank (4.3 gallons), the second-best fuel mileage after the Harley and the longest range to empty, about 193 miles. The Bonneville starts with a pull of its carburetor-mounted choke knob and a stab on the elec tric-start button, and warms up quickly with a bland, far-too-quiet exhaust note that revs with all the ferocity of a goldfish blowing bub bles in a pet shop. Triumph offers a set of louder performance mufflers that are said to add 10 bhp, and we can't imagine anyone resisting this change. The junk man cometh. As you hit the road, the light clutch and unobtrusively slick five speed transmission make shifting easy. The oil-cooled 790cc engine pumps out enough torque-41 .4 foot-pounds at just 3300 rpm-so you can cruise through town in almost any gear. The torque curve is so flat,
KAWASAKI W650
$6599
A Great But-like attention to detail A Appropriate exhaust note A Light, responsive and agile A All this and a kickstarter! owns v Stepped seat limits movement ` No traditional oil leaks, despite appearance Y Owner can't wear Triumph or BSA T-shirt
KAWASAKI 800 DRIFTER
$7499
Luxo-bike highway ride Smooth, willing engine Styling owns r Styling r Needs windshield on highway r No room for wife (or is that an Up?) .
the missing tach seems a minor inconvenience, as there isn’t much incentive to buzz the engine. When you do, the only negative is a mildly vibratory thrum that feels like the counterbalancer moving slightly out of phase. Triumph, incidentally, tuned the twin balancers to be less than perfectly smooth to give the engine a bit of feel. Not an exciting engine (with these pipes), but a muscular, sweet-running one.
Suspension is comfortable and well damped over large and small bumps, and when you get into the twisties the handling-for a bike not aspiring to be a roadracer-is absolutely superb. It tums-in effortlessly and intuitively, holds an accurate line and is not upset by waves and ridges in a corner. It has all the light, rider-friendly responsiveness of an old Meriden Twin, but translated into the modem idiom, with real suspension, excellent cornering clearance and easi-
ly modulated disc brakes that actually stop the bike.
One of our testers commented that the chassis feels so contemporary-almost like a current Japanese “standard” such as the Kawasaki ZR-7S-that it loses some of its link to the past. Probably for the better.
Of all the bikes here, the Triumph is the easiest to ride fast on a winding road, and has the most power and drive coming off a comer. In our performance testing, it was quickest and fastest in the quarter-mile, roll-ons and top speed. It also feels the safest and most stable at speed. Whoever was on the Bonneville normally led the pack during our two-day mountain-and-desert excursion (Edwards’ ability to grind virtually any bike into a shower of sparks aside).
And now we turn to the other side of the Britbike coin:
Kawasaki W650
Materially, the W650 gives you everything (at a lower price: $6599) the Bonneville left out. You get classic, good-looking pipes and mufflers, a tach, knee pads, centerstand, fork gaiters and a beautiful engine that emits a truly wonderful and snotty Sixties verti cal-Twin exhaust note. The engine makes 11.2 fewer bhp and 3.9 fewer ft.-lbs. of torque
fewer ft.-lbs. of torque
than the Triumph, but has a nice edge to it, revving crisply to a more discernible power peak, despite its very flat torque curve, which is close to its maximum at just 2200 rpm. In testing, the W650 (actually 676cc) was the second fastest and quickest bike, with a 60-80mph roll-on better than anything but the Bonnie.
Riding position is a little different from the Triumph’s; you sit more on top of the W650 rather than down in it, and the wide bars come back to meet you, allowing less forward lean. The seat (newly shaped for 2001) is nicely padded, but has a step that limits movement to the rear, making it less comfortable on long rides than the Bonneville’s wide, flat saddle.
The Kawi feels lighter (and is, by 22 lbs.) than the Bonnie and handles beautifully in the twisties, but is not quite as confidence-inspiring as the Triumph when pushed, nor does it have the effortless gmnt for pulling hard in, say, an uphill sweeper. The riding position and suspension damping conspire to give it more of a true vintage flavor, lowering its perceived limits by a small notch.
Overall, the W650 has a smaller and more delicate feel than the Bonneville, a better-equipped and higher level of finish, more finesse in the controls and-dare we say it?-more personality. Not quite as versatile an all-purpose sport/road bike as the Triumph, it is nevertheless more fun around town and on shorter rides, and much more evocative of the sound and feel of the old Twins.
TRIUMPH BONNEVILLE
$6999
A Triumph back in the vertical-Twin business A A no-excuses bike with modern brakes and handling A Roomy, rational riding position owns V Needs several hundred dol lars worth of accessories (grabrail, centerstand, knec pads) to be complete V Those awful bent exhaust pipes V Where's the tach? (Even ol~ Honda CB35Os have one)
Harley 883C Sportster
Harley certainly gets the Unbroken Bloodline trophy for this test, the Sportster having been in continuous production since 1957, with significant but careful updates that have retained much of the look and character of the original beast. You could throw a current Sportster into a pack of Sixties XLCHs and, at speed, hardly anyone would notice.
Our testbike was the Custom version, with its odd (some would say useless) feet-forward, arm-stretched riding position and penny-farthing wheel-size combination, but it is in every other way the basic 883. And the riding position didn’t hurt its handling or speed.
If you haven’t been on an 883 Sportster in a while (and two of us, both previous owners, hadn’t) you forget what a solid, compact and nice-handling bike it really is. The chassis and engine seem forged out of a single billet, and the knife-narrow dimensions make it feel like a tossable, doanything flat-tracker compared with today’s ever-larger and taller road bikes.
Vibration? Yes, there’s more than in the other three bikes featured here, and the 883 ain’t much of an interstate cruiser. Above 70 mph, grip vibration can make your palms feel as if they’re being nibbled by ducks, but if you move the speed around a bit, it’s a fun and entertaining bike.
In the mountains, especially on long uphill sections, the 883 became a bit wheezy compared with the others and had to be ridden with the throttle pegged much of the time to keep up. The Sportster dynoed lowest of our group by a small margin but tied the Drifter for most oomph, producing a flat torque curve that is a thing of beauty. This bike hammers out pleasing, right-now forward motion at any legal-range road speed. But at the high end, it fades fast.
At the dragstrip, the 883 was least quick in the quarter-mile and the slowest in roll-ons. It tied the Drifter for lowest top speed at 98 mph. On the other hand, it got the best average fuel mileage, which allowed its smallish 3.3-gallon tank to give it nearly the same range (164 miles) as the two Kawasakis.
The Sportster’s seat doesn’t look like much, but it’s well shaped with firm foam, and it allows longer stints on the road than you might expect. If you could use the pegs to support more body weight, it would be better still. The passenger portion is.. .just adequate.
Essentially, the Sportster is just what its name implies. Not a great all-around highway machine or a two-up touring bike, but a fun and charismatic town bike that’s also
great for the occasional blast down a winding road. And, after the trip, it had at least two of us scratching our heads and wondering if a 1200 Sportster with a standard riding position wouldn’t be a perfectly good-and perhaps more authentic-fulfillment of all those hallowed British attributes we like so much.
After all these years, it’s still a stripped-down, spartan, real motorcycle with chiseled and honest good looks. At $5595, the standard 883 version would also be the cheapest bike here by a thousand dollars, though the Custom treatment makes it a little more expensive than the W650.
Kawasaki 800 Drilter
In some ways, the Drifter is the odd man out here. It’s a cruiser with no pretensions of sporty flat-track heritage or nimble backroad prowess, or even a link to its own corporate past. But it is a frank attempt at building a throwback to another era, so we brought it along. And, like the Harley, the Drifter turned out to be a pleasant surprise in many ways.
How so?
Well, it’s a very competent motorcycle. Smaller and lighter than its big brother, the 1500 Drifter, the 800 is nimble and easy to handle on both highways and backroads. It also has a smooth, glitch-free, liquid-cooled V-Twin that literally purrs down the road with a mellow beat, sounding like a subdued inboard marine engine with its pipes burbling below the waterline.
Ride matches sound, in this case. The fork and hidden rear suspension are extremely compliant, but also well damped, so the bike’s serene, Cadillac-soft ride doesn’t upset the chassis in normal, brisk riding. Only when pushed hard over a wavy road full of dips and rises does it start to feel a little loose. The Drifter’s main drawback is its low floorboards, which drag early and often when you turn up the wick. The “hero nubs” on the bottoms strike the road with a loud gratching sound that slows you right down. Carry too much speed into a decreasing-radius mountain hairpin with this baby and you’ll be looking for your rip-cord.
But that’s not the way people ride a bike like the Drifter. At a relaxed Sunday-ride pace-and even a little above-the 800’s handling is crisp and facile. It tums-in easily and holds a line without effort. In general handling and performance, it feels a little like a smaller H-D Road King.
What it could use, however, is the Road King’s windshield. At highway speeds, the wide, long handlebars have you leaning back and straining to pull forward against a wall of wind. It’s okay for short distances, but tiring on a longer ride, and the feet-forward floorboards don’t help.
Speaking of which, several of us found ourselves inadvertently kicking the transmission into false neutrals by sliding our feet back on the floorboards and bumping the rear half of the FLH-style rocker shift lever. Fashion has its drawbacks.
But not where the man or woman on the street are concerned; bystanders and passing pedestrians love the Drifter and are drawn to it, effusing praise. Part of that look, of course, comes from the concho-festooned solo saddle (a two-up seat is available). The less initiated often thought the 800 was "a great restoration." It's a set of classic motorcycle shapes that still whisper in the ear of many people.
Conclusion
So, is the past alive and well, undiluted by time? Well, each of these machines is a better nuts-and-bolts motorcycle than their inspiration. Kawasaki’s 800 Drifter, at first glance, might be easy to dismiss as nothing but a bunch of vintage-style bodywork trying to make a styling statement, but beneath that flamboyant plastic is an honest, very likable motorcycle. Smooth, competent and easy to ride, it’s a good town-and-highway cruiser for riders who are tired of bulk and/or high prices. The smooth, Yellow Submarine pumping of its V-Twin matches perfectly its laid-back personality on the road. As one of our editors (a vintage Indian owner himself) commented, “This is the best neo-Indian you can buy, if that’s what you want-and it doesn’t cost $24,000 like that made-in-Gilroy Chief.”
The Sportster, for those without Limey aspirations, is still a great basic motorcycle that radiates uncluttered charm and an uncompromised continuity. In many ways, it’s the most authentic bike here; it’s not trying to be anything but an updated version of itself. With a little more power (or the 1200 engine), it could be right in the hunt among these bikes. It could be smoother on the highway, but then maybe it wouldn’t feel like a Sportster. A little rawness can be a good thing.
For those who want a versatile, do-anything road bike, the Bonneville takes Best of Show. In this group, it’s the fastest, quickest, best-handling bike, with the most comfortable seat and the greatest fuel range.
It’s a nice update on the concept of the old Bonneville, without being just like one. But, we all agreed, it’s not the best retro “British” bike.
That award goes to the Kawasaki W650. Its look and sound, its lightness, chassis feel, attention to detail and high level of finish are much more evocative of the past. It really is a late-Sixties Bonneville for people who want to recreate the sensations without the worry. We met a Britishborn tourist at our Borrego Springs motel who told us he’d bought a W650.
“I’ve owned a lot of old Triumphs,” he said, “but the new Bonneville didn’t quite do it for me.
Kawasaki got it ri
It’s all a question of how retro you want to go. □
