Dancing With the Stars
Dancing with the Stars
UP FRONT
David Edwards
CRUISER HEAVEN, THE BLUE RIDGE PARKway, 469 miles of meandering two-lane that link Virginia's Shenandoah and North Carolina's Great Smoky Mountains National Parks. Imagine a tree-lined golf course laid out on the ridgetops of the southern Appalachians, but with paved fairways and manicured short rough. No crossroads, no traffic lights, no billboards, no, guardrails, no shoulders, not even white lines painted at the asphalt's edges to spoil the parkway's rural character.
This is what you get when a landscape architect-not some slide-rule-wielding, dynamite-happy engineer-lays out a scenic byway. Stanley Abbott was the man, not far removed from his studies at Cornell University and heavily influenced by the great Frederick Law Olmstead, design er of New York City's Central Park and the expansive grounds at Biltmore House in Asheville, North Carolina, coincidentally within sight of the parkway. A project of FDR's Civilian Conservation Corps, work began in 1935, height of the Great Depression. Local people did most of the construc tion, much of it by hand, including the tunnel digging.
This road hewn out of the wilderness, with panoramic views of parallel mountain ranges, treated like a trea sure by its keepers the National Park Service, has one overriding theme that we as motor4 cyclists understand better than anyone: "recreation4 .• a! motoring." No won der it's called America's Favorite Drive.
My dance partner on the Blue Ridge Parkway was Yamaha's new-for2007 V Star 1300 Tourer, the top-o'-the-line two-tone version priced at $11,390. Knock off $200 for the mono-color models, while the base bike without windscreen, leather covered hard bags and padded sissybar MSRPs for a reasonable $10,090.
Actually, I should correct myself here. Technically, see, I wasn't riding a Yamaha but rather a Star, the spin-off moniker the company uses for its cruiser family. As owner of eight Yamahas over the years (HT1, AT-i, XS75OD, RD400F, Seca 650, Champion-framed XS750 Twin, Venture Royale w/sidecar and Warrior) and a follower of the brand's many rac ing exploits (Roberts, Hannah, Rainey, Lawson, et a!), I don't understand the name switch-but, hey, I'm just a simple scribbler and not some high powered marketing maven Okay, back to the Star V Star 1300, then...
A pretty nice piece, what now passes for a cruiser middleweight-well, if you can call 80 cubic inches (1304cc) and 668 pounds dry a middleweight. "Balanced" is the word that comes to mind. In styl ing, performance and handling, the V Star is right down the middle of the pike and a great traveling companion. I'd prefer more cornering clearance before hard parts start to scrape (see floorboards afire photo, below), but I could say the same about almost any cruiser, including this issue's Harley-Davidson Fat Boy test bike-and, last I looked, sales of that bike have hardly been affected by my prior criticisms of its abbreviated lean angles.
No surprise to Yamaha's (sorry, Star's) numbers-crunchers. Demographics show that the average cruiser buyer is a 39to 54-year-old most interested in "relaxed twisty backroad" riding (hence the post ed-45-mph Blue Ridge as location for the 1300's world press launch), followed by "boulevard cruising" and then "free way/interstate" use. Throwing sparks did not make the cut.
Demos aside, the 40-something ahead of me was doing a decent job of wear ing down his 1300's replaceable floor board scuff pads. Turned out be Masato "Maverick" Suzuki, leader of the V Star 1300 project. Over dinner that night, I had a chance to find out more about the man. Suzuki spent his first four years (of 24) at Yamaha in the boat division, working on a slick personal hydrofoil straight out of James Bond. Just prior to his move to Star, he was involved in a little project you may have read about recently: the makeover of the YZF-R1 motor from five valves to four. In his spare time, he designs human-powered aircraft-goal for the latest is to cover 120 kilometers if the bicycle racer inside can pedal that long.
It's not very often that we get to meet the men behind the machines at the Japanese Big Four. In North Carolina, the Blue Ridge, the V Star 1300 and Mr. Suzuki did not disappoint.
For a V Star 1300 Tourer riding impression, go to www.cycleworld.com
