I haven’t been attending to these RooR pages for over six months now, partly due to Churchill-ian events, dear boy events, but also because regurgitating past glories – ho-ho-ho – was starting to pall as a waste of your and indeed my time. But this change of heart was prompted by a determination to overcome a debilitating world-weariness invoked by enforced retirement, as much as by recent readers letters to Bike, a magazine that has obviously changed enormously in the five decades since I founded it.
Last things first, lately Bike’s readers have been writing about such contentious subjects as the road pricing in cities (e.g. £5/day in Cambridge), the huge cost and impracticality of electric ‘bikes (e.g. £20k for a 124mph ‘bike with an 80mile range when a faster, petrol one would cost £7–8k), the cost of servicing for ‘bikes that are too complex for the home-spannerman (e.g. £800 for a 6-year-old Africa Twin) and the financial and practical obstacles to becoming and remaining a ‘biker that uncoincidentally accounts for the ongoing decline in our numbers.
I’m also personally irked by other issues that readers have occasionally aired in Bike and indeed other, lesser magazines, such as the aesthetics of modern ‘bike design which substitutes ‘aggressive’ bodywork and pillion discomfort (if not denial) for purity of line that admittedly is almost impossible with modern emissions-mandated plumbing… although tell that to a professional customiser. I’m also increasingly angry about the state of virtually all but motorway road surfaces, the potholed and seriously degraded nature of which makes for treacherous riding, but which the local councils responsible for their upkeep cannot afford, not least because reduced government funding compels them to devote finite resources to other, more pressing matters like putting the likes of me into care homes and changing all the road signage to 20mph limits in urban areas, and then policing it.
Yes, these are the harrumphs of a miserable old fart bemoaning the march of time and I well recall how what was then motorcycling’s Belstaff-suited old-guard moaned in the existing ‘bike media when Bike came along extolling the virtues of spanky new Jap machines that were, quite literally, overtaking the products of already dying British brands and encouraging loud, bad behaviour on the Queen’s highways.
But what gets me now is that the nature of such dissent has changed, big time. Bike, and even to a greater extent the next rag I founded, WhichBike?, editorially questioned legislation coming down the pike, actually campaigned for change, and occasionally even got it: I well recall how one transport minister, Peter Bottomley – that shows my age – privately admitted as much to me.
Nowadays such media opposition, if such it be, is largely confined to the letters pages – if at all – which is one consequence of rapidly declining print media in this digital age having to not rock boats and concentrate on the upbeat and positive. And yet in this digital age, so-called online ‘bike mags, podcasts and ‘reviews’ are mainly about showing off how clever their authors are. As a result we shrinking band of ‘bikers – down some 12% since 2009, whilst their average age is up from 40 then to 51 now, which includes 48% of us over 60 year-olds who’re plainly dying off. Moreover, we are keeping our bikes for longer – an average of 15.4 years now compared to 11.6 years in 1994, which partially accounts for a steadily decline in new bikes sales, currently down 7.2% year-on-year, which also explains whey their manufacturers are trying to maintain their profits by increasing their prices, and the ‘bike media are chasing ever dwindling advertising budgets.
It’s as if we’re supposed to meekly roll-over and ignore this depressing state of affairs and those of us that are luckily able to afford it just carry blithely on paying ever larger portions of our monthly outgoings to buy, maintain, tart-up and ride bikes in the fewer and fewer areas where we’re able to indulge the freedom ‘biking once epitomised – ULEZ charges anybody? – until we peg it. And that’s because as only 1.2million people hold full ‘bike licences, compared to 41million with car licences – we barely merit political recognition, much less consideration.
But as for the personal ennui mentioned at the top of this tirade, there is one magazine which still, if up to a point, actively campaigns for our ‘bikey rights, and that’s Motorcycle Rider. However it’s the freebie house mag of the British Motorcyclists Federation, it’s only quarterly, written by amateurs and hardly anybody else, especially in the bike trade, reads it. So although the BMF does some good work – recently canvassing its members who unsurprisingly voted overwhelmingly against the planned phasing out of fossil fuelled vehicles – it’s hardly influential.
I will say that Motorcycle Rider does have a damn fine, fearlessly controversial columnist though, and his name is somebody Williams, but nobody in their right minds pays attention to him anymore… So like a few of his close friends, he’ll probably just carry on riding loud, gas-guzzling, old-school motorcycles until he pops his clogs, or the Forces of Darkness take away his licence. And before that happens, he’ll probably start chasing as many sacred cows nowadays as he did a few decades ago, albeit in an occasional, outraged blog.
P.S. You might also just be interested in a non-bikey blog I also posted today at wwww.markswill.wordpress.com
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Good evening, or possibly not, because this latest rant is really a companion piece to my last, Aug 3rd blog (with its many endearing typos, since corrected). And following that I’ve received the news that our wonderful caring, sharing government is proposing to ban petrol-powered mopeds, 125cc motorbicycles and scooters by 2030. And then follow that up by banning all oil-burning ‘bikes come 2035. This edict is a consequence of a long-awaited consultation process which has apparently ignored submissions from the (IMHO toothless) trade body the MotorCycle Industry Assoc. and the (IMHO codger-like) British Motorcycle Federation who point out that the charging infrastructure the electric ‘bikes that we’re all supposed to buy instead is nowhere near adequate nor growing fast enough. And yet…
“We have already committed to phasing out fossil fuel use across road transport,” said Trudy Harrison MP, Minister of State for Transport, “with sales of new petrol and diesel cars and vans ending as early as 2030… It is therefore important that L-category vehicles (basically, ‘bikes) do not remain fossil-fuelled as the rest of the transport fleet cleans up.”
Now excluding pedalecs which are basically slower, less range-capable equivalents of mopeds, electric ‘bikes made up just 2.8% of powered 2-wheeler sales in 2021 – a figure which I even find excessive – and although we’re told that Triumph, Norton and the revived BSA are working on electric prototypes, as are numerous foreign manufacturers who of course supply the vast majority of the ‘bikes we buy, but like their four-wheeled brethren, the few existing battery ‘bikes are even more expensive to buy than the other sort, e.g. Energica’s Ribelle costing £26,690 and Zero’s SR/F at £20,990, and don’t have anything like the range of a modern, petrol-driven machine.
Although the MCIA claims that “eight years to fully transition doesn’t sound like a problem,” it is true that the cost and availability of entry-level models will likely deter newcomers to our little game, newcomers that as mentioned in my last dispatch are already thin on the ground, never mind the tarmac.
With my famously pessimistic hat on, I might argue that by 2035 and possibly even 2030 I won’t be around and certainly not in a mood to buy a new motorbike, certainly not after my recent interface ‘twixt BMW and tarmac – see pic – I remain passionately committed to the cause. And hope that you are too. In which case you can comment, forcefully I hope, on the Govt’s consultation document using this link. Tell ‘em Williams sent you.
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It’s been over a year since I last I last regurgitated one of my old Bike, WhichBike? or M/cycle International columns for current consumption, a hiatus driven as much by the realisation that such ancient mutterings are largely irrelevant into today’s exciting, social media enhanced world as it was by my inherent sloth. So why start again now? Well I’m actually not going to resume the repetition game, at least not yet, but instead indulge myself a little commentary on the current world of motorbikery which, as you might possibly recall, was what those old columns were all about long, long ago in what now seems like a land far away.
Partly this was prompted by the ending of my long-running rants in the industry magazine, Motorcycle Trader which, thanks not least to the pandemic, canned its print version in 2020 and is now just a daily email essentially plugging this or that product to a dwindling number of ‘bike dealers. I loved doing that column and Andy and Jenni, who published it, are good and longstanding friends who nobly put up with my sometimes bizarre, sometimes offensive scrawls and what’s more, paid me for them. But Trader’s declining fortunes are a reflection of what’s happening to motorcycling generally so if you’re looking for fun and frivolity, stop reading now.
Whilst it’s true that even after I stopped scribbling for Trader, I carried on with a monthly spread in Bike as its Custom Editor and contributed a few tests of largely retro-style bikes that no-one else could be bothered with but that, too, came to an end, ironically around the time of the magazine’s 50 Year Anniversary issue which flattered me not a little (not least with a cake and candles!). This wasn’t, as my friend and its current editor Hugo Wilson at least pretended, because I’m a crap wordsmith, but because the latest round of cutbacks meant that his freelance budget had been whittled down to almost nowt. And in fact the latest belt-tightening at its publishers means that all Bike’s sister mags, including Ride, MCN and Practical Sportsbikes, have to draw much of their content from an even smaller pool of writers and photographers which inevitably spawns editorial homogeneity. Oddly enough, there still seems to be an awful lot of middle-management who haven’t had their numbers, or budgets cut.
And yet Hugo and his tiny (and shared) team manage to produce an impressive offering each month, but unlike the old days, well alright my old days, when we had irreverent, often campaigning pieces that challenged orthodoxy and celebrated the ‘two wheel trip’, it seems to exist mainly to test a large, dazzling array of bikes, the point evidently being to try and claw back some of the importers’ advertising that hasn’t migrated wholesale online and, presumably, inspire aspiration amongst us mere mortals who can’t really afford and few can ride to their limit on today’s crowded, heavily restricted, poorly surfaced roads.
Now as an inveterate editor and publisher of ‘bike mags since the early ‘70s, I’ll resist the temptation to bore you with my thoughts on the ongoing and probably obvious commercial consequences of this, but I will say that it’s symptomatic if not a direct corollary of what’s happening to motorbiking generally. And worse still, I will predict that in about 20 years time there will be virtually no motorcycling as we understand it in this country, and certainly no printed ‘bike magazines.
And for why? Well for starters us bikers are getting older and older and eventually dying off, and fewer and fewer young ‘uns are coming along to replace us. The average biker is now aged 46 – back in the 1980s it was over ten years younger – and a lot of this is to do with money, not just the ever increasing cost of insurance, fuel and the considerable deterrents facing anyone who wants to get a licence to ride the buggers, but the cost of the buggers themselves.
Regular correspondents to Bike magazine ask who is buying these bikes that it lauds as brilliant in every issue, e.g. £14,600 for a Triumph Tiger, £16,498 for a BMW R1250RT and don’t get me started on mad-ware like Ariel’s 28-grand Ace or Norton’s V4SV at £44k. You can get a very nice 4-door hatchback for the price of any number of modern sportsbikes plus quite a few that aren’t even that and, for example, the £17,150 RRP of Suzuki’s GSX-R1000R is now equivalent to 54% of the average UK median income – in 2011 it was ‘merely’ 41% – so it’s obvious that such bikes are the domain of the well-heeled, which invariably if inevitably means older blokes like me without mortgages or young mouths to feed.
And on that sobering note I’m going to pack it in for now, but if you want more on this, plus what might possibly reverse this sorry trend, sign up to get email alerts using the box in the RH column, or check me out again at the weekend. Oh, and if you’re bored enough to want to read my thoughts on non-motorcycling matters, have a go at http://www.markswill.wordpress.com
WhichBike?, the nominally objective and irritatingly independent ‘consumer guide’ that I’d launched five years after launching Bike, had become rather wilfully self-indulgent and whacky by the early ‘80s. despite having an excellent, much respected if a little straight-laced editor, John Nutting, and this column was an effort to reflect if not explain why.
Cartoon by Spike Davies
Sorry to disappoint, but what you read elsewhere in this issue is a lie.
Well maybe not all of it. Despite your deepest suspicions I am not about to blow Mr Nutting’s cast-iron drag strip credibility by revealing that he makes up all our performance figures, but I must respectfully admit that some of the stuff I wrote just isn’t kosher. Specifically the bit prefacing the XJ900 and RD350LC tests (Which I gone to Japan for in this issue – MW) claiming that i would un-lid the animal behaviour of Euro-journalists on a Japanese junket.
No, large wads of bribery have not changed hands (more’s the pity), and I can’t even tell you that I was beaten within an inch of my life by otherwise upstanding family men from that hot bed of creativity that is Peterborough, (Home of EMAP and almost all the other UK ‘bike rags – MW) merely to put the frighteners on me. All that’s happened is that I just started asking myself who needs to read this crap?
Who, indeed, wants to know about the enticement of innocent Japanese girls for the purposes of what I can only describe as lugubrious activities of a physical nature? Or the wilful spreading of vicious germs by cunning PR men anxious to immobilise serious investigative journalists who, subsequently confined to their sickbeds, were thus unable to expose the sham and trickery of non-standard test bikes? Or the drunken claims of the young turks who edit rival publications about how they poach WB?s readers and, of course, refute any changes of promo-puffery by dismissing the entire XJ900/RD350LC launch in a few paragraphs at the front of their mags? Or the pitiful sight of grown men watching Samurai movies and drinking tea:
Passé, my dears, distinctly passé.
Besides, there are more important things afoot, although they do indeed stem from that little jaunt I made to Japan, courtesy of Yamaha’s good offices. All the executives I spoke to at the various presentations and binges were, you see, confused.
“I am confused,” added Shoji Sek, Manager of European sales and Marketing.
And even Satoshi Watanabe, the normally perceptive senior general manager of Yamaha’s entire overseas operations collared me and said, “I am confused.”
Approached thus, I naturally responded sympathetically, for I have in recent months given some considerable thought to how hard a must be for those of such a markedly different culture to fully understand the manifold subtleties that attract we westerners to this or that breed of motorcycle. (Of course there is the hypothesis that since they are rapidly driving every other motorcycling nation out of business, this rather simplifies the problem of choice.) So when Mr Ikeuchi first came up to me I thought maybe he was going to offer me a fat retainer to advise his company on the socioeconomic factors affecting design and marketing, but then I remembered they’ve already got a big one in the shape of Yamaha Motor NV’s head-honcho, Paul Butler (joke). (Paul was a friend and all-round good bloke with a wicked sense of humour – MW) In fact what was perplexing all these gentlemen was something far simpler; they couldn’t understand half the stuff that’s written in WhichBike?
Of course I explained to them that most of the hacks who write for us are illiterate oafs too gullible to demand a decent fee for their efforts, but since they were used to westerners bandying those sort of excuses about in respect of Japanese factory workers, it just didn’t wash. Instead I came up with a solution, a glossary of biking slang that will once and for all de-mystify the quirks of Which Bike? If in doing so it removes the protective veneer of incomprehensible gibberish from the biased, libellous fakery we’ve got away for so long, then tough bananas: my contract is up for grabs next month and I’m hoping that I can get an office boy’s gig at Super-yike (A bowdlerisation of Superbike magazine, then in terminal decline – MW) now there’s a job with a future. So here goes with the Oriental Guide To Which Bike? Jargon
(Led by wordmongering contributors Colin Schiller and Roger Willis, it had become a merry competition to see who could, quite literally, out-obscure each other – MW) Part 1:
Banging Nails Through Your Winkie: Roger Willis’ rather curious notion of amusement.
Big Lunch: Falling off one’s motorcycle in a rather serious manner.
Bins The Lightbulb: Throws out that idea.
Blimp: Eye up (N.B. Not “Ay up’) or fond term for magazine editor.
Edge City: The area of psychic experience immediately preceding the Big Lunch.
Endoed Oriental Ore: Japanese bike that has recently had a Big Lunch.
Firm’s Bike: Vehicle used by Porkus Mobilius (see below).
Flankers: Devices used by the bike trade for convincing customers/journalists of a bike’s obvious worth.
Gone Whack-ola: Sudden descent into Wally-dom (see below).
Johnny Boys (a/k/a Smarty Boots): Those who ride in an anti-social, dangerous and flamboyant manner (e.g. C. Schiller after two Babychams).
Knee High To A Gnat’s Bollock: Not very tall.
Misconceived Ostracism and Vilification: Pass the dictionary squire, Williams has been at the Pro Plus again.
Moosh: My esteemed friend (e.g.”Oi Mmoosh, piss off”).
Munich Mogadon: A reflned motorcycle with many famous characteristics (e.g. slowness).
Naff-ola: Bad Nancy Boy Gizmo: Typical Japanese Styling trait masquerading as useful technical feature,
Popping A Hernia: Trying rather hard.
Porkus Mobilius or Mobile Pigs; Motorcycle Cops.
Oiled: Treated very well by those nice, honest PR men.
Powerband The Width Of A Cock On A Chocolate Mouse: Narrow powerband.
Richard Cranium or Dick Head; A very silly person.
Snazz-ola: Jolly good.
Teensy Weensy Foibles: Some drastic shortcomings that the R&D Dept somehow overlooked and we’ve been thoroughly oiled-up not to mention.
Turkey Dinner: A rather unmemorable range of motorcycles (e.g. Honda’s early lightweights).
Wally: Person of limited intelligence (e.g. Berk magazine readers, people who lend enduro bikes to WB? staffers etc, etc).
Wildly Exceeding The Structural Parameters: Beyond the bounds of even journalistic reason.
(And yes, these were all phrases employed by us irresponsible WB? hacksthe likes of both you’d never find in a motorbicycle magazine these days – MW)
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Thanks to Covid there isn’t going to be an IoM TT again this year but harking back to the mid-70s when it was still just about in its glory days, I started thinking about what might’ve been, at least commercially, and this column warned that the sport’s governing bodies seemed to be missing a Big Trick, even then and indeed as now.
THE MOTORCYCLE BUSINESS IS SO full of anachronism and contradiction that it’s small wonder it hasn’t disappeared up its own posterior. We have ample evidence that biking is increasing in popularity each year, registrations of new machines soar every month and the breadth of two-wheel appeal is such that even unlikely cats like Lord Hesketh and ex-Deep Purple rockstars are investing time and money into the biz.
Next summer will probably see a really full-tilt motorcycling boom in which a much larger section of the public will become aware of the diverse pleasures and excitements of the two wheel trip. Unfortunately they probably won’t be able to go out and indulge this new found thrill on a brand new British motorcycle thanks to our foresighted government and the bright sparks of NVT (Norton Villiers Triumph – the last corporate gasp of the UK industry – MW). But no matter (he said, stifling a technicolour yawn).
But in one important area of motorcycling we British are still pretty damn good. And that’s road racing. Already such outfits as Motor Circuit Developments have elevated bike racing to the level of a spectacle for baptised bikers, if not for the public as a whole. All it requires is just one really charismatic event which has the potential to capture the imagination of the average man-in-the-street, and suddenly road racing could occupy the same sort of role in the public’s consciousness as football, horse racing or Raquel Welch. (Remember her? – MW)
I mean very few people are into rowing, for instance, but just about everyone follows the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race, don’t they? And if anyone tried to legislate against rowing, you can bet your Y-fronts that there’d be a lot of public sympathy for the boys in the boats. It’s the nature of the event that captures people’s imagination and there are of course parallels that can be drawn in almost every sport that people bet money an,
Now in motorcycling we have a yearly event worthy of more public attention than the Cup Final, The Derby and the Horse of the Year Show all rolled into one, and yet almost everyone from journalists to sporting officials are trying to kill it. I’m talking about the Isle of Man TT, obviously.
Even if you hated motorcycles and the leather-jacketed clods who ride them, you could not fail to be drawn by the imagery and scope of the Isle of Man during TT week. I have taken people to the island who didn’t know the difference between a Benelli Six and a BSA Barracuda and they came away euphoric as much from the good-natured mania that grips the island as the racing itself. All of them were riding motorcycles within six months, too.
For whilst Agostini, Norrie Whyte (a gruff, veteran Motor Cycle News hack who loathed everything Bike stood for– MW), the ACU and the FIM concern themselves with the safety and status of the TT races, the majority of the people are attracted by the sheer outrageousness of motorcycle racing around 37 miles of varying terrain. Ask anyone who goes.
Now if the same incredibly efficient publicity machine that ground into action to publicise the recent Earls Court (Bike) Show (which attracted over 140,000 punters – MW) was given rein — and enough cash – to whip up public interest in the TT, then you can bet attendance and that all-important media coverage would increase by at least 50 per cent. And I ain’t kidding. See, the trouble with motorcycling in this country if it can be glibly put down to one single factor, is that the people who run its industry, its sport and its press are into motorcycling at the expense of most everything else. They find it hard to detach themselves from a closed reality that has something to do with an island mentality and a lot in common with 1950s cultural self-righteousness. The recent debate in the motorcycling press concerning the future of the TT races illustrates this only too well. Do we really want the TT races at a short, flat Silverstone circuit, even if it means world status and the return of superstars? Even if such a move attracted Linda Lovelace (notoriousstar of early porn movie, Deep Throat – MW) riding topless on a 16 cylinder Mercedes-engined Bantam, I doubt whether it would attract as much public interest as a properly promoted Isle of Man TT.
Yet it appears that the ACU and the FIM (and everyone else who obligingly follows the haughty edicts of these two bodies) object to the world status of the island races on the basis of safety, or rather lack of it. Well I ask you, is the Isle of Man circuit any more dangerous than Daytona? And does it really matter if it is?
No, I ain’t a vicarious sadist or a roller-ball (a barmy team sport involving violence on skates – MW) freak, but a good rider is a good rider and will deal with the problems better than a poor rider. The better able he is to deal with these problems – be they changes in road surfaces, a multitude of corners, or a split fuel tank – the more likely he is to win races. The point I’m trying to make is that even a real dynamite rider knows when his ability is being pushed to its limits. And if he can’t handle a situation he’s confronted with in any race, anywhere, then he has to slow down.
Only a fool rides beyond his limits, and who wants to see fools riding around the TT circuit? Does anyone care that much if lap times continue to diminish each year provided they’re seeing exciting competition between top class riders? The best riders would still win even if average speeds started dropping.
It’s certainly true that the TT circuit makes demands on a rider that no other track does, and for that reason alone it should reclaim its prestige as perhaps the ultimate challenge to a road race star’s ability (this title now seems to’ve been adopted by Daytona, aided, no doubt by the British motorcycle press in its role as a decreasingly patriotic blind sheep). Maybe more money should be spent on making the TT circuit safer. Maybe practice times should be doubled. Maybe the terry service is inadequate. But all the remedies necessary to make Isle of Man TT Week the giant spectacle it could become are now within the grasp of the motorcycle world as we stand poised on the threshold of a boom, It seems the whole status of the PP has deteriorated as a result of Giacomo Agostini moaning about its dangers five years ago. Before arrogant Ago copped-out there was hardly a word said about the event’s safety, or lack of it. Even if the sport’s governing bodies pander to the whims of a few petulant (and now fading) stars, should the rest of us miss out on what could be the motorcycling extravaganza of the year, every year?
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I think everything I wrote in this column was long ago vindicated by the demise of Hesketh and the dimming of David Essex’s star… talk about the Curse of Williams. But four decades later it also has a grim resonance when one thinks of the more recent departure of Norton…
“IT DON’T THINK ANY OF US SHOULD be too hard on the bike,” said Rodney Gould who, as an ex-world champion racer, could be forgiven for being tougher on a new competitor than most people. But Mr Gould and I were conversing amongst the elegant portals of Easton Neston, country seat of Lord Hesketh, where minutes earlier his business partner, Mike Hailwood, had helped unveil his Lordship’s much-vaunted 1000cc production roadster. It was this machine that was the subject of Gould’s verbal fingerwagging.
Red rag to a bull, of course.
dav
Hah! Actually I’m all in favour of the Hesketh, or at least the idea of it. The 90degree vee-twin is a welcome alternative to serious European sports machinery produced by Laverda, Moto-Guzzi, BMW et al, but I’m afraid everybody is getting swept up in a welter of patriotic fervour when assessing its merits as either the salvation of the British bike industry (a glib hope applied with equanimity by the weekly comics (MCN and the long deceased MotorCycleWeekly – MW) every time NVT paints its Easy Riders a new colour or Meriden fit a revised exhaust system to the Bonnie), or more seriously, a viable opportunity for the average well-heeled Joe to own something better than a Suzuki, Kawasaki or Honda of similar capacity.
In his opening speech, the redoubtable Lord Hesketh emphasised that this was not a one-off fantasy to tempt the cheque book of some ingénue backer into turning it into an instant museum piece, but a pre-production model that was tried, tested and very much ready to roll once proper manufacturing facilities had been set up. This I do not doubt, but how sound is the concept of the Hesketh in marketing terms? Will anyone actually want to buy it on its stark qualities as a high performance motorcycle for the ‘eighties?
Well there are plenty of vee-twins available, some of them capable of propelling their owners at speeds marginally in excess of the 130mph suggested (though not, wisely, claimed) as being the Hesketh’s terminal velocity. Disregarding the market’s fatuous reliance on manufacturers’ and road-testers’ claimed top speeds as purchasing decision makers, I’m concerned by the fact that Hesketh claims this speed is achieved by 86bhp at 6,500rpm. The Ducati 900SS Desmo needs just 68bhp to go 140mph, and the Moto-Guzzi Le Mans II, 75bhp to hit around 130. Admittedly these machines are lighter and their engines have to rev higher to match or exceed the Hesketh’s top whack, but this only focuses attention on what I consider the most dubious aspect of the new bike’s highly exalted British-ness.
Firstly, the Hesketh’s specification is really little more sophisticated than that of the equivalent Laverda, BMW or Guzzi. A couple of extra gauges and a clever rear-end hardly make it more desirable than, say, the Guzzi with its linked braking system and shaftdrive. Laverda have a hydraulic clutch available and BMW have fairings and extra instruments. But this may be nit-picking when considered against the heart of the bike itself, the Weslake vee-twin.
Why is it necessary to endow an engine which peaks at only 6,500rpm and produces optimum torque 1,500 revs lower down with double-overhead cams? They absorb energy and add weight. Perhaps they also add sales-appeal, eh? And why does the engine run so slowly anyway, when other European manufacturers of big twins and triples have clearly proven that their engines can safely peak two or three thousand RPM higher? I hate, but am not afraid, to say this, but I fear the answer may be that the Weslake is an inherently unreliable engine, certainly their earlier motorcycle engines were notoriously failure-prone. And keeping the revs down and the torque up may’ve been an expedient compromise between performance, durability and once again, saleability.
One chap who’s actually ridden several prototypes admitted to me that Hesketh had to virtually re-build all the engines delivered to Easton Neston by Weslake because they were so, er, ill-fitting. Later he collared me and asked me not to publish what he’d told me, but I honestly think it would be irresponsible not to tell you that the Hesketh, whilst it might be an admirable project in numerous ways, may also be a flawed one. (Unsurprisingly, I got a lot of stick for this at the time – MW)
The finish on the engines also left something to be desired, especially the rev-counter drive housing which looked as though it had been machined up the morning of the launch. I also considered it vaguely suspicious that no engines were started whilst we were ogling the ironware. No rorty roar to further fire the patriotic pride was a distinct downer as far as I was concerned. (There were a few squeaks however, when Motor Cycle Weekly’s dapper hack, G. Sanderson, was refused entry to the lig ‘cause his paper had broken the shock-horror embargo by 24 hours. Anyone would’ve thought that Lord Hesketh was declaring home rule for Towcester and war on Japan instead of launching a machine that will probably capture nothing more than 0.00049% of the world market.)
It’s only occasionally that the motorcycle press en masse enjoys the unbridled largesse of Britain’s cultured minority, although in the hey-day of BMW’s efforts to up-grade the biking image some four years ago or so, we got to sup champagne, munch paté de foie and break out the kipper ties quite frequently. I was therefore amused to see so many of my peers (ouch) straightening their knots and desperately tying to regain lost ‘h’s in the company of some genuine motorcycling gentry, many of whom were actually paying for the extremely generous piss-up. Eventually the sight of so many forelocks being metaphorically tugged in unison depressed the crap out of me, not because of any misplaced sense of socialism, but rather that the whole spectacle promised unilateral, if not fawning approval of the Hesketh. I’ll repeat that I don’t wish to demean the fundamentally admirable aspects of the machine and the dedication and despatch which lie behind its appearance. I just hope that it doesn’t end up like another Silk or Quasar due, at least in part, to the myopic indulgence of the media and the trade.
Actually an even unkinder analogy would be the preposterous Silver Dream Racer which David Essex is currently pledging his all to at a cinema near you. ‘Pudgy Dave’, as we close friends and colleagues affectionately call him, encourages your sympathies as the penniless road-racer who via the most unlikely set of circumstances imaginable, manages to acquire a mysterious bolide capable of circuiting Brands Hatch considerably faster than the factory Suzuki of smart-arse World Championship contender Beau Bridges… who also looks far too corpulent to convincingly pilot a 140bhp motorcycle. Bridges has a nasty reputation for ungentlemanly (and occasionally homicidal) behaviour on the track and what appears to be an incestuous relationship with Christina Raines. Into this sordid menage a trois (i.e. Bridges, his ego and Ms Raines), the recently bereaved Essex unwittingly marches, full of derring-do and pints of lager. Aboard his shiny new steed and with a figure trimmed by a fortnight of jogging round a disused air-field in South Wales (N.B. the same location used in the forthcoming ‘Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle’ movie for Malcolm McLaren’s flight from the reality of his crumbling business empire… is this significant?), Master Essex can do little wrong, and indeed quite a lot of nights, (T-shirt rights, album rights, poster rights etc., etc.)
Naturally this lengthy flic wastes no opportunity in promoting Essex the musician — he wrote the totally disposable soundtrack and can also be heard warbling an equally unmemorable ballad at one point. There is also an extremely thin patina of “humour” pervading the dialogue, doubtless an attempt to divert the audience’s attention from the ludicrous plot and otherwise facile script. A teeny bop ‘Carry On Bike Racing’ would just about sum it up. Nevertheless ‘Silver Dream Racer’ has two redeeming features: the racing footage really captures much of the adrenalin edginess of throwing a_high-performance bike round a race track circuit; and the stereo soundtrack (if your local fleapit, is in a position to offer you such a thing) complements this element of the film magnificently.
In the end though, the Silver Dream Racer proves to be only fractionally more durable than its name suggests; a dream that quickly fades. Now what was I saying about the Hesketh?
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One of my perennial complaints about advances in motorcycle design providing more finicky technology than the average rider needs or can use featured here, and once again, in these days of traction control and lean-angle ABS it was as relevant then as it is now… possibly.
In the bad old days of bike journalism (and indeed Bike journalism), L J K Setright used to write a column called ‘Cog Swapping’ which most of us didn’t understand but few of us remained unimpressed by. (Setright was a marvellously eccentric but high erudite automotive journalist – also a real biker – who I’d previously admired in Car magazine from under whose wing, anoraks might recall, I launched Bike – MW). Leonard’s command of the English language was such that the determined reader could often only plough through his pieces if armed with a very substantial dictionary, and it was thus often the case that the subject matter got swamped by the syntax. But on matters technical – and ‘Cogswapping’ was after all supposed to be a technical column – Setright certainty knew his stuff, and if he didn’t it was inflamed with such extreme literary pyromania that few would dare contradict him. One technique that he repeatedly employed, and which consistently irked me, was to jump into a eulogy on some deeply obscure engine design, brake system or lubrication pump using the catch-all springboard of there being ‘nothing new under the sun’. An old trick and one beloved of motoring hacks of every stripe, but too often used when the writer has little wise or witty to say about matters of the moment. (And just in case you think you know what’s coming, you’re wrong…)
No, I merely mention this now because | was reminded of Setright’s technique, and indeed his loquacity, when | was struggling to come to terms with current motorcycle suspensions… and also because this column probably wouldn’t fill a page without a couple of largely irrelevant introductory paragraphs.
However, unlike Setright, I am not especially interested in plundering the history books in order to leaven the claims of modern motorcycle designers. The march of progress is in my opinion entirety healthy and any recent duplication of engineering solutions can only improve on the original thanks to better development and manufacturing techniques. Unless of course the march of progress is no more than a well orchestrated fox-trot, you know – two steps forward, two steps back.
Take suspension for instance ~ and you’d better take it ‘cause that’s all I got: The high performance sport bikes of the early ‘60s had all manner of acronyms emblazoned on their fork legs which basically added up to the fact that anti-dive control, adjustable pre-load, damping and even ‘heat compensation’ gizmos had been engineered into their front ends. In truth, much effort end ingenuity lay behind these devices, but it was equally true that derived as they were from race technology lots of them provided damn-ail benefit to the average road rider. Now we all know that racing does indeed improve the breed. But somewhere between Kenny Roberts and Joe Soap the best suspension system in the world had to be diluted for you or I rode around the Hammersmith roundabout with HRC forks legs on our VFR7SOF we’d probably come off the bugger anytime we applied the front brake in earnest. The trouble was that modifying these undoubtedly accomplished racing solutions for domestic use meant sacrificing one of a number of their original benefits, and the compromises that ensued left us with systems that were either ineffective, effective only at low operating temperatures (i.e. for a short while), or required the rider to execute a complex equation of dial and valve settings every time the road surfaces, vehicle load… or his mind changed.
It therefore comes as little surprise to me that these twiddly bits seem to be quietly disappearing from today’s new and revamped models. Two recently ridden examples illustrate my point: Suzuki’s new GSX1100F abandons the R-version’s anti-dive and air-valves, as does the older but equally impressive XJ900 Yamaha.
Taking the last first, the bike was originally launched in an all-singing, all-dancing display of high-tech hubris at the Suzuka Circuit in Japan. Well do I remember the po-faced claims that were made for the bike’s sophisticated suspension (this was before mono-lever rear ends had really caught on big-time, remember). And well do I also remember that whatever settings I dialled into the forks of my particular test bike, it still waddled on hard braking into corners.
Now, of course, the anti-dive !s no longer a feature of the XJ900, just as Suzuki have chosen to leave it off a brand new, high-performance tourer that from its price-tag alone, would suggest that such an accoutrement would be de rigeur. There are those cynics who’ve already suggested that such omissions are merely economic expediency in the current cold sales climate – and I’m indeed one of them. But in reality, I’m now asking myself are these bikes any the worse off without them?
The XJ900, tested in our next issue, is a fantastically accomplished machine at a bargain price (well at least by the current crazy standards), and I doubt if anti-dive – certainly not the original anti-dive – would improve its performance or my enjoyment of it? The Suzuki, on the other hand, could usefully benefit from a bit more compression and rebound damping, but that could be done far more easily and cheaply than by bunging on the company’s PDF.
These contentions were generated by jumping on and off an XJ900, a GSX1100F, a Norton Commando and a BMW K75S in fairly quick succession. Quite frankly the ancient but well refined Commando had the best balanced front suspension, inasmuch as it suited fast, every-day riding on average roads, although the other three bikes all offered more comfort (due to longer slider travel if nothing else). The K75 with its large damper fitted in just one of the fork legs, dives on braking only slightly more than the two Jap bikes but — and it’s a big but neither of them offered better roadholding.
The conclusion I draw from this is simple, and the analogy tortuous: There are many ways to skin a rabbit, but only one way to eat it – namely with your mouth. That is to say that the refinement of a simple idea is often preferable to complex innovation (and it’s certainly cheaper), and the effects are invariably lost on all but the most tutored or sophisticated palate. We are now seeing this with front suspension, just as we have recently witnessed a certain amount of retrogression in the boiler room with Honda all but dumping complex V-fours and quietly resurrecting the UJ-multi in the shape of their CBRs, whilst Ducati steadily tinker with their V-twins and come up with comparable output figures.
If this is the shape of things to come, then it’s no bad thing … but the techno-junkies that the Jap marketing men have turned us all into in the past decade will have to modify their perceptions of what technological improvement actually means in the real world. Or – and Leonard Setright was unbearably fond of chucking in obscure quotations to underline his point — we should take note of Lewis Mumford’s dictum, namely that, ‘For most people, progress means accepting what is new because it is New, and discarding what is old because it is Old’.
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I can fairly be accused of occasionally wandering off-topic with my columns, and this one was certainly near the edge. However it was all true and was the product of a much-needed holiday after four exhausting years starting up my own company, re-launching WhichBike? as MotorCycle International, acquiring Motorcycle Enthusiast and preparing to publish Used & Classic Bike Guide edited by the estimable Frank Westworth, mentioned herein and, extraordinarily, still a good friend.
The recent burst of activity in the upper echelons of the whacky world of motorbicycle organs might deceive a bored and lethargic public into thinking that the leisure hours of biking’s men of letters are spent in exotic climes aboard equally exotic motorcycles (or in MotorBicycle Preview‘s case exotic motorcars).
True, some of us are regularly eased into our skin-tight, freebie Kushitani leathers by simpering bimbos and the liberal application of Baby Oil, all in readiness for a quick thrash down to Juan Les Pins for a little foie de gras and a crate of Bollinger. And equally commonplace is the preponderance of ‘plane tickets that arrive on senior magazine editors’ desks in an effort to persuade them to hop off to Bali for a quick look at the Micronesian motorcycle industry and to be fascinatingly photographed on the beach in their shorts and smiles for the benefit of grateful readers back home.
Even a humble soul like Mr Editor Isitt spends three or four months a year working on his tan on a Greek Island or the East African Coast, but for a distressed mogul such as myself, time and the purse strings are tight, which is why the sum total of my exotic motorcycling activities this year looks like being a long weekend on a moped in the Balearics.
I tell you, there’s nothing more relaxing after a year piloting the leaky craft of destiny through the treacherous seas of high interest rates, disconsolate staff and uppity printers than wheezing along at 20mph on a freezing night aboard a 50cc Derbi enduro. Especially if your riding companion is a spotty 16-year-old who’s just taken great delight in leaving you miles behind on a bona fide moped, and so you’re now lost as well as cold and mildly stoned.
There’s not much streetlighting in Formentera and the only road of any substance on the island, although virtually straight as a die on the map, is in fact bedeviiled by sudden, vicious turns that are usually unsignposted. Which might not have been too bad if the Derbi’s headlamp had been anything more than pathetic and I’d been able to recognise the turning to San Francisco. (Honest. And to think that Big Frank was singing the praises of a dusty, two donkey hamlet on a Mediterranean island all these years).
The previous evening mine hostess had lurched us all off to the island’s only happening-acid-house-bullfight-disco bar in her topsy-turvey Tonka Toy (which for some reason bore stickers that read ‘Suzuki SJ410′), but as I was well shit-faced at that point I couldn’t remember the exact turning and all Spanish dirt roads look the same to me. So I took what I thought was the correct turning and, sure enough, there were a few houses either side of the track. Trouble was that the candlepower of the Derbi’s headlamp was roughly equivalent to its horsepower, i.e. next to damn-all, and the same goes for its suspension. So if you were a nocturnally grazing Balearic goat on December 30th last, the fool falling off the Derbi was me.
The previous morning we’d had a little trouble with the throttle which, I later surmised, probably had a knock-on effect on the engine’s unwillingness to pull in the gears and thus spin the dynamo (surely those things don’t have magnetos, and they certainly don’t have batteries?). The appalling bandit who’d hired out the moped and this grim apology for an enduro bike had neglected to secure the throttle cable with anything firmer than a small twig (I kid you not), which meant that the first time a red-blooded tarmac stripper such as myself grabbed a handful of go-gas, the twistgrip made like a yo-yo and the cable went AWOL.
After trucking the thing back to the shop in the ‘jeep’, a new(ish) cable was fitted which was clearly too long and, thanks to advanced Derbi engineering there was no means of adjusting the slack. I also suspected that the crankcase seals were also as sloppy as Joan Collins’, er, syntax due to the lack of air filter and the quality of Spanish petrol, a combination of maladies which resulted in the Derbi’s extreme reluctance to move in a forward direction unless propelled by foot.
Yet somehow when it was daylight and, unhindered by the blunt edge of alcohol, I was just pottering around the boondocks near our villa, this didn’t seem to matter too much. Whilst wheelies weren’t exactly a snap, I was able to regain at least a glimpse of my glorious youth and the thrilling exploits of the all-conquering WhichBike? Enduro Team… providing my spotty friend didn’t zip by on his single speed moped with a humiliating smirk on his dial.
In fact it was on one of these relaxed sorties that I discovered the true reason for the continued existence, if not buoyancy, of the Spanish motorcycle industry. No, this is not because the absence of mandatory helmet legislation and the most rudimentary of licensing requirements encourage all and sundry to take to two wheels, nor is it because the climate favours wind in hair, bugs in teeth etc., etc. The real reason is that Spanish ‘bikes are bloody awful, but bloody cheap. Which is why I found sundry dead Bultacos, Montessas and Ossas littered along the bay behind our holiday retreat.
Experienced, talented mechanics such as you and I would have been able to restore many of these 50-250cc ‘strokers to their vibrant, adrenalin-pumping glory with the mere application of a crowbar and 15 gallons of WD40 (salt spray is a ready hangman), but the laid-back Spanish obviously just leave their dead bikes under a bush or on the beach when they break down and walk back to town to buy another. I honestly can’t understand why else there would be so many of the things lying around the place… unless they’d all been hired from the same dealer who’d supplied the Derbi.
And if for any strange reason you should be reading this, Pedro, it wasn’t me that left it propping up a wail with the front wheel and a cunningly re-shaped set of forks; someone must’ve stolen it just as we were running for the ferry back to !biza, taxi drivers and civilisation. All I need now is a proper holiday so’s I can recover from this grim automotive experience: I reckon a couple of weeks spent camping around the picturesque Durham slag heaps on a CX500 should just about restore the bloom to my cheeks and the fire to my veins. Sounds like something I could blag through the Used & Classic Bike Guide... now where’s Frank Westworth’s phone number?
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Written over three decades ago (when RooR had become Lore inMotorCycle International) much here still applies today, which is why I decided to post it here. The only thing that’s really changed is that China has somewhat by default taken up the baton as far as entry-level bikes are concerned which is a bad or a good thing depending where your morals, politics and hopes for motorcycling’s future are concerned.
IN 1976, THE AVERAGE WAGE OF A 17-21 year-old man was £68 per week. That same year, the price of a state-of-the-art Japanese sport bike like Honda’s CB750 F1, was £1145. Something less exotic, the sort of 250cc machine a first-timer could slap a pair of L-plates on, say a Kawasaki KH250 or Suzuki GT250A, cost a mere £540 and £549 respectively. Ten years on, the apogee of hotsy-totsy motorcycling, Honda’s VFR750, will put you back £3649; that’s a rise of 218% in the retail price of Honda’s top 750.
For the poor beleagured learner, nervously assessing the cost, personal discomfort and legislative barriers that face him should he take up the unfashionable pursuit of motorbiking, a Kawasaki AR125LC will add £1389 to his parents’ overdraft, or a Suzuki RG125 Gamma, £1219. These rises in the retail price of decent learner tackle work out at 110% and 122% respectively.
And yet in what seems like a remarkably short decade, the average wage for our 17-21 year old has risen to £115, an increase of 69%.
So there, in a nutshell, is the reason why motorcycle sales have declined so horrendously | in the last few years. Well perhaps not all motorcycle sales. The modest, some would say comparitively agricultural, machines of the Eastern Bloc, have not suffered such grossly inflated price hikes. In 1976 a MZ TS150 Sports | would make you the laughing stock of your KH and GT mounted mates for a paltry £245. Today, the remarkably similar TS150 Eagle costs £407, a rise of just 66%. Even the prices of more prestigious machines from just this side of the Iron Curtain haven’t risen by anything like as much as the best that Japan is now peddling: BMW’s £4285 K100 costs ‘only’ 61% more than its 1976 superbike, the £2659 R1008.
And thus the fortunes of Britain’s MZ and BMW importers have prospered whilst almost all those around them have watched the dust settle on gaudy rocket-ships that remain rooted to their dealers floors. I find it extraordinary | that the Jap importers make no mention of this, either in the public prints or, as far as I know, to their masters back in Japan. The only serious discussion I ever managed on the subject was with Steve Hackett, then head PR honcho at Mitsui, who was espousing a fearful inevitability that the recently launched XJ900 would breach the psychologically critical £3000 threshold. That was in 1983, and he was bemoaning the irony that as Jap bikes had now overcome their reputation for being cheap and tinny, the punters were becoming less inclined to pay prices for them that approached those of the BMs and Laverdas that hitherto represented ‘quality’ engineering.
Certainly in terms of performance per pound, the Japanese sportsbikes are in fact a steal, but that argument only holds good when you’re talking vis a vis the automobile. It does indeed take in excess of £20,000 to buy the sort of 150mph-plus top whack that several sub £5000 motorcycles can deliver, but for your £20,000 you also get a roof, a heater, a stereo and, if you’re smart, an appreciating asset. Anyway this is entirely academic, as neither the megabike nor supercar owner is really able to exploit his machine’s bum-clenching performance to anywhere near its max on our crowded tarmacadam and, even more to the point, the few motorcar freaks who can afford a Maserati and also appreciate the primordial rush of high-edge motorcycling, probably already own a Ninja or a Bimota…
No, the real point here is whether or not motorcycle performance has increased in relative proportion to cost. Well let’s take what was arguably the swiftest machine of a decade ago, the Laverda Jota. Depending on gearing, here was a machine that could deliver a genuine 144mph and cost just £2100 in 1976. Today, the cheapest bike you can buy that’ll take you that fast on the Mistral Straight of your choice, is Honda’s VFR750, at £3649. A more sophisticated bike for sure, but does that make it worth an extra 74%, and would you be better off buying a used Jota for two grand and enjoying the pleasure of owning an appreciating classic that’s cheaper to maintain?
True, the GSX-Rs and FZs of today do actually handle a lot better and accelerate significantly quicker than the sportbikes of yore, but my contention is that by locking themselves into a ‘performance-is-all’ marketing battle, the Big Four are losing their grip on the fundamental realities of the marketplace. Realities which, again somewhat ironically, allowed them to trash the rest of the world’s manufacturers in the first place.
In 1970, when Honda shocked the world by launching an OHC, four cylinder 750, its obvious rival, the Triumph Trident, cost £614. The faster, more exotic CB750 cost just £690. Three years later, Kawasaki’s (admittedly evil handling) 500cc two-stroke triple rabbit-punched the opposition at just £725, by which time a Norton Commando was eking out its last at £824.
So all other considerations aside, was it any wonder that Japanese machines quickly outsold their European rivals on performance per pound alone? Of course not. And now we’re seeing (he Japanese pricing themselves out of a market they themselves created! Ten years ago the cost of buying a CB750 represented about 32% of a young man’s annual income, Today, the VFR750’s price tag represents a staggering 61% of that same punter’s hard earned dosh. And the cost of developing and marketing these high-profile projectiles is borne not just by the individual models themselves, but by the toy-boy 125cc versions first-time bikers are expected to pin their L-plates to. Plus, there’s the awesome and seemingly unstoppable ascent of the yen.
The differences between 1976 and 1986 are many, but none of them are good for the motorcycle trade. Unemployment amongst this prime 17-21 year-old motorcycle buying age group is higher, and if the Japs have got their marketing-driven manufacturing policies wrong (just like the Euro-manufacturers got it wrong 15 years ago), then there is no major motorcycle building nation waiting around the corner ready to exploit the situation.
Okay, the Italian industry totters on, primarily in the shape of Cagiva and Moto Guzzi, but these two companies are not interested in, or capable of profitably exporting anything but high-priced and largely uncompetitive machines which a few well-heeled folk buy purely for emotional reasons. And BMW, for their part, are just not interested in the sub-500cc, entry-level punter.
But if the Japanese have unwittingly gone upmarket at the expense of broader retail accessibility, then what the hell happens next? The spoiled brat/rich eccentric market is not bi – maybe 5000 units per year tops – and the cost of just reaching it, let alone expanding it by weaning fat wallets away from sailboats and microlights, is massive.
No, if the industry wants to win back a mass market for new motorcycles it should reduce the prices of entry-level bikes by a least 20%, sport-touring and all-round roadsters by 15-20%, and maybe push up the price of the exotic stuff by a similar amount.
And it’s no good the MCA big-wigs complaining that they are at the mercy of hard-nosed manufacturers far across the globe. Nor is there much sense in holding out the begging-bowl for a zillion pounds to mount a glitzy motorcyling PR campaign. You can make the bikes as attractive as hell, and imbue the business of riding them with all the add-on sex appeal and freedom fantasies that advertising bucks will buy (not that they’ve much of a track record in this department), but who’s going to be able to afford to buy these machines? Certainly not the financially strapped young men and women of Thatcher-land.
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This was one of my all-time favourite RooRs, although TBH it now seems particularly dated and obscure subject matter-wise. It follows the absolutely greatest ride of my life from LA up Highway 101 to Laguna Seca for the AMA Grand National with six fellow hacks, including some real pros not mentioned here to save their (and my) embarrassment. It’s actually a fairly accurate if not extensive account of what followed, even if it reads now like that of a (very) poor man’s Hunter S. Thompson who, of course, was my one of my journo heroes at the time and not averse to a little motorcycle madness himself.
NOW WHAT’S EXPECTED OF THIS columnist is the jug of pythons he leaves in the closet when at all possible, i.e., always. Recently, though, stern advice reached me that a by-line behoves me to stick unequivocally to the subject in hand, specifically delineated as nuts, bolts, pre-load ratings, gravel rash, DoT intransigence and the numerous pints of real ale that constitute the only fringe topic permitted by the serious motorbicycle journals. Not entirely unsympathetic to this concept of biking as an exclusive male enclave of locker-room hubris and techno talk… hey, it’s fun to revel in the camaraderie of shared Yamaha gearbox failures and late-night speed wobbles… I nevertheless find myself unable to reinforce and condone tunnel vision just ’cause the economy of Peterborough is founded on it. On the other hand, from my point of view as an embittered pauper, perhaps I should own up to H.G. Wells’s dictum, “Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo.”
Humbled into a state of grovelling compliance by a combination of H.G’s cheap wisdom and an intolerant bank manager, I recently decided to return to some real grime-under-the-nails, straight-ahead motorcycle hackery. No longer would I stand accused of effete badinage comprehensive only to BMW owners and LJK Setright: it’s time to Get Real. And the mainline to the motorcycling artery that I now aspired to was Laguna Seca Raceway and Round 16 of the AMA Grand National Championship in all its pomp, circumstances and, above all, meticulous detail.
There was genuine inspiration at work here. In fact, the minutiae of lap times and grid positions are soaked up by the newsprint of gaudy, monosyllabic tabloids world-wide, and regurgitating yesterday’s papers for the benefit of monthly readers seems positively redundant. Yet few race reporters appear to have the time, or perhaps the creative inclination, to meld intuition and sensitive enquiry into the sort of post-event analysis that really explains why a man wins or loses a race. Anyone who has ever gotten a bike running balls-out along a fast deserted road and found instructions flowing effortlessly, even subconsciously from the brain to the hands, feet and torso in a giddy adrenalin crescendo that frequently leads you, and leads you happily, to the precipice of real danger, anyone who’s squandered fear on the edge of that reckless adventure must know something of the stuff of which road-racers are made.
And surely that sliver of shared experience whets the appetite for more? In such obviously physical spectator sports as football, boxing and even bar-room indulgences like snooker or darts, cause and effect are self-evident skills, whereas high-roller motor sport insulates its protagonists from their audience with fences and leather cocoons and confusing equations of speed and distance. It was my intention at Laguna Seca to add a vivid dimension to the fleeting spectacle of the tarmac chase by reporting what these stocky young gladiators actually felt about what they were doing … what goes on in a skilled professional’s mind when he’s sliding toward the Big Lunch at 170 per… whether the parameters of usable power and inertia bear even the remotest similarity to those by which we judge our humble efforts in the & commuter jungle or the Sunday afternoon show-off… what a seizure at 14,000rpm feels like… how they take their breakfast cereal? Such dumb idealism on my part.
Not one, not two, but four card-carrying roadrace reporters would accompany me. Well, actually two full-time pros girt in freebie leathers with their monikers plastered ostentatiously all over, and two somewhat tardier items: Hodenfield (Chris, loyal pal, early Bike co-conspirator and a truly great rock journalist – MW) on a scurvy GS1000 with a balding rear Metzeler and credentials furnished by a ‘family’ paper back east (on the lookout for a gore story, no doubt); and Gordon (Paul, laconic 2-stroke addict and another razor-sharp scribbler – MW), acting on 11th hour orders from, if you can grasp such a concept, ‘Canada’s leading motorcycle publication’, riding a Suzy 550 unwisely lent him by the aforementioned pros who thought he might ‘gently’ run it in before they set to work on it at the drag-strip. There was also Gordon’s wife, a mean pixie on his hot-rodded RD350, and someone called Belle Starr (My then girlfriend, and a real trouper – amazingly we’re still pals– MW), whose overtures to become our official photographer were cruelly exposed as a peculiar fraud when she produced an Instamatic as the tool of her trade!
Brill ‘toon by Hunt Emerson
Me? Well as luck would have it, telexes chattered across oceans and a Honda 750F emerged rather astonishingly from the American importer. All I needed then were paddock passes, photography passes, entry permits, parking permits and a snappy nylon paddock jacket on which to pin all this garbage… Hell, if you’re going to mingle inconspicuously with these chumps and file a real authoritative story, might as well wear the uniform, right? Calls to race headquarters two days before the 350 mile trip there informed me that I should’ve made a written application three years earlier. The exigencies of fast-moving global journalism impressed my lady informant not one 1tota. More telexes rattled from Which Bike? Central. A last desperate cable flew off to the Monterey nerve centre, but no honey-toned press aide called to reassure me that I was persona grata. Winging it was the only option.
After a 300 mile ride and a night in what laughingly claimed to be “Hollister’s newest and finest motel’, I was rudely awoken by I5 Mexicans bump-starting an ageing Pontiac the size and colour of a Nissen hut… middle-aged leather-boys who’d sneered at our motley attire as we’d shivered in from the mountains the night before broke the grev dawn with their revving, barely silenced multis. It was time to Go Racing… But not before a 25 mile detour into Monterey where a woman with too much make-up and a face full of sandwich sullenly claimed she knew nothing about me, my editor’s telexes or the rudiments of civility. At Laguna itself, a man with a gun forbade me to enter the press office until I showed him a press card and Hodenfield, who was up early and smug as hell with more labels hanging off him than a Woolworth’s Christmas tree, somehow oozed sufficient authority to usher me into the office without suffering a merciless beating. Inside, things got worse. A woman who looked like a professional wrestler sneered at me from behind a thin moustache and told me that (a) the telexes and cables were too late and to no avail, and (b) A woman who looked like a professional wrestler sneered at me from behind a thin moustache curtly pointed out that my proffered press card was two months out of date. “I have come 7,000 miles to cover this race,” I lied, as calmly as possible, “‘and a lot of English people are going to be disappointed if they don’t read my report.”
I don’t know whether she saw through my preposterous act, or whether she hated men in general and English ones in particular. But when she shrugged her shoulders and told me I could pay my $30 and write my report in the public enclosure, I started yammering incoherently about professional facilities and international public relations and had to be restrained from violence by Gordon and Hodenfield.
We queued for Coors to cool us all down. Three straggle-haired beer-guts with mouths in their necks loudly out-grossed each other with claims about who had the most beers, blow-jobs and spliffs before getting out of bed in the morning. The race organisers congratulated each other on the PA system over what a wonderful job they were all doing, somehow expecting us to believe they’d ‘only just break even’ from the 40,000 tickets they’d sold. The only vantage point our little team could get in time for the first Superbike Heat was in a square yard of dust vaguely in sight of the infamous downhill chicane, which the riders hit at around 90 over the brow of a blind hill. Reaction to the first wave of gladiators spewing over the top on their street-based racers was mixed. A large woman with a bouffant continued knitting despite her husband’s admonishments. Our photographer decided to take snaps of the diverse headgear on display instead of Chuck Parme throwing away his big Kawa. Hodenfield snorted something about the superior line he would’ve taken through the chicane but I noticed the strange aroma of exotic cigarettes permeating from his direction. Personally, I felt tiny Wendy Epstein (One of America’s few really top class female road-racers who carried on racing, including at the IoM TT, until the mid-noughties – MW) was pushing her GS1100 harder through the turns than Hodenfield could ever manage, although the yawing of what was basically street suspension threatened to have her, and indeed many of the other riders, kissing tarmac. The fundamental difference between pro-stock and formula racing was just one of the burning questions I resolved to ask her when I could steal Hodenfield’s paddock pass.
Eddie Lawson, who looks like he belongs in the movies rather than in motorbike racing, dumped over everyone in both heats and the final of the Superbike and there were apparently mutterings in the Honda camp that his engine was rather more than race regulated when the stopwatch revealed he was lapping only four seconds slower than Freddie Spencer on the NR500. Belle, when not photographing millinery, was loudly rooting for second-place man Wes Cooley for reasons that only became apparent after I saw him surrounded by lissom blondes in the Suzuki/Yoshimura pit palace: another goddam pin-up. Just when I was mentally bemoaning the dearth of gnarled old stagers like Smart and Du Hamel, Dave Emde crashed on the last lap.
You cannot buy a writing implement at a race circuit, so as Gordon scrawled furiously on a notepad, I self-consciously muttered such details as I could ascertain from the PA system into a micro-cassette recorder… and cursed my professional predicament. While Hodentield ambled casually into the press office and interviewed Mamola and Freddie Spencer, I’m listening to some super-jock twerp extracting revealing gems from Wes Coolev: “Uh, yeah, well we ran a real good race ‘n’ I went fast as ah could, the bike wuz goin’ real well, but, uh, well, Lawson was faster.” Heavy stuff, Wes. But these, and infuriating gibberish about mum and dad’s help and how easy it was for the likes of Fred Merkel and Bob Cunnington, respectively first and second in Sunday’s novice race, to move from dirt to road-racing, were all the insights available. One jock told another jock what a great and experienced commentator he was. Opinions were aired as to whether Randy Mamola’’s motorhome was bigger than Kenny Roberts’. California Yamaha dealers were thanked a zillion times for selling tickets. No-one seemed to think we were very interested in the fact that Roberts was riding the 1980 Yam with the transverse, piston port motor, rather than the ’81 square four, or that the Suzuki RG500 Mamola eventually rode to victory in the Championship was also a year old and 30 pounds heavier than the factory’s latest models. Or why.
Yet another brill cartoon from Hunt Emerson
Fortunately, Belle produced a bottle of Jim Beam from her bag and I quickly numbed my irritation, just in time to receive Hodenfield’s paddock pass which allowed me to stumble round the rows of opulent caravans and suss this stuff out for myself. No economies in the Honda camp. Freddie’s NR had a shelf full of engines ready in case 20,000rpm proved too much (eat your heart out, Mick Grant, I thought), and the other Spencer, Mike, on the conventional four looked cocky. History, and your copy of MCN, will record that Roberts blew the first segment of the Grand National with a “wrong tyre command” and the second with a clutch. “It’s a little fragile,” he told the commentator with rare lucidity and candour. So what the hell is it doing on a hyper-performance racing bike when the World Championship’s at stake, then? Spencer was indecently quick and effortlessly stylish for a few laps, then lost power and dropped out. Randy Mamola and F. Spencer pulled like trains from much argued-over slots at the rear of the grid as did Roberts before he retired and provided the sharpest racing of the weekend, even though John Bettencourt pipped Spencer for fourth place on a neatly decked-out TZ750.
The second segment of the 33-lapper was clearly Mamola’s, with Cooley sitting in his third second position of the weekend, when I turned to watch Belle taking a snap of what looked like two junkies – an ashen-faced couple with suspicious bruises on their necks – sway towards the exit gate. I was thoroughly Beamed by this point on Sunday afternoon and I couldn’t stop irrationality from posing questions like, “Why do a pair of junkies turn up at this ultra-conservative celebration of all that is good, dangerous and American… and am I really here for any better reasons, however weird they might be?”
I decided that it was the right moment to filch a paddock pass again and confront Wendy Epstein with these matters… as one confused soul to another. I mean, precisely why was she out there being lapped by everyone and his brother on a streetbike in a Formula One heat? There might even be a profile for Honey or Spare Rib in it. “Hi Wendy. Exactly how much do you hate men?” That sort of approach would probably crack it.
Or not. At that point in my alcoholic line of reasoning, it occurred to me that reportage is probably best left to those who can deal with it; the weekly papers and their fast-fingered fact processors. I shall cease this dubious quest for insights and stick with what I’m most comfortable with – raging subjectivity – and to hell with conventional wisdom.
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Running Out Of Road 