2001 HONDA GL1800 GOLD WING

The flat-six super-tourer Quick Spinned.

Seven thousand pounds, seven grand, seven big ones: what can you get for that sort of money? A Honda CBX1000 perhaps? Of course, we’d be talking the Pro-link here. But what if I told you that you could spend £7k on a 16-year-old motorcycle with the sweetest engine ever placed inside a motorcycle chassis, ride it everywhere for another decade or so and still guarantee to you now that the bike will be a bona fide classic: scout’s honour… Welcome to the Honda GL1800 Gold Wing. Yes, you can just about get one of the first 1800s now for £7000 (no, not this 2012 model, but the bikes are pretty much the same) and that’s a bargain because not only are you getting one of the most amazing touring bikes ever created and the latest(ish) in a long line of classic flat-layout Hondas going back to the original GL1000 of 1975, but you’re also getting a time machine and by that I mean that you never forget your time on a Gold Wing. It’s not just the ride (which we will come to in a moment) it’s the soundtrack. Whether you manage to get an original GL1800 with the six-disc CD changer or the later models with some sort of USB connectivity you can enjoy your sounds on the road or – as I often did – switch it all off and listen to one of the best sounds in motorcycling: Honda’s flat-six 1832cc powerplant. This amazing soundtrack took me to Portmeirion in North Wales, it saw me peg-down around the Gooseneck on the Isle of Man, it reverberated around the remote Scottish Highlands and it was also my accompaniment when I got pulled by the cops for using cruise control so I could eat a sausage roll and drink a Capri-sun up the M2 on the way to the Brands Hatch World Superbike race in 2002…