Roy Poynting column.
What did a 1960s youth look for first in the road test of a new machine? Seat? Fuel economy? Dry weight? Not a bit of it; the first thing was ‘top speed,’ every time.
Looking back, it’s somewhat embarrassing to admit how readily I and my contemporaries accepted simplified and prejudiced advice about motorbikes. We fell over ourselves to believe everythingwe read and were told about which bike was best and fastest, so we never stopped to question whether the pundits had sensible and unbiased priorities, or evenwhether they knewwhat they were talking about. With more experience, I now realise a bike’s preparation and maintenance is much more important than its reputation, but surely it should have been obvious even to callow youths like us!
But no. We accepted the gospel that Triumphs were fastest and Nortons handled best, even after we’d observedwell set up Tigers out-cornering Featherbed Dominators with worn shocks, and then being left behind on the straights if the Dommie’s engine was in tune. And to be fair (which we weren’t) a spot-on BSA or Royal Enfield might have been just as good as either, plus it might have beenmore comfortable as well, if comfort had ever come into our reckoning.
What we didn’t seem to get our heads around was that basic design was just part of the equation. It only took the wheels to be a little out of line towaste the best efforts of RexMcCandless, and it was no good Doug Hele developing race-winning Triumphs if their owners fiddled with the ignition and carburation. Therewas also the quality of the ancillaries to consider, and I still shudder to think I once did the ton on remoulds from Pride and Clarke.
Despite all that, most of us pored over road tests and articles in the weekly mags as if they were divine gospel. Looking at a report on a big twin, for example, the first thing to note was its top speed. A 650 which didn’t record something north of the magic ton was instantly reclassified as an old man’s bike only suitable for hitching to a sidecar, and 500s only came onto our radar if they could achieve something in the 90s. And then therewas acceleration; I recall being extremely impressed by a test waxing lyrical about a 650cc sportster going fromnought to 60 in a handful of seconds.
Why? How could I ever have thought that such a feat was remotely relevant to real-life motorcycling, let
With more experience, I now realise a bike’s preparation andmaintenance is much more important than its reputation.
alone practicable on a regular basis without something breaking or falling off? Somehow, we didn’t think any of that mattered, and some even boasted about how many rocker caps their Triumphs had chucked into the hedgerows because they rode them so hard. In hindsight, I find this preoccupation with speed all the more puzzling because – at least inmy rural area – there were no roads long and straight enough to regularly achieve terminal velocity. But we still bought the biggest and (allegedly) most powerful bike we could, and then spent time and money ‘improving’ it.
Simple logic – somethingwhich seems to have been in short supply – should also have told us that not every motorcycle would come off the assembly line exactly the same. We’d all heard stories about somebody who’d become victim to a ‘Friday-afternoon’ lemon, with blocked oilways ormissing brake shoes. And you’d have to be spectacularly naïve not to suspect that test bikes would be carefully selected, or even specially prepared, and that our shop floor versions were unlikely to match the road test figures.
It was also an open secret that AMC withheld bikes from test because of a slightly critical report, so it should have been obvious that journos would be pressurised into saying nice things. As a result, criticisms tended to be trivial and levelled at the accessory makers rather than the manufacturers themselves. Poor old Joe Lucas got his ‘Prince of Darkness’ titlewhenever electrical equipment caused problems, but nobody ever blamed the motorcycle firms which refused to pay for better stuff. I even remember one report where the main criticismwas that the horn gave a ‘ridiculous squawk’ as if that had any relevance to riding the bike, or even proved anything except that nobody had bothered to adjust the horn.
I supposewe subconsciously understood that road test statements saying ‘a tremor could be felt at times’ meant our fingers would gowhite and tooth fillings would fall out, and ‘the finish could have been improved’ indicated that rust was already showing on the brandnew test bike. But we were such willing victims that we chose to ignore those hints, while still leaping on every word which allowed us to claim our bikes were faster or handled better than ourmates.’