POST-APOCALYPTIC ' ONDA

THE LEAST PC-PC ON THE PLANET

Y'see, the PC800 was Honda USA's attempt to sell motorbikes to young affluent West Coast middle class couples, the sort of people who, back in the late '80s when it was launched, didn't buy motorcycles, and sadly for Honda, despite its slick and on-target advertising, didn't buy this one either. Even more unfortunately for Honda, the rest of the motorcycling world took one look at it too, and didn't buy it either. The reasons for this, I suspect, are manifold, but the main one, I'm guessing, is the fact that it looked like a large Tupperware butty box on wheels, and performed about as well as one, too. Even the fact that it had an under-seat space, or 'trunk' as our colonial cousins are wont to call it, large enough to smuggle whole families of Mexican immigrants across the border into California in, didn't really help...

The PC800 you see before you is almost unrecognisable as being one, due to the fact that its builder, a guy called Ricky Cook from over Clacton way, removed the original hectares of Tupperware, and replaced them with steel mesh, bullets, brass gauges, and rusty doo-hickeys that turn the almost deathly dull stock bike into something that people'll literally cross the street to check out.

Bikes like this, when one writes them up, almost make you unsure as to where to start. The basic configuration of the bike is as it was when it left the Honda factory - the engine, the frame and the running pack are pretty as is, save the fact the front tyre's now an on/off-road Heidenau, while the rear's a BF Goodrich car item chosen because (a) it looks right, and (b) getting 15-inch bike tyres is both difficult and bloody expensive. And, yeah, I know what you're thinking about car tyres on a bike, but I followed Vargo, the new owner, and he didn't seem to be having any trouble making it go round bends so...

It also retains its under-seat fuel tank - that mesh 'n' bullets concoction where a tank'd be on a normal m'cycle both covers the air-box and provides a home for the 'lectrics, and also serves as a structure to which both Ricky and Vargo've added stuff - brass gauges; chain; cutup sprockets; various superbly rusty tools; an aircraft style ignition panel; and the remains of a number of those (not) very rock 'n' roll bullet belts we also used to wear back in the Eighties before we knew better. There's more 'stuff' elsewhere, too - a string-operated bell down on the left; a machete so rusty that you can almost get tetanus just looking at it; various old spanners and keys; an ancient hand-pump; and some wonderful olde-worlde push-bike lights that Vargo bought in a joblot off eBay and converted from gas to LED. The exhaust system is a feature in itself - a home-made two-into-one-into-two, wrapped, that culminates in two suitably battered and

rusty old silencers that clatter away like mad when the engine's running, thanks to the tractor-style flaps on their ends.

The result is a bike that's not quite steampunk ('cos steampunk-styled things are often painted and shiny, and this very definitely isn't), and not quite rat either... well, not in the sense of the word that we've become accustomed to these days as it's not matt black. It is, I s'pose you could say, post-apocalyptic - the sort of thing you could see being hooned across the desert in Mad Max 2 or Fury Road. It's a bike that you're not s'posed to take too seriously - it's not about being 'bro', it's about being fun, about making people smile - and it certainly stands out around Vargo's native Cambridge when he takes it for a socially-distanced blat around the city of dreaming spires (yeah, so that's actually a description of Oxford, I know, but the two cities are very similar so...). I would say that, because he's a hardcore and dedicated rallyist, keep an eye out for it on the circuit this summer but, given coronavirus and the effect it's having on gatherings, it might be next year now before you see it anywhere. God, I'll be so glad when this shit is over, won't you? 0