BEST BIKES OF 1984

In 1984 the coal miners were on strike and politics was in turmoil, but the motorcycle world wasn’t bothered as it had some fabulous new machines to play with! John Nutting reviews the best bikes of the year.

John Nutting takes us down memory lane.

It was the year that many reckon the first bikeof the modern era was launched. Kawasaki’s 155mph GPZ900R, which went on sale in 1984, featured an across-the frame four-cylinder liquid cooled engine and aerodynamics that would provide the template for sports bikes over the next three decades or more. But if in the motorcycle world we were aiming for the stars, ordinary folk were troubled. “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen,” so the first line goes in George Orwell’s novel ‘Nineteen Eighty Four’, which described a dystopian future in which we were dominated and spied upon by Big Brother. Politics in 1984 could be seen as going that way, what with the drawn-out miners’ strike that started in March and a bomb that exploded at the Brighton hotel were PM Margaret Thatcher was staying during the Conservative Party conference. “If there is hope,” said Orwell’s character Winston Smith, “it lies with the proles.” And so it seemed as the miners dragged the dispute with the National Coal Board into the following year. Like Winston Smith, coal power was doomed.

The Brave New World, however, was also forging ahead, with the launch of the first mouse-controlled desktop computer from Apple, the Macintosh, and the first compact disc players were being sold by Sony and Philips. Chances are that you’d be listening to Michael Jackson’s smash-hit album ‘Thriller’ and, later in the year, to the Band Aid song ‘Do they know it’s Christmas’ which went on to sell 37 million copies in support of the famine in Ethiopia. It was a year of million-selling singles, topped by ‘Relax’ from Frankie goes to Hollywood, which was initially banned from being broadcast by the BBC. Wham! said ‘Wake me up before you go-go’, and Madonna went on ‘Holiday’. Top movies included Ghostbusters, Indiana Jones and and the Temple of Doom, and The Terminator. In sport, Liverpool won the football league and Niki Lauda won the tightly-fought Formula 1 motor racing title by a whisker from Marlboro Mclaren team-mate Alain Prost. New technology was beginning to have an impact on the newspaper industry, and at Motor Cycling Weekly, where I was editor, a gallant attempt to streamline production with the use of computers was undermined by union demands for extra staff. Under a new owner who reverted to traditional working practices, Motor Cycling Weekly aimed at getting the news out on Tuesday morning each week, beating Motor Cycle News by a day. Remember, comprehensive on-line news was still about a quarter-of-acentury in the future. There was plenty of new bike technology to report, because we’d been primed at the autumn shows in Europe with the newfor-1984 models. Along with Kawasaki’s GPZ900R, BMW had launched its new four-cylinder K-range, Honda extended its range of V4 sports bikes, and Yamaha, despite its financial woes, shocked everyone with its RD500LC two-stroke four and was forging into new chassis-design territory with its FJ1100 sports tourer. At home, even the Triumph Bonneville was being produced again. For a bike fan, what wasn’t there to like? BMW’S first modern four-cylinder motorcycle, the K 100 series, launched in the South of France just before the end of 1983, was a dramatic departure from what the shaft-drive air-cooled boxer twins that

the Munich-based manufacturer had been refining over the previous 60 years. The factory’s development chief Stefan Pachernegg stumbled on the idea when his team placed a Peugeot car engine on its side with the crankshaft in line with the wheels and mated it to a BMW gearbox. It ticked all the boxes, fulfilling the need for an engine with more potential, smooth operation, easy maintenance access and a long development life. So it was asymmetric with its camshaft boxes on the left and the crankcase cover on the right, but BMW was breaking the mould. It worked. On the autoroute and with 120mph on the clock – a speed at which the boxer R 100 RS would have been maxed out – the 90bhp four felt everything a BMW should be: safe, secure and ruffle free, with plenty in reserve, if a little buzzy. In 1984, few thought the K 100’s production life could have been more than 20 years, but the ‘Brick’, as it became to be known affectionately, would last until the 21st century, when it was superseded in the range by the across-the-frame four-cylinder K1200 series. By then the K 100 had spawned sports and touring versions, a smaller 750cc three-cylinder sibling and the K1, featuring all-enclosing bodywork. Few newly introduced motorcycles had the impact created by the GPZ900R when it was revealed at the Paris Show. Kawasaki had already established its performance credentials twice with new technologies: the first time with its stunning 500cc Mach III triple in 1969, and then with the four-cylinder DOHC 903cc Z1 in 1972. The GPZ900R was completely new and though ‘only’ 908cc, promised to trounce its 1000cc competition. This was confirmed at its Press launch at the Laguna Seca race track in California where its 150mph plus top speed proved to be no idle claim. What made the GPZ900R was the combination of a number of key features that are now regarded as absolutely vital components of a modern high-performance machine. The most important was Kawasaki’s adoption of liquidcooling on a big-four stroke four. This was necessary to enable the 16-valve dohc engine to produce a claimed 115bhp at 9500rpm, almost as much as the bigger air-cooled GPZ1100 four. The first comprehensive road tests of the GPZ900R showed that the first impressions had been conservative. Although geared for 140mph at 10,000rpm a top speed of 158mph was claimed, suggesting that the test bike was revving way past its power peak at more than 11,000rpm, and higher gearing might be pulled. The new Kawasaki’s prowess in handling and performance were confirmed soon after the bike reached the showrooms, when at the Isle of Man TT the GPZ900R filled the top three places in a production race whitewash. Geoff Johnson won at an average speed of 105.28mph, ahead of Barry Woodland and Howard Selby. But Kawasaki was robbed of a hat-trick when during post-race scrutiny Woodland’s bike was deemed to have a modified inlet porting, although the head had been taken from factory stock. For fans of the more traditional Kawasaki fours, the factory uprated the Z1000R four to 1089cc and gave it more authentic Eddie Lawson Replica styling to celebrate the US Racer’s American Superbike titles. The carburetted Z1100R with twin shocks, lowered seat and power upped to

114bhp was a real scratcher. Honda cleaned up in the 750cc class of the 1984 Isle of Man production race, taking the top eight places. But it wasn’t the V4 VF750F, launched the previous year, that won, although four of them filled the placings, but the new CBX750F ridden by Trevor Nation that took the honours. This was a new take on the air-cooled dohc across-the-frame four theme and launched earlier in the year in South Africa alongside a number of new V4 models. With its frame-mounted bikini fairing and 91bhp, the CBX750F was a conventional sports bike with the novel feature of having hydraulic valve clearance adjustment, and was offered in the US as the CB700SC custom to meet local regulatory requirements. Honda’s top-of-the-range model for 1984 was the 998cc VF1000R, featuring its most potent version of the liquid-cooled V4 with gear-driven camshafts and a claimed peak power 122bhp at 10,500rpm. Talk was that with its sleek fairing, the VF1000R was capable of 160mph. By the end 1983, Honda had established the V4 as a championship winner, with Joey Dunlop and Wayne Gardner respectively taking the World and British Formula 1 road-race series with the works 859cc RS850R (with a 920cc machine for Dunlop at the Ulster round). Another RS920 won the Bol D’or 24-hour endurance race in France. During the launch of the new Hondas we were due to ride from Johannesburg to the Kruger National Park on a route that included several miles of almost empty motorway. Despite having just 300 miles on the clock, I wound the VF1000R up to 11,000rpm through the gears, the camshaft drive gears screaming like a banshee. When it reached 150mph on the clock I chinned the tank, tucked in my elbows and pulled my toes back on to the pegs. I felt relaxed as the needle crept towards 160mph. But it stopped at an indicated 155mph. The bike felt solid, stable and undramatic as the kilometre posts flashed by. On more twisty going, however, the VF1000R was less impressive. It felt heavier than its claimed 238kg and the 16-inch front wheel’s geometry delivered vague steering. Another of the V4s launched for 1984 in South Africa was the VF500F, a larger capacity 498cc version of the previous year’s VF400F with a liquid-cooled engine developing 70bhp at 11,000rpm. Honda packed the engine into a tiny chassis with square-section tubing and fashionable 16-inch front and 18-inch rear wheels, air-pressure adjustable suspension, and wrapped it all in a tight-fitting race-style fairing. While highly sophisticated and refined, the VF500F was sold at a premium price in the UK. Against Yamaha’s lighter RD350LC, which was much cheaper to buy, the Honda didn’t stand a chance. Also new for that year was the ‘sportstouring’ version of the 998cc V4, the VF1000F, with a smaller fairing and an engine with chain drive to the camshafts and more flexible power that peaked at 113bhp. Honda’s huge Gold Wing touring machine was updated for 1984, its ninth year of production, with its flat-four engine increased to 1182cc and the valve gear using, as on the CBX750F, maintenancefree hydraulic valve clearance adjusters. The CX series of V-twins was also extended with the launch of the GL650 Silver Wing. As the CBX750F showed, Honda wasn’t developing just its V4 range. But with Freddie Spencer winning the 500cc world road racing championship in 1983 on a three-cylinder two-stroke, Honda must have felt duty-bound to offer a road-going

version. Strangely though, and with the domestic market in Japan probably the priority, the machine launched for 1984 was a liquid-cooled 387cc triple, based on thealready available MVX250F, and called the NS400R. With two cylinders pointing forwards and one upwards, the engine was unusual at best. But with expansion chambers sprouting out the back and a state-of-the-art aluminium alloy frame, the NS400R looked the part. Honda claimed a peak power of 72bhp at 9500rpm, aided by Auto-controlled Torque Amplification Chambers controlled by solenoid valves in the exhaust ports. It was capable of 130mph and with a short 1385mm wheelbase allied to a claimed dry weight of 163kg, offered nimble and precise handling. But when it reached the UK, the NS400R was even more expensive than the VF500F V4, so again couldn’t compete with Yamaha’s 350cc two-stroke twin. The Yamaha factory in Japan had been struggling financially though, and even after its president Hisao Koike resigned in 1982, it made a huge loss that was the equivalent of £80 million a year later, while planning production cut-backs and fewer new model launches. With Eddie Lawson looking likely to win the world 500cc road racing title for Yamaha in 1984, beating Freddie Spencer, the launch of the highly anticipated replica of his V4 two-stroke racer became all the more key to raising the factory’s reputation. Yamaha revealed its RD500LC at the Milan Show at the end of 1983. Gasping, the motorcycle world reeled in shock. For here was everything on the race bike junkies’ wish list: the water-cooled V4 engine sprouting a multipack of expansion chambers, a mirror of the works twin crank V4s. But as it turned out, the RD500LC wasn’t quite the race replica we’d expected, because it used a pair of parallel twin engines fed by different reed-valve ported inlet plumbing and a balance shaft to smooth out the vibration. If that made the RD500LC less capable of being converted into a racer, it didn’t impede its road performance. With 88bhp propelling a bike weighing just 178kg, it was a rocket, and first tests in Germany at the Hockenheim GP circuit reported that it was capable of reaching more than 138mph. Yamaha was innovative at the other end of its range as well, with the launch of the FJ1100 sports tourer. The design was similar to one that had been developed by Italian specialist Bimota, one of whose racing machines had been seen at the Bol D’or endurance race by Yamaha’s project leader Mizua Mizutani, who had been keen to erase the reputation created by the unwieldy XS1100 shaft-drive four launched six years earlier. Mizutani’s interpretation of Bimota’s ideas for the FJ1100’S frame – later called the Lateral Frame Concept – was translated by using two large, for the time, rectangular steel rails encompassing the engine and locating the steering head in the centre of the structure. It offered better torsional rigidity, a slim waist behind the engine and the benefit of enabling the cylinder head to be removed easily. The decision to use 16-inch wheels took its cue from Bimota, enabling a lower centre of gravity and reduced seat height. Suspension was up-to

the-minute, with 41mm fork legs and a single shock controlling the light alloy swingarm. The engine was similar to the established 550cc to 900cc fours from Yamaha with the generator above the five speed gearbox, giving a slim profile. Capacity was 1097cc and with double overhead camshafts and four CV carbs, pumped out a healthy 123bhp at 9000rpm, enough to propel the bike to 150mph. The FJ1100 turned out to be a brilliant-handling machine on its 16-inch wheels, despite weighing 253kg tanked up, and was even better when 17-inchers were later adopted. But for its subdued styling, underlining its sports touring credentials, the FJ1100 could have been the star of 1984. Yamaha also added the XJ600 four to its range in 1984, an update of the XJ550. At Suzuki, there was nothing quite as innovative for 1984, with its range-topping GSX1100E (GS1150 in the US) sports getting a bigger capacity 1135cc fourcylinder engine pumping out 124bhp. But it was still a beast, which Suzuki was probably aware of. It was, of course, developing its lightweight GSX-R750 for the following years’ introduction. As a prelude, Suzuki revealed its GSX-R400 for the home market in Japan, with a light-alloy double-cradle frame and racing-style fairing. While BMW was breaking its own design moulds, elsewhere in Europe manufacturers were struggling to keep up with the Japanese. In Italy, Moto Guzzi restyled its big shaft-drive V-twins, such as the 850-T5 tourer and 850 Le Mans sportster, with smaller 16-inch wheels and funky bodywork, and a 650cc version of the V50 Sport with similar styling was introduced.

Meanwhile, Ducati was limping along under the ownership of the VM Group, which was more interested in making diesel engines than motorcycles. Of fewer than 2000 Ducatis produced in 1984, most were 900 Mike Hailwood Replicas. Cagiva owners, the Castgioni brothers, were, however ,showing an interest… Although Norton as a mainstream manufacturer had died back in the 1970s, the rotary engines were still being developed, and the Interpol police bike, using a fairing styled on BMW’S RT tourers, was being made in limited quantities. The assets of Triumph Motorcycles had been sold at the end of 1983, with the brand and various designs going to builder John Bloor and other equipment and machines going to Andover Norton, but production of the 750 Bonneville twin was revived in 1984. In Devon, Racing Spares, run by Les Harris and supported by a number of former Triumph workers, had acquired the rights to manufacture the Bonneville and other models for a limited period from Bloor, with an initial production target of 20 bikes a week. It was a gallant effort, but as we know, Bloor prevailed and with multi-million investments, restored a new era of world-class Triumph machines six years later. Though key to future events that was a side-show: the bikes we loved in 1984 were the Kawasaki GPZ900R, Yamaha RD500LC and the FJ1100!