ORIENTAL ANGLES
As fans of old motorcycles we are blessed with a significantly better choice now than we were when our bikes were new. Almost without exception, back then we were entirely at the mercy of importers, concessionaires and franchisees who imported the bikes sold in the UK. It was their decisions alone that influenced which bikes we got to purchase.
Back in the 1960s and 1970s you were expected to think yourself lucky that you had a new motorcycle, and it wasn’t uncommon to find that the bike you’d ordered was not exactly the one you got. This wasn’t really a major issue if you were expecting to take delivery of a dark purple Yamaha RD350 and found yourself being proffered the keys to a light silver RD350B – it was just the way the system worked back then.
Today we have the ability to buy pretty much any bike we desire (and can afford) thanks to this global village in which we live via the internet. This column was able to source an early side-port Suzuki TS400 from the southern states of the USA which was never, ever offered in the UK and, being a second-year model, wasn’t sold in mainland Europe either. You might reasonably think such a machine has the potential to be a royal pain in terms of parts supply but, to date, this hasn’t been the case.
The various British factories of the 1960s responded much faster to the whims and desires of the American market than to their own home-grown market. Desert sleds, street scramblers, tuned singles and high performance twins were readily available to our colonial cousins while we got either the so-called ‘cooking versions’ or had to wait until the following year to buy what amounted to the overrun of the previous season’s exports that hadn’t sold.
Generally the UK’s importers did a reasonable job and supplied bikes that sold well, yet there were a lot of oddballs out there in the market alongside the mainstream stuff. Numerous small Italian companies were able to make a good few lire from bolting on pedals to their 50cc bikes, but spares could sometimes be a real issue. Russia was happy to offer all manner of weird and wonderful options, complete with Cyrillic model names stencilled randomly hither and thither – although quality control appeared to be a nebulous concept to the Soviet State! Early Kawasakis were imported and supported by Agrati of Nottingham, which also handled the frenetic Garellis. Obtaining spares for either marque sometimes proved to be interesting, bordering on the challenging.
And then there was the famous (or should be infamous?) WSK175 distributed by Baron Motorcycles. This curious device was a Polish take on the prewar DKW125, and those who purchased one often wished their machines had German build quality rather than Eastern European.
By and large the Japanese franchises offered a decent range, yet Yamaha’s agent, Mitsui Machinery, was effectively hamstrung in that it was unable to offer a machine over 350cc, Yamaha’s early 1970s YR3 being the largest bike on offer. When Mitsui did eventually take the early XS650 on in the guise of the XS-2, some of the 80 or so machines imported hung around until 1976, by which time they were four years old!
Another example of shooting oneself in the foot was Honda’s frankly bonkers decision to import the much-loathed CB500T. Its predecessor, the CB450, had never been a great seller in the UK so why Honda might think a rehashed version would be an instant seller in the latter half of the 1970s is anyone’s guess. And when both models offered came with tan brown seats and one was painted fluorescent orange, you do have to question the logic.
Today, thankfully, we are able to swerve the true lemons and obtain pretty much any bike we like and for that we should be eternally grateful. The only trouble is there are just so many good ones from which to choose!