FROM THE FRONT
It feels a little as though I’m repeating myself, here – repeating what I jabbered away about the surprise, delight and considerable entertainment which arrived by simply riding an old bike – a particular type of old bike; in this case a 500 Triumph. You may recall that I passed some rather amusing miles aboard both our own seriously scruffy T100C and a rather more shiny Daytona last month. And they were both great, with their common features shining through, as you’d expect, despite the considerable differences in their cosmetic condition.
What I failed to consider at the time was this… one of the onerous tasks of a magazine editor is deciding which bikes make the grade to make the page. We – editors – have a tendency to favour the unusual, the odd, the exotic, the headline bikes, if you like. Something to shout about. The reason for this is obvious – we want you, gentle reader, to choose to read our magazine, not one of the alternatives. It’s less important with a magazine like RC, because we rarely find ourselves competing for newsagent shelf space – which is a very good thing indeed. And in any case, we feature real stories about real classics (there’s a good name for a magazine there, I’m sure!) often written by the bike’s owner, which is always a good thing. However, we’re as interested in the odd and the exotic, too…
What the two Triumphs reminded me is how all-encompassing the old bike world has become. When it started out in 1977 (I think), the emphasis was on glamour, on heritage, on history. Pedigree and provenance may have been around then too. I was largely uninterested in such machines, and indeed this is still the case, but watched with some amusement and pleasure as the scene expanded to include not just Gold Stars and Rocket Gold Stars but also Rockets and B33s. BSA’s glorious 250 Gold Star took a long time attaining classic status, but there’s still hope…
What is slightly surprising – at least to me – is that although I’ve been (usually) fortunate enough to ride lots of aspirational big name machines down the years, the bikes I’ve actually enjoyed the most have been of the more pedestrian persuasion, non-CSR Matchless twins, for example. Norton’s ohv bangers arouse my delight in a way that no cammy job ever has, while Triumph’s Tigers are always welcome in The Shed, but anything with ‘R’ as an engine suffix is likely to be only a fleeting visitor.
So imagine my amusement when I trolled off to borrow something really exotic so I could write about it. Well… to be exact there were two exotics available on the same day, one with four cylinders and an overhead cam, the other with an ohv flat twin engine and a pressed steel frame. Both bikes have flat steel frames, in fact, now that I think about it. So you can work out what they are…
However, the bike aboard which I actually rumbled away into the wintry sunshine (OK, it rained rather a lot) was something much more mundane, much less interesting … except to me. What was it? It was a BSA, a once cheap’n’cheerful plodder and now really rather rare. I loved it. You can read about it next month…
Ride safely, and we hope everyone has a great new year