Back in the day
A retro ahead of its time
IN 1998, CRUISERS were growing in popularity almost everywhere in Europe. Except Britain. In an attempt to make some sense of it all, we gathered together three very different examples of a rather loosely defined category and went for a ride in our June issue.
They were the Goldwing-based Honda F6C, the ungainly BMW R1200C techochopper and the Triumph Thunderbird Sport which, with its stacked exhausts, doffed its cap to the short-lived but very influential Triumph X75 Hurricane of the early ’70s.
Viewed with hindsight, the Thunderbird Sport is barely a cruiser at all. Triumph have gone on to make some much more cruisery bikes – but they’ve also pushed the retro button increasingly hard and ever more frequently, finding that the world has a huge appetite for Bonneville spin-offs.
But back in ’98, the Thunderbird Sport – with its three-cylinder Tiger-based engine and relatively conventional chassis geometry – seemed the odd one out. Now, it looks like the shape of things to come; check out Triumph’s new Street Cup and Street Scrambler – and indeed the Ducati Desert Sled – tested in this issue.
Our usual testers were joined by Squeeze drummer Gilson Lavis, a Triumph Thunderbird owner who at the time an eye on buying a Honda F6C. He’s also, handily, a big bloke, without whom the huge Honda might have seemed a bit silly.
Steve Rose wrote: “With around 100lb.ft of torque, the F6C pulls like nothing else. Or feels like it. Where other cruisers have fake Harley lumpiness engineered in, the F6C is smooth and so free revving that banging it off the rev limiter is an all too common event.”
Guest tester Lavis loved it: “Any gear, anywhere, this engine is the business.”
The heavily chromed Honda was also excellent at stopping the traffic. The BMW caused a bit of a stir too, as people recognised it from its thenrecent appearance in the 1997 Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies.
Rose added: “The Triumph has the strongest image of all three bikes. A 1950s throwback to the days of greasy caffs, greasy hair and greasy Herberts cracking a ton down the bypass. High, rearset footrests and low, stubby handlebars tuck you in to the Thunderbird and brace you against the windblast. The Sport offers a different
kind of posing to the other bikes… On the move the Triumph goes almost unnoticed, but blasting, handling and stopping is like a decent modern bike.” And it was a magnet for old men who’d want to talk about the Triumph they used to own.
RIDE ended the test none the wiser about why Brits remained so cruiserphobic. We didn’t have many kind words for the BMW, but we really enjoyed riding both the Honda and the Triumph, regardless of their looks and image.