One of my favorite bikes from years gone by is the Yamaha TT500. Yamaha did a great job with that bike, it worked well in the desert and on trail rides. It was easy to start (sort of), easy to ride (as long as you weren’t expecting it to act like a lighter European two-stroke),…
When you name a motorcycle after an Intercontinental Ballistic Missle it better be one hell of a bike. Norton did just that, sort of. Norton had some sort of Post War / Cold War theme going for a while. They had the Dominator, then the Atlas, next came the Commando… Norton was at war with…
Starting back in the Victorian era when motorcycles were just emerging, you’d have a guy building bicycles in one village, and another guy building motors the next village over. The guy building motors was thinking about putting them in an automobile or a farm tractor, the bicycle guy was just making bicycles. Well, one day…
Sometimes you just have to wonder why a motorcycle manufacturer would keep building a bike that they have already replaced with a much better bike? A bike that is smoother, faster and much more in line with the times. The 1976 Honda CB500T is the poster child for just that question. In the early to…
In 1957 Harley Davidson was not really in trouble compared to Indian. A few years before the Beatles arrived there was the original ‘British Invasion’. Soldiers had returned home from the war in Europe and were buying motorcycles. Triumph, BSA, Norton, AJS, Enfield, and others were all building light and fast motorcycles while Harley and…
….gone South. Those of us that are afflicted with ‘VBD‘ (get your mind out of the gutter, it is not a sexually transmitted disease…it’s Vintage Bike Disease) seem to have a hard time resisting finding a way to sneak some weird, obscure, oddball motorcycle into our garage without our spouses noticing. I have tried it…
Picture this, you’re buzzing along a tight twisty mountain road on a classic roadracer that just happens to have lights and a horn. The bike is light, quick and amazingly agile. The bike almost knows what you’re going to do before you do. A very light push on the bars sends you through the corner…
Through the first part of the 20th Century, Indian was the largest motorcycle manufacturer in the world. Indian produced the fastest and most technologically advanced motorcycles there were. Then World War 2 hit. Indian did supply motorcycles to the military for the war effort but Harley Davidson, Indian’s closest competitor, was awarded more of the…
In 1969 BSA commanded 80% of all the Brit bikes sold here in the USA. Eighty Percent! Who woulda thunk? I, and I think most of us, would have pegged Triumph as the leader but not so say the statistics. What was it about BSA that made it that strong a seller in a time…
Well, here we are again looking at something way too cool, a ride that will give you a huge grin on your face for a bunch of reasons. First, it’s a classic scooter; second, it’s a Cushman (you don’t see those around every corner); third it is so strange looking that the cool factor is…
