Believe it or not, often times less is more. Yeah, there is nothing quite like the rumble of a big V-Twin, the scream of a high revving two stroke triple, the roar of an inline four, or the thump of a big single. But, there are times that the song of a little (not even…
Today I was doing my daily research on cool old motorcycles and started finding an interesting pattern, small displacement motorcycles seem to live on decade after decade with minor changes, but larger bikes come and go and change every couple of years. My closest reference is the Honda 350. Honda built that model for years…
Nobody doesn’t love Hodaka. With names like Ace, Dirt Squirt, Wombat, Rat and Super Rat, Road Toad and Thunderhog, what’s not to love? In the late 60’s through the mid 1970’s every young ‘wanna be racer’. wanted a Hodaka. Why? Well, they were cheap, they were easy to ride, and almost maintenance free. Operative word…
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…
