It's an interesting thing. 1960s and 1970s Hondas are so appealingly svelt and simple and classic when compared with the futuristic, severely angular, Jetsons-like, space-agey, heavily computerized aura of modern bikes. As my wife likes to say, "Our bike looks the way motorcycles ought to look". And she's right. And yet, simple does not mean flimsy. Vintage Hondas are definitely over-built. Look how they have endured for the half-century! And how many suffer more from neglect than from breakdown or failure! Drag it out from under the weeds or from the shed, and oil it, clean it, gas it and charge it--and wow, it runs! Our refrigerators should be this durable! Such wonderfully artistic amalgamations of function and form, are our fifty-plus-year old Hondas! Do we even care that they don't have ABS? And does simple have to mean kludgy? Vintage Hondas are so elegantly beautiful, so simply pleasant to look at, so artistically rendered. But Gen Z would be aghast at having to manually provide fast idle function, or doing without a digital screen. He would be incredulous that there are rubber tubes inside the tires, no auto-cancelling turnsignals, no fuel gauge and no clock. Our bikes are not spaceships, but neither are they civil war artillery pieces. They're unpretentious, by comparison almost minimalist. But at the same time essential and adequate and uber-functional. They're already exotic to me, and one day they will be just as special as the Munch Mammot and MV Agusta 750 and others of their kind. And that's only a part of why I like them.
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It's an interesting thing. 1960s and 1970s Hondas are so appealingly svelt and simple and classic when compared with the futuristic, severely angular, Jetsons-like, space-agey, heavily computerized aura of modern bikes. As my wife likes to say, "Our bike looks the way motorcycles ought to look". And she's right. And yet, simple does not mean flimsy. Vintage Hondas are definitely over-built. Look how they have endured for the half-century! And how many suffer more from neglect than from breakdown or failure! Drag it out from under the weeds or from the shed, and oil it, clean it, gas it and charge it--and wow, it runs! Our refrigerators should be this durable! Such wonderfully artistic amalgamations of function and form, are our fifty-plus-year old Hondas! Do we even care that they don't have ABS? And does simple have to mean kludgy? Vintage Hondas are so elegantly beautiful, so simply pleasant to look at, so artistically rendered. But Gen Z would be aghast at having to manually provide fast idle function, or doing without a digital screen. He would be incredulous that there are rubber tubes inside the tires, no auto-cancelling turnsignals, no fuel gauge and no clock. Our bikes are not spaceships, but neither are they civil war artillery pieces. They're unpretentious, by comparison almost minimalist. But at the same time essential and adequate and uber-functional. They're already exotic to me, and one day they will be just as special as the Munch Mammot and MV Agusta 750 and others of their kind. And that's only a part of why I like them.