Innehållsförteckning för January/February 2024 från Motorcycle Classics

In Italy and in Germany, former munitions makers were banned from going back to their previous business after World War II. Companies like Aermacchi, Piaggio, Heinkel, Zündapp and more had to turn to other activities. Piaggio, of course, created the Vespa, selling tens of millions. Presumably, three German industrial companies that entered the same market hoped to emulate Piaggio’s success: Zündapp, Heinkel and NSU. Until the Vespa and Lambretta, powered two-wheelers had mostly followed similar design criteria. They were essentially heavyweight bicycles with an engine mounted in the middle of the frame. While perhaps the optimal arrangement from an engineering standpoint, it left something to be desired in ergonomic terms. The rider was required to straddle the machine, something that, in some socially conservative countries, could be considered immodest, especially…

Vintage motorcycle enthusiast Ron Nichols had his mind blown at the 2022 Barber Vintage Festival Swap Meet. The Canadian says he’d taken a friend to visit the Barber event because, “He’d always wanted to go, and had never been able to,” Ron says. “In appreciation of him helping me with a house renovation, I told him I’d take him down. It was my second trip to the Barber Festival, which is an unbelievable event.” While wandering the acres of swap meet vendors, Ron walked past a motor home. Parked in front of the RV was an old BMW with a For Sale sign that “sort of caught my eye, but I didn’t know why. It all looked correct, but there was also something weird and unfortunately, I didn’t look too…

I wish I had a snappy lead sentence for this article, but I don’t. The story itself centers around Honda’s 1960s vintage Super 90, often referred to as the S90. And that begs the question: how much excitement can you generate from a bike powered by a single-cylinder OHC engine producing an advertised and undersized 8 horsepower? There’s more. My first motorcycle was a brand new 1965 Honda S90, and apparently S90s were popular among many of my editorial colleagues, a fact I discovered while researching an S90 article penned by Ron Lawson for the April 1987 issue of Cycle World magazine. Turns out that Ron had learned, as he wrote, “the dark and mysterious ways of a manual clutch” from his S90. Sticking with CW’s staff, Western Advertising Manager…

Bonneville. Monster. Commando. Vespa. Bullet. There’s a select list of motorcycle and scooter models which have become such iconic products in their own right that adding the name of the manufacturer responsible for them is simply redundant. But while those first four examples are still very much a part of today’s global marketplace, the Royal Enfield Bullet has been “resting” since 2020, when the last-ever 500cc version was manufactured. But this represented just a brief hiccup in the Bullet’s unrivalled claim to be the motorcycle with the longest continuous production run in history, ever since its 1932 debut when Royal Enfields were exclusively made at Redditch in England, prior to the foundation of Enfield India in 1955. For now the Bullet has returned to Royal Enfield dealers around the world…

While researching information and details for a Vincent Black Shadow replica I was building, I came across an old black and white photo online of a gentleman sitting on what looked to me to be a late 1940s Indian Chief motorcycle. Upon a closer look, however, I noticed the engine was not the usual 74 cubic-inch side-valve Indian engine, but an OHV, all aluminum Vincent Rapide engine. I was confused and intrigued so I clicked on the link. It told the little-known story about a short-lived prototype motorcycle that was a joint venture between Indian and Vincent in 1949. In a nutshell, Indian was losing revenue in America to Harley-Davidson, and their Indian Chief was down on performance when compared to some other brands. In an effort to save time…

Before there were smart phones and the internet, before there were disc brakes on motorcycles, even before there was color television, there were Burma-Shave roadside signs that, starting in 1925, popped up along America’s highways and byways. And every one of those red-and-white signs helped tell a story to passing motorists. It was a tradition that existed for more than 40 years. Burma-Shave was a brushless shaving cream (starting out as a liniment product) that got its name when the Burma-Vita company was formed in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in the early 1920s. The primary product was a topical preparation for shaving; part of the cream’s ingredients originated in Asia on the Malay Peninsula, which contains a region known as Burma. Thus, the name Burma-Shave, which helped explain the shaving cream connection…

Reconciling the imagined and actual Gold Wings of glittering memory The last few years I haven’t ridden much. Bicycles yes, motorcycles no. Parenting, bills — you’ve either lived or have heard it. Last month I started a new job featuring a hybrid work schedule, though 80 miles away, and resumed my two-wheeled ways for the once-a-week jaunt on a previously undertaxed Suzuki V-Strom 650. As a kid my parents affixed my grandfather’s old Honda onto blocks in the backyard. Did the engine seize? Did my grandfather suddenly decide his riding days were over? Back then I wasn’t yet a journalist and didn’t think to ask. The kids of Briar Ridge Lane suddenly had the coolest backyard sandbox toy to “rev” while envisioning our travels. When I was a kid my…

1957-1962 NSU Prima In 1951, long established motorcycle maker NSU inked a deal with Innocenti to build Lambretta scooters under license in Germany. But it seems this may have been a feint, as what NSU actually did was “borrow” some of the technology, shortcircuiting the process of developing its own scooter. After the license expired NSU launched the first of its Prima range. The stop-gap Prima D of 1956 featured a 6.2 horsepower 150cc engine, electric starter and pressed steel forks. The Prima Five Star arrived in 1957 and was effectively a new scooter. Underneath the restyled body was a new 175cc engine, still a single-cylinder but laid horizontally and transverse to the frame with the flywheel on the front. It also featured a 4-speed gearbox, 3.50 by 10-inch wheels,…

“Every man has an idea that will not work.”Anonymous Neracars were invented by a man with a lot of experience in the automotive and motorcycle industries. The factory was backed by some very wealthy investors. Despite the best possible conditions for success, the Neracar factories (one in England, one in the U.S.) shut down after six years because not enough of the buying public was interested in buying a Neracar. A few Neracars have survived the Depression and the scrap drives of World War II. “My interest in Neracars goes back 40 years,” explains Dave Kafton. Dave, an Antique Motorcycle Club of America stalwart, has been a motorcycle mechanic, a Cannonball racer, a restorer of vintage engines, and (in his youth) one of those people your parents warned you against.…

The story is well told about Honda’s early days of exporting motorcycles to the American market. The star product of that era was Honda’s then-new C110 Super Cub, a step-through design powered by a 50cc OHV 4-stroke engine producing 4.5 horsepower. It was enough to command annual sales in the tens of thousands during its initial years in America; sales figures unheard of in the motorcycle industry at the time. But, Americans being Americans, we wanted more — horsepower, that is. Oh, for sure Honda also offered 250cc and 305cc models with performance comparable to conventional motorcycles of the time. But there remained a missing link in the lineup — a transition model powered by a mid-displacement engine mixed with styling and performance that Americans longed for, regardless of the…

Street motorcycles have always been much closer to their competition counterparts than cars. For example, today’s 600cc sport bikes are not much less than Supersport racers without the blueprinting. Not surprisingly, then, any winding road near a major conurbation early on a Sunday morning will find team-suited, replica-helmeted riders dicing for honors. And with the popularity of clubman’s racing in the 1950s, where riders duked it out on the track on lightly-modified Gold Stars, Matchlesses and Nortons, it wasn’t long before the bars-below-the-instruments look was being copied by young street riders emulating their heroes. And with the loosening of credit purchasing, many British working blokes could afford a pretty fast bike. It is worth comparing power and performance of the cars and motorcycles of the day. My first car, a…

HERSHEY, PENNSYLVANIA There’s an old saying: The difference between a success and a failure is that a failure is a person who stays down and a success is a person who refuses to stay down. By that measure, Milton Hershey (the man who started the Hershey candy company) certainly was a success. His first two attempts at candy companies flopped, but Hershey made it big on his third attempt, his company became an American icon, and the town where it is all located came to bear his name. On that topic, this article touches on three Hersheys: The chocolate company, the town, and the man. I first visited Hershey back in the 1960s. Two things stood out in my mind on that first visit: The streetlights looked like giant Hershey’s…

The Vincent H.R.D. Owners Club (VOC), founded in 1948, celebrated its 75th anniversary in 2023 and every four years since 1977, the U.K.-based VOC has held an International Rally. The events are typically attended by hundreds of Vincent owners and have been held in various locations including Australia, Canada, Germany, Holland, New Zealand, the U.S. and the U.K.. For 2023, the Southern California Chapter organized the event, and it was held in two stages between September 11th and 23rd. The first week of the rally was based in Ventura and the second week was held in Cambria which is north of Morro Bay and south of Big Sur on the Pacific Coast Highway (PCH). The first week’s featured events included a visit to the Solvang Motorcycle Museum, a trip to…

Limited to 1972 and older and 350cc and smaller machines, SBBA is a vintage small-bore ride spread out over six days and 800 miles. Those numbers may not sound particularly ambitious, but by themselves they don’t tell the story. A test of endurance for both rider and machine, SBBA is a deep dive into the core of what motorcycling’s all about — camaraderie and adventure. Beginnings 2023 witnessed SBBA’s fourth run, with 23 riders piloting their small-bore bikes on a tour that swept them across Colorado’s Western Slope, starting and ending in Palisade, epicenter of Colorado’s peach industry. Launched in 2020 by Coloradans Ben Foster and Todd Wallis, SBBA was spawned by a shared interest in small bikes. An avid bicyclist, Ben, an IT specialist at the University of Denver,…

Visitors to Vancouver often assume that the Rocky Mountains should be right on their hotel doorstep. In fact, they’re about 500 miles away. Between the Coast of British Columbia and the Rockies lie three mountain ranges and an intermontane plateau that includes the region known as the Cariboo. Mountains generally make for great motorcycling roads, and British Columbia, Canada’s most mountainous province, is no exception. The flip side is that mountains make their own weather too! Fortunately, the sky is blue when I head out of Vancouver. The Fraser River’s fertile delta spreads across a 50-mile gap in the Coast Mountains behind me. I’m heading east along the Fraser Valley on BC’s Highway 7. The Fraser River is named for Northwest Company explorer Simon Fraser, who traced its course to…

Faithful readers of this magazine may recall that the May/June 2022 issue contained my article about the Haas Moto Museum in Dallas. The museum was co-founded by Bobby Haas and his partner and current Museum Director, Stacey Mayfield. The museum contains more than 230 machines from all eras and nations and is best known for its unrivaled collection of custom motorcycles. Although not the largest motorcycle museum in the world, the Haas Moto Museum contains the largest collection of custom bikes. Bobby became a patron to many of the custom builders represented in the museum and he sponsored many of the builds, creating strong personal bonds with many of the artists. Sadly, Bobby Haas passed away at age 74 in September 2021 but during his lifetime he made his…

THE COMPREHENSIVE VINTAGE MOTORCYCLE PRICE GUIDE 2024/2025 EDITION The 20th edition of the Comprehensive Vintage Motorcycle Price Guide contains over 160,000 prices for over 105 different motorcycle marques in six different conditions. Through hundreds of hours of research and data entry, formed by the opinions and data gathered by more than 450 worldwide dealers, auctioneers, collectors, and experts in the vintage field, this is the most accurate price guide available. It also contains more data than any other, as all major marques (and many lesserknown marques) are included. #12187 $21.95 Members: $19.95 ULTIMATE COLLECTOR MOTORCYCLES This XLdouble-volume book showcases 100 of the most legendary and coveted motorcycles of all time. It covers a wide range of bikes, from pioneering models torecord-breakers, luxury tourers, roadracers, superbikes, and customs. The book features…