Alright, we get it, retro motorcycles are flavour of the month in the Malaysian motorcycle market at the moment with the call and price of nostalgia appealing to many riders, especially those who have taken care of life’s necessities and the fixed deposit has matured. So, in a momentary lapse of reason, the author had the idea of gathering retro bikes in the litre-class, available for sale in Malaysia via the official distributors, and seeing what was what.
We gathered together, for the first paultan.org Retro Bike Rumble, the 2019 Honda CB1100RS, the BMW Motorrad R nineT Racer, the Ducati Scrambler 1100 Sport, the Kawasaki Z900RS and the Triumph T120 Black. This became an exercise in easier said than done and the logistics involved in doing so were… well… somewhat difficult.
In this particular case, where comparison is being made in terms of design style rather than the basis of, say, outright performance, the main criteria became ‘does the bike look like it came from the 60s, 70s or 80s?’ The selection available to us did indeed cover the decades in question, all updated with technology from this millennium and reliability we take for granted.
But, is a modern motorcycle dressed in retro clothes all that it is cracked up to be? Many, including the author, are oftentimes guilty of looking at the past through rose tinted glasses and saying things like, “they don’t make them like they used to,” and “get off my lawn!”
Anyone who’s ridden a 90/90-19 Dunlop TT100 front tyre in the rain with brake pads made from wood – ok, they weren’t made from wood, it just felt that way – will recall some of their scariest riding moments, ever, and if you don’t, you’re weren’t riding fast enough. That being that, we set out to see if a modern retro bike would deliver fun, nostalgia and value for money, in that order.
We gathered together, for the first paultan.org Retro Bike Rumble, the 2019 Honda CB1100RS, the BMW Motorrad R nineT Racer, the Ducati Scrambler 1100 Sport, the Kawasaki Z900RS and the Triumph T120 Black. This became an exercise in easier said than done and the logistics involved in doing so were… well… somewhat difficult.
In this particular case, where comparison is being made in terms of design style rather than the basis of, say, outright performance, the main criteria became ‘does the bike look like it came from the 60s, 70s or 80s?’ The selection available to us did indeed cover the decades in question, all updated with technology from this millennium and reliability we take for granted.
But, is a modern motorcycle dressed in retro clothes all that it is cracked up to be? Many, including the author, are oftentimes guilty of looking at the past through rose tinted glasses and saying things like, “they don’t make them like they used to,” and “get off my lawn!”
Anyone who’s ridden a 90/90-19 Dunlop TT100 front tyre in the rain with brake pads made from wood – ok, they weren’t made from wood, it just felt that way – will recall some of their scariest riding moments, ever, and if you don’t, you’re weren’t riding fast enough. That being that, we set out to see if a modern retro bike would deliver fun, nostalgia and value for money, in that order.
-paultan
0 Comments