Antique & Classic Cars Blog

Our youthful experiences play such an important role in our choices as classic car and motorcycle buyers, or dreamers, they must be credited for helping to sustain the hobby itself.

For 15 years my motorcycle was a 1975 Honda CB750 bought because my brother’s friend Jim came over to our house when we were kids astride a used CB550 he’d bought for $200 and got running. He and his stepfather were seriously good with a wrench. With its spoke wheels, chrome fenders, twin gauges, high circular mirrors, rubber gaitered front springs, attractive engine, and excellent overall proportions, it looked to me like the smartest way a pair of Franklins has ever been spent.

Yesterday, I traded it in toward a CB1100F, another bike from a bit later in youth. I saw one of these in a motorcycle dealership in Newark, Delaware, in 1983. Looked like the sexiest, most powerful motorcycle in the world.

BSAs and Nortons and Triumphs have all laid claim to my imagination but somehow, that bike, the one I had seen and sat on and daydreamed over for so long pushed them all out of mind. Infectious devotion like that is gold to a manufacturer and half the time, it arises from mere happenstance and not the millions in advertising they all lavish on print and airwaves.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 29th, 2009 at 8:57 pm and is filed under Motorcycle tales. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.