HONDA 2018 GOLDWING 1800
“I’M OFF TO THE LACHLAN SIDE, WHERE THE BRIGHT LAGOONS ARE WIDE; I LONG FOR RIVER AND GRASS AND TREE, [THOUGH THERE’S BUGGER-ALL GRASS FOR ME TO SEE…]”
HENRY LAWSON (UPDATED BYTHE BEAR)
UNLESS YOU RIDE ONE, it is fashionable to dismiss the big travelling galleons of the motorcycle world as, well, big galleons – fat in the beam and slow to turn, slow in fact to do everything except for slurping up the precious bodily fluids of our Mother Earth at the fuel pump. Ponderous and pathetic on the road, fit only for use by Ulyssians on their way to the next cream tea.
This has not been true since 1984 when Honda released a GoldWing that not only went (even the 1000cc original had clocked high-12s for the standing quarter) but handled – the GL1200. Four years later, the GL1500 with two more cylinders and further handling improvements confirmed that one of those big ships could both hunt and handle with the best of them out on the real roads, and of course Masanori Aoki’s GL1800 lit up the year 2001 with an altogether amazing new take on the theme.
Even the 1500 had been capable, in hands as relatively unskilled as mine, of maintaining 200km/h... on gravel. The Bavarians, meanwhile, had been pounding on the gates with any number of R and then K series motorcycles which sported more and
