The single life

There is no dispute that the vast majority of CMM’s classic motorcycle fans have had it easy either for most or all of our lives when it comes to two wheeled transport.

If you’ve grown up on a diet of Japanese machinery I’d tentatively stick my neck out and say – we’ve been spoilt from the day we first rode a motorcycle. Why you ask? Quite simply, if you are a fan of all things oriental and on two wheels you’ve had one key facet of bike ownership served up to you on silver salver via a spoon of the same origin. Almost every Japanese machine any of us can think of was designed to be a veritable paragon of virtue. It started, ran and stopped with an almost unerring predictability and carried on doing so until it was deprived of oil, denied even basic servicing or suffered the indignities of teenage tuners. What the Japanese motorcycle factories delivered was a sea change in terms of accessibility, reliability and usability.

If you’re not convinced try long term ownership with almost any non-Japanese motorcycle from the 1960s or earlier