FALLING FLAT
Honda’s brave attempt at getting on the big thumper bandwagon was, arguably, always doomed to failure… in the UK at least.
Both it and Yamaha’s SR500 were always destined to be marginalised here in Blighty. Collectively we Brits had had a gutful of big singles a decade or so before, yet the pundits still reckoned there was a market for such machines. If these experts were the same people consulted by the importers prior to finalising the next year’s line-up then it was obvious they were hugely out of touch. BSA had ceased production of the Goldstar in the early 1960s because it wasn’t selling in decent numbers and Velocette, possibly purveyors of the finest of the genre, had folded at the start of the 1970s. BSA had one more foray into the macho world of
