STEEL ART
The very first Honda XRV650 RD03 Africa Twin is a legend among motorcycles but was never exported to Australia. I don’t know why. There may be no-one alive at Honda HRC today who remembers why we were deprived of it. Fortunately for us, 53-year-old Andy Hoddle was so infatuated with this now 30-year-old bike that the former civil engineer spent a lot of effort and money getting one to Australia.
It’s been quite a journey. Fate played a hand in making it happen, as it usually does, but not always kindly. This is how Andy describes how he came to live in Australia and to own one of the rarest bikes in the country.
“Two weeks before the end of the century, while out skiing with my daughter in Scotland, I experienced what felt like a sledgehammer blow to each side of my head,” he says. “I didn’t know at the time but I’d just experienced a brain haemorrhage. A tiny blood vessel had burst in the front of my brain.”
“It was cold, remote, and the roads were closed due to heavy snow, but thankfully I was with a friend who called for assistance. I was thrown into the back of an old Land Rover and bounced a few miles down the track like an old sheep. An ambulance couldn’t reach us so it was
