You're right of course, but I was thinking more in terms of sales figures and the boom in superbike sales in particular.
I agree with Fig - that's pretty much how it is. A not negligible consideration is the current biking environment. There is more and more traffic, more and more roadworks, congestion and significantly, speed control via cameras etc. Into that climate you introduce a whole crop of bikes which make almost no sense sub-100 mph, because their motor isn't working up a sweat and the ergonomics are built for very high speeds. It is unsurprising that bikers, getting older, are seeing these bikes as increasingly irrelevant. The have probably worked out, like me, that extra power and handling and a host of electronic gadgets doesn't really translate into any more FUN on the road, whatever it does for your lap times on a track. Strangely, by refusing to make beautiful bikes in the quest to make more efficient bikes, manufacturers seem to be missing the point. I think efficiency is vastly overrated in all walks of life. You're still going to die. It's how you get there that counts, not how efficiently you get there.
Not yet, Pete. By any means. I still like a bike you can actually go somewhere on, and one that doesn't ground on corners.
I detest Hondas but even I can accept that the Foxeye Fireblade was as near as Honda can get to making an iconic bike. That doesn't mean I'd buy one unless I was going to break it but at the time it was a nice looking bike. As for Kawasaki; they haven't made a litre sports bike that looks even half way decent since the C1-C2 ZX10R and they lost the plot completely when they brought out that mongrel of a thing with the wheelbarrow handle exhausts.
May be I have shit on my eye, but my 749 seems to get better looking the older it gets. Most modern bikes are homogenous by design driven by CFD and stylists. Perhaps as the motorcycling population ages the design and acceptability gap widens? Duke
I don't think there's a correlation between age and ugliness, a beautiful bike can be seen as such by all ages. Perhaps its more a case that as we get older and less willing to push the limits of a bike, then the looks become more important as a purchasing decision. I can't say I see many bikes as downright ugly (apart from that hideous MT-09), but there's no stand-out beauties at the moment. But there's going to be a change soon. The japs have been punting out the same sportsbikes for a good few years now, with only minor alterations, and they're losing out badly to the europeans. Wouldn't surprise me if we start seeing a whole raft of new manga-insect-inspired rice rockets in the next year or so. And judging by the amount of NC700s, Kwak 300s, etc I see on the road, a whole bunch of A2 license-friendly style-driven machines too. In fact I'd go as far as to say that, despite the eurocrats' best attempts to kill off motorcycling once and for all, they've actually done us a favour by unifying the A2 class (which so neatly dovetails into the huge Asian market's requirement for smaller capacity bikes), and now the manufacturers have continent-wide regs to build to we'll see a huge surge in sub-600cc bikes of all different styles. Expect to see downsized adventure bikes, mini sportsbikes, tourers and a whole host of retros, all with new styling and cheap price tags. You never know, it may even drag a few youngsters back into the fold too...
I always forget the RC30 because most of them ended up where they belonged and that was on the track.
I think that was self referential. Although it does goes against Pete's International Man of Mystery persona :smile:
