Report From Japan
REPORT FROM JAPAN
YUKIO KURODA
KLAKKETY BOOM!
Klakkety klak go the assembly lines. Boom boom go the sales. People in Japan are riding, and buying, motorcycles more than ever before, and all export markets are going strong. A very interesting publicity brochure released by a firm doing promotion for Honda reports that production of Japanese machines was up to 2,610,000 in 1969, from 2,410,000 in 1968, and that 1970 looks to be a three million machine year. Gnaw on that for a second. Honda, of course, gets the hog’s share with 60 percent of the market. They set a world record for production in the month of April, with an output of 152,660 bikes. That’s 6100 a day, or in more graphic terms, 750 an hour, or 13 every minute.
This is a supreme achievement for any firm involved in motorcycling, and for the motorcycling constituency, whose mass motorcycle consumption in other countries (England, for one, which used to be so Ripping Good Show I Say about motorcycles, or Italy, where all that is sold is Fifties anymore) is on the verge of extinction. The best spin-off of the fat sales is the plethora of supersikkles which Honda, Kawasaki, Triumph, BSA, BMW, etc. have built, and the benefit to the sport is considerable, too. In Japan, motocross and road race events see remarkably increasing entries, and many events are televised on national networks. And in the U.S., beset by woes and war and a silly putty economy, sales are soaring too, especially for the Japanese manufacturers. And riders have it better than ever before.
They have a wider choice of very different machines than at any time in the past. Young Japanese riders have never enjoyed the experience of owning and working on, and occasionally even riding, cretinous models that shed headlights and mufflers like old skins, shattered deep innards of electrics with massive vibration, and substituted the remarkable resiliency of the human kidney for suspension. They never had to learn to play intricate rituals with dealers who would look at their machines like they were fossils from the Pleistocene age and mutter “Hell, boy, you won’t find no Whitworth reverse taper frammis spring clip retaining gasket cover seals for that thing nowhere. Heard tell the factory back in Transylvania hasn’t shipped parts out in two years.”
You have never had it so good. And you’ll have it better if some of the sleek new toys I occasionally whisper about come out around Motor Show time this year.
WHERE IT’S AT
One source of many rumors is Kawasaki. And for good reason: the gents from Akashi have been responsible for introducing more fancy mounts than just about anybody else . . . the most mind-staggering of which being the Mach III, which, though baby-size for a
super-bike, is just as fast as the fastest, and lighter than any of the others. It looks sweet and runs smooth and they’re tooling 2000 of them a month out of the Akashi factory, far more than anyone thought they would sell back when they first considered whether or not they should actually build the machine. At that time, it seems there was some discussion as to whether they should build a twin-cylinder two-stroke or go ahead with the Three. Design engineers went as far as actually drawing up two sets of blueprints before finally deciding on the three-cylinder version. The company is building more assembly plant space for their expanding production, and while the Mach III is still making riders breathe hard back in Sioux City, Kawasaki realizes that nothing lasts forever. They’re plenty busy on all sorts of devious projects, though I didn’t get to see a one. I said to some of the engineers, “Bring on the four-cylinder! I wanna see some big arn!” But they just tee-heed and scratched their heads and looked like they knew something I didn’t know and boy would I be surprised when I found out!
One area that Kawasaki is pushing very strong is off-road machines, and I can tell you that they are about to spring some very pleasant surprises in this division, when new model time rolls around. The company is very anxious to establish itself in this growing market (and more than a little anxious to un-establish Yamaha, who has snatched more off-road riders than anybody else combined with their 125-cc and 250-cc Singles). Go get ’em, Kawasaki! Gam bar el
HONDA SL175 MOTOSPORT!
Faster and faster now, Honda’s trying to hop into the off-road or motocross or trail or enduro or whatever you call it market. There have been big changes since the days of the CL72, a “street scrambler” that wasn’t much good on the street and worse than worthless in the rough stuff. The SL100 stacks up with the best of the twostrokes for power, weight and handling, and the SL350, while weighing about a ton more than two-stroke Singles of this displacement range, has plenty of giddyup and fine handling for fast dirt roads.
Now there’s the SL175, a little brother of the SL350. The engine is undoubtedly based on the quick and sturdy 175-cc Twin powering other Hondas, and the rest of the design looks very much like the SL100 and ST350: upswept single muffler, which the exhaust pipes sweep under and cross over and feed into, teardrop tank and longtravel suspension. The motorcycle is very beautiful, and with 19 horses at 9500 rpm, a 30-degree climbing ability, a five-speed tranny, a 3.00-19 front tire, a 74-mph top speed, the Honda name and probably a lower price than everybody expects, it should be a very popular trail machine, but ...
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it weighs 255.2 pounds. Dry. In case you don’t know, that’s about the same as the competition s 350-cc, 35-bhp single strokers. Sorry, friends, in case you were thinking of playing Dave Bickers or Torsten Hallman or Jett Smith you’d better forget it unless you can drill, file, saw or hammer off about 50 lb. Not very likely.
Honda’s Japanese bulletin states rather coyly that you can enjoy “motocross-type riding adventures” with this machine, and to be fair we must stress that it’s called a “Motosport” machine.
SUZUKI MOTOCROSS GOODIES
And speaking of motocrossing, Suzuki is celebrating the numerous wins of its RH70 Grand Prix motocrosser under the nimble fingers and toes of Joel Robert & Co. by offering for sale a huge selection of racing goodies for its TS90 and TS250 machines: sprockets, expansion chambers, jets, cylinder heads, and on and on.
And while the 250 won’t have all the magnesium goodies and factory tuning of the RH70, it will undoubtedly make a good showing of itself in competition.
Suzuki has proven very well that they know what it takes to make a Grand Prix motocross machine win Grands Prix,
MORE IDLE FANTASY?
if you’ll retrieve it from your meruory bank, you’ll recall that I was phiiosophizing to you about what a glorious surprise it would be if Honda were to introduce a scaled-down version of the King Qf Beasts, their Ruler of the Universe, otherwise known as the CB750 Four. I think they’re actually going to do it-double. No, not a V-8. Rather, two Fours: a 350 and a 500. The CB750 is selling as many machines in iwo months as Honda originally planned to sell in a year, and if there’s gold in a critter like that which costs $1500, it couldn’t be bad business to build smaller, less expensive versions of the multi and really do it to the two-stroke makers. Apart from little echoes that find their way in my big ears, I have no further idea on what the machines will be like, how many squirrel-power they’ll put out or if they’ll run on compressed phlogiston. But whatever they’ll be, they’ll be brainbending jawdroppers, that’s for sure, Same way the CB750 was. And the Mach III.
All they need now is a super-man to ride these road racer-quick superbikesany volunteers? [Q]
