At Large

AT LARGE

Memo To The Engineering Department

DEAR (FILL IN ANY MOTORCYCLE MANufacturer’s name):

Thanks so much for your stupendous new GFVX980. I knew when I laid down my $5600 for it that I was buying this week's hottest asphalt-ripper. I knew that your engineers (how many do you have there these days, 200? 600? 1000?) worked day and night to build a motorcycle that could reach orbital velocity in under 10 seconds, stop on a deci-yen and corner at 1,86g. And I also really appreciate getting 48 mpg as a nice bonus. Despite all the wonderful stuff you built into this thing, though, there are a few items I think you might want to check into.

Like the sidestand. Now, I know that sidestands aren’t very glamorous, and that it's probably hard to get a career-minded engineer interested in such lowly items, but I humbly suggest that because the stand on the GFVX980 is worthless, you get cracking on it. 1 can assure you that the w'arm glow' I felt for your bike after my nice ride last Sunday evaporated when the blasted thing idled off its stand onto its expensive ABS fairing and break-away mirror.

Of course, you’d be justified in claiming that the industry standard for sidestands is pretty low'. I mean, only the week before last. I watched a certain Italian motorcycle quiver, twitch and fall ever so artfully off of its laughable sidestand smack into the hood of a very expensive Swedish automobile. Then there’s the famous German bike that seems to be as bad at sitting on its pathetic little sideand centerstands as it is good at eating hundreds of miles of autobahns. And I know at least one motorcycle magazine editor who has watched, amazed, as that week’s hottest model from the biggest motorcycle manufacturer in the world eased off its sidestand into a petunia patch.

I know that, as a big-time manufacturer. you run thousands of hours of tests on every part of your products. And I know that the prestige of your entire, immense corporate family rides on how fast your latest missile is. I know about your company’s pride and its Face. But if you could see our faces when those wonderful missiles tip over and stagger ignominiously to the ground, you might understand something of the otherwise puzzling ambiguity with which even most American sport riders—the very ones who live for your missiles—regard you and your company.

See, we all know' here about the tough regulations that made you take the simple, effective kickstand of the old days and turn it into a lock-dow n, lock-out, no-fault vehicle-support assembly. And we even agree, most of us. with the thinking behind the regs: Many of us have had at least one close shave with the Great Gulp by riding off in a fit of forgetfulness with the deadly old-style kickstand still aimed at the ground. And we know how' we felt when we almost got swallowed by the Gulp when we tried to turn left. So despite the fact that a few of us older guys remember those simple kickstands with some fondness, we don’t want you just to bend a piece of steel rod, hang it on a pin next to the shift lever and go home for the week. No. What we’d like is for some of those fine graduates of Tokyo University’s superb engineering school to be given a Priority Ichi command to build a sidestand that is—if you’ll excuse the phrasing—as hi-tech and user-friendly as most of the rest of your GFVX980.

While you're at it. could you also see to it that the same guys who design the stand are forced to use it on a bike for. say. a month or two? And ensure that they use it not just on concrete slabs, but also on gravel, soft tar. off-camber dirt and on an incline something like Lombard Street in San Francisco. Ifyou’ve never seen Lombard Street, just imagine a paved Widowmaker.

I can't speak for my colleagues, but I would regard your making such a change in your engineering priorities as evidence that you in fact do care about your overseas customers. Not conclusive evidence, mind you. I’m afraid that will come only when you take the engineers who weren’t chosen for the sidestand redesign and put them on a project that is just as important, but that also has obvious limitations in career-enhancement.

Mirrors, for example. Like sidestands, they're not so glamorous, to be sure. But if you've ever been almost knocked into that previously mentioned Great Gulp by the Buick hidden in the blind spot in your GFVX's mirrors, well, you know that glamor doesn't matter very much until you stop shaking. Maybe in your country, everyone wears a size 36 shirt, and so your average rider's shoulders don't block the rearward view in your standard mirrors. But here we seem to be pretty big folks, as your car-making colleagues have long understood. I trust even the disgruntled engineers who got assigned to your last model-year’s mirror design can figure out what that means about how those mirrors work for us.

Now', don’t get me wrong. That GFVX980 is one incredible motorcycle. All of us (well, most of us) over here really appreciate its great engine, fabulous chassis and crisp styling. Your guys have got the big things, engineering-wise, mostly under control now. and you can be proud of that. But you ought to understand one thing about America: Here, little things can quickly become big things. To find out how big, talk to some of the ex-directors of certain defunct British motorcycle companies. A lot of them used to think that problems such as vibration, unreliability and oil leaks were little things. If you'd asked them back when they still felt that way, they'd probably have told you that stands and mirrors were also little things.

Of course, none of those directors are around any more, so you can't ask them. Come to think of it, though, that’s all you really need to know, isn't it? —Steven L. Thompson