Up Front

UP FRONT

Back to the future

David Edwards

NOSTALGIA IS LOOSE UPON THE LAND. Bell-bottoms are back in style, the nation’s number-one box-office hit, The Fugitive, is based on a 1960s TV show, and in a truly frightening development, nightclubbers are once again dancing to the beat of honest-to-Travolta disco music. Lord only knows what we’ll have to dust off next: pet rocks, leisure suits, poor old Dick Nixon?

This fascination with the recent past is a curious phenomenon. Are we-fed up to the back teeth with incurable diseases, serial killers and an economy run amuck-looking back with fondness to a safer, saner, more secure time? Or is it simply that there are only so many fresh ideas to go around and having used up our share, it’s now time to recycle?

Whatever the reason, motorcycling has not been immune from the trend. Harley-Davidson’s copy writers can coo all they want about Evolution engine this and rubber-mount system that, most of the Motor Company’s catalog is an homage to the ’40, ’50s and ’60s. All to good effect: H-D’s sales numbers remain hotter than young love.

Others are jumping on the retrobandwagon. In this issue you can read about the Cards, father and son, who are on a holy quest to revive the Brough Superior, that grand old British V-Twin most famous for being the death machine of Lawrence of Arabia, who offed himself with an impromptu trip through a backroad hedgerow. Asking price? About the same as a top-line Lexus LS 400.

Also in this issue, a report about a new-for-1995 Indian Chief. Now, I don’t know about everybody else, but I’m just about sick and tired of all this Indian-revival business. If you’re going to build an new Indian, just do it, and enough already with the stylized drawings and the wooden mockups. Here’s a standing offer: As soon as you’ve got a runner, give Cycle World a jingle, we’ll come calling with Nikons, notepads and test gear, put the damn thing on the cover, and tell the assembled masses all about it. That’s an instant audience of almost 400,000 of the most intelligent, most educated, most affluent ultra-enthusiasts in motorcycling, just the kind of people you’ll have to entice if you want to make a go of things.

There’s more. Just as we went to press, came the news that a very successful SoCal entrepreneur wants in on the retro-bike craze. As you can read in “Viva la Vincent,” Bernard Li is hard at it, building prototypes of latter-day Vincent Black Shadows. This is more of a likeness than an exact replica, and will be powered by a modern motor. “It’s what we imagine an evolved Vincent might look like.” Li says.

Even the Japanese are not immune to retro-bike fever. Both Kawasaki (with the ZR series) and Honda (with the CB1000) are offering dead-nuts rips of what American hot-rodders-emulating AMA Superbikes of the era-built in the 1970s. Yamaha and Suzuki have similar machines in the works, though given the ZR/CB’s dismal sales performance over here, it’s doubtful if they’ll make it stateside.

May I make a suggestion?

For a yester-bike to succeed in a big way, it needs to have a yester-price, so I propose that Yamaha dig into its past and revive the venerable XS650 Twin.

Why Yamaha and why the XS650?

First, Yamaha, bless its heart, has over the years shown an unwavering propensity for building weird-Harold motorcycles (witness the Vision, the XV920, the SR500, et al, right up to today’s bugeyed-but-lovable TDM850). Second, the XS, simple, stout and strong-hearted, is just too good a machine to let fade away. Built from 1970 to 1983 in num-

bers approaching 500,000, the XS motor resembled a Triumph verticalTwin, yet had oil-tight cases and more reliability than any Bonneville could ever hope to muster.

I’ve got one-actually I’ve got an XS engine, punched out to 750cc and installed in a Champion-framed streettracker-and I’m always pleased at how accessible, how inviting, a machine it is to work on. Pull up a garage creeper to the side of the engine, take a seat and the sparkplug damn-near pokes you in the nostril. The last time I wrestled four new plugs into a CBR600F2 testbike, I came away with bloody knuckles, vowing to take it to a dealership next time.

Of course, some updating would be needed. Old XS models had malignant steering-head bearings and sinister swingarm bushings. Fix those. Keep the conventional fork, the dual rear shocks and the single front disc brake, but give those components the benefits that a decade’s worth of development has wrought. Do something to quell the XS’s shaking. Don Lawson, director of the Yamaha 650 Society and owner of 14 XS650s, is fond of asking, “What vibration?” but for the rest of us, a rubber-mount system akin the one now used on the FJ1200 would do nicely. Finally, price the neo-XS correctly-no more than $3999, I’d say-back it up with the proper ad campaign and wait for the orders to start rolling in.

Ed Burke, Yamaha product planner in the 1970s, is the man credited for giving the 650 a second lease on life-not to mention starting the factory-built custom craze-when he commissioned the XS Special series in 1978. Today, a division manager in the R&D department, the idea of a retro-XS appeals to him, though he says the bike’s tooling was long ago scrapped and he knows of no current plans to exhume the XS.

“If I were in the position, I’d definitely consider it. I get letters all the time from riders who just love their old 650s. With some systems upgrades and the application of a little technology, it would be a neat motorcycle,” Burke says.

A motorcycle, it could be added, that’s right for times, especially at a time when old is in. □