American Iron

American iron

UP FRONT

David Edwards

AIN’T IT NICE TO HAVE THE BAD-ASS motorcycle back among us?

After years of dumbed-down standards and tepid, cookie-cutter cruisers, bikes with balls are on the rebound. Witness the latest examples in this issue, Yamaha's FZ-1, MV Agusta’s Brutale and Honda’s whacking great VTX1800.

This is simple stuff, really. America loves hot-rods, two wheels or four. Give us lotsa motor, a rumbly exhaust, peeling rubber, and we are happy people. Forget Formula One, we are a NASCAR nation.

Writing about the blue-collar roots of hot-rodding, author Pat Ganahl notes, “Young men who could not afford something like a Stutz Bearcat or Mercer Runabout, and certainly not an Auburn or a Duesenberg, figured out they could resurrect cheap, cast-off Model-Ts or Chevrolets, strip them down, hop up the engines and combine junkyard parts from other cars to make them not only racy, but capable of beating big, expensive cars...” Simple, in-your-face motoring.

Sportbikes are high-performance, sure, but they’re not bad-ass. It’s hard to swagger with an aero package to haul around. “Eggbikes” a friend of mine calls them, and there is something effete about all that plastic bodywork. Besides, the cladding covers the engine, which to many of us is the point of the whole exercise. The machine is called a motorcycle, after all.

When it comes to cruisers, until recently it’s motor that’s been mostly missing. Hoping to slice off a piece of the Harley-Davidson success story, each of Japan’s Big Four came out with retro-styled wannabes, some of which made all of 45 rear-wheel horsepower (for reference, I’ve got a vintage BSA roadracer, a 500 Single, that cranks out 38 bhp, and my dual-purpose KTM 620, another onelunger, is good for 43-and neither comes close to the average cruiser’s 600-pound heft).

There was hope a few years ago with Yamaha’s Royal Star, which early rumors had being powered by a fourbanger yanked straight out of the fearsome V-Max’s engine bay. You remember the Max, don’t ya, and the 1985 ad that ballyhooed its existence? It featured a blown hi-boy Deuce roadster complete with Halibrands and flamed paint job, then opened up into a gatefold of this massive, meaty motorcycle. “Simply put, if the competition had doors, this would blow them off,” teased the tagline. Sixteen years ago, Yamaha had the hot-rod thing down cold.

But while the Royal Star had a Max-derived motor, about half the VFour’s horsepower got left behind. When we pointed this out in an otherwise favorable (well, there was a cornering-clearance issue, too) road test, Yamaha muckety-mucks asked if they might have a word. Focus groups had shown them, I was informed, that potential buyers were scared off by too much horsepower, that the targeted 45-year-old re-entry rider just didn’t want to be bothered.

I listened respectfully, but wasn’t having any of it. I agreed that all of the V-Max’s 110 horsepower was not needed, but suggested this exercise for their next focus group: Put two identical Royal Stars side-by-side, one with a sign saying “65 BHP,” the other proclaiming “85 BHP.” See which one snagged the most interest.

We had similar talks with other manufacturers. “You just don’t understand cruisers,” I was told. As the owner of the flamed Fifties BSA Gold Star that appears on this page and a stroked Indian Scout bob-job that’s part of the Guggenheim collection, I countered with, “Uh, maybe it’s not me that doesn’t fully understand cruisers...”

It’s not just the Japanese that have been slow to grasp the hot-rod cruiser concept. Dan Hanlon, he of stillborn Excelsior-Henderson, once told me in no uncertain terms that we in the mainstream motorcycle media didn’t “get the V-Twin lifestyle” and in short that we could all just go.. .well, away.

Had he been in the mood for intelligent conversation, I’d have suggested it was he who didn’t understand the history of his own company. When the original Excelsior intro’ed the Super X model back in 1925, it was one hot little number-lithe, streamlined styling, unit-construction gearbox, all-gear primary drive, double-cradle frame, etc. But when the Hanlon brothers pulled wraps off their resurrected X in 1999, there was nothing Super about it. What $100 million in investment money had wrought was an overweight, overpriced, underpowered retro wagon burdened by the butt-ugliest front end ever to wrap around a 16-inch Dunlop. True, its motor looked like the end-cut from a modern automotive V-Eight-fuel-injection, four-valve heads, doubleoverhead cams, etc.-but it made just 59 bhp, not much better than a twovalve, pushrod Evo Harley, itself basically a glorified version of the 1936 Knucklehead motor.

Ironically, while everyone from Hamamatsu to Minnesota to Munich was targeting the Evo Big Twin, Harley engineers were de-bugging the new Twin Cam 88 and Willie G. was putting the finishing touches on the knockout Softail Deuce. Hot-rod styling and 10 extra ponies (more with dealer-cataloged hop-up kits) vaulted the bike to the top of Cruiser Mountain. Advantage Milwaukee.

Now comes Honda’s VTX1800, all 90 rompin’, stompin’ horsepower of it. Factor in almost 100 foot-pounds of torque, and rear tires everywhere are cowering in fear. I’m sworn to secrecy, but I’ve seen a similar machine that’s soon to be released from another Japanese bike-maker. Harley wants to play, too, and its Porsche-tweaked VR motor should be a real runner, with more than 100 bhp on tap. Heck, maybe Yamaha will lay a little restyling on the venerable V-Max-rumors insist that a 2000cc version has been considered.

Hang on, this is gonna be fun.