25 Years Ago September 1984
25 YEARS AGO SEPTEMBER 1984
ROUNDUP
Custom cruisers were cool in 1984, and Suzuki's new GV700 V-Four Madura was featured on this issue's cover. Despite our front page's stylish photography, the ad for the same bike on pages 4 and 5, featuring bikiniclad models with totally '80s hair, was more attention-grabbing. The full road test opened with the line, "Not only is imitation the sincerest form of flattery, it's very often a prerequisite for sales success."
• Husqvama took a step back to go forward with its then-new 400WR. The bike previously was powered by a 430cc air-cooled mill, but the Swedish company’s revised 396cc Single with an all-new liquid-cooled top end thrilled testers with its tractable bottom-end power combined with a revvy rush worthy of a factory-ported 250cc motocrosser.
• Then-Feature Editor and current skipper of the CW ship, David Edwards, found himself, um, well, up a certain creek without a paddle. While covering the Widowmaker Elillclimb in Utah, he managed to trap himself in an outhouse paperless. “Thou shalt always bring thine own toilet paper,” he stated in his perhaps overly informative lead. To which we add: Thou shalt not park your YZ490 against said structure, where it may tip over and block thine exit...
• The Flying Brick, as BMW’s longitudinally mounted inline-Four came to be known, had just arrived in America in the form of the new K100RS and was subjected to a full road test. Editors were impressed, saying that it made “the fine art of riding quickly a whole lot easier.”
Blake Conner
