25 Years Ago November 1987
25 YEARS AGO NOVEMBER 1987
ROUNDUP
On our penultimate cover of Cycle World's 25th Anniversary, we celebrated "Harley Power" with a road test of the brand-new '88 Sportster 1200 and a feature on Erik Buell's first, the RR1000. A quarter-century later, our theme is "middleweights," so it's interesting that we now classify the Sportster 1200 Custom in this cate gory when back in '87, the Sporty was considered a big, hairychested man's bike. Despite the change in class definitions, performance and specs are remarkably similar between the two: Horsepower and torque are almost identical at 68 and 72-ish, respectively, while 25 years of sedentary behavior means the new bike has packed on 86 pounds over its 470-lb. ancestor. The extra heft doesn't seem to have hurt performance, but not much has changed, either. Quartermile times have improved by less than two-tenths (12.93 @ 102.22 compared to 13.07/99.39), while 0-60 improved a tenth (4.2 vs. 4.3).
• A story titled "Legends" looked back at the 25 best racers spanning 1962 to I '87 and had me a bit baf1 fled at first. It ] wasn't who was included that had me confused; it was the order in which they were listed that got my boxers in a bunch. Yup, most of the big names were there: #1 Baker, #2 Burleson, #4 Hannah, #5 Lackey, #6 Lawwill, #7 Mann, #8 Markel, #10 Nixon, #15 Rayborn, but Kenny Roberts 17th? Malcolm Smith 20th? Freddie Spencer 22nd? Then I realized they were listed alphabetically without any explanation. Thanks for raising my blood pressure, guys...
Blake Conner
