The Throaty Ghost

The Throaty Ghost

UP FRONT

MARK HOYER

VEHICULAR REGRETS IN MY LIFE HAVE been few. Starting around age 10, I bought my first gasoline-powered transport, a Tecumseh-engined go-kart. It got used, crashed, abused and passed on to the next ignorant lad with a broken screwdriver, Vise-Grips and no skills.

A pair of street-legal Batavus HS50 mopeds (circa ’77 models) followed, as well as a ’79 Suzuki RM 100 motocrosser and other numerous (mostly reached) old dirtbikes.

Once I got my license and some steady work, I pretty much spiraled out of control buying, selling, riding, trading my way up the mechanical food chain any way I could.

Today, after many cars, motorcycles, trucks and even a fire engine (1945 Seagrave pumper), I’ve almost never looked back. Okay, so I wish I’d kept my ’62 Aston Martin DB4, but not because I miss it or still want to own it. I’d just like to sell it in today’s market!

That’s just avarice, not love.

So I’ve been haunted in life by just this single vehicular sale: the 1974 Norton 850 Commando you see below. When you’re trying to buy a house, sometimes you have to make tough decisions. Shelter or the freedom of the road? Well, I was really buying shelter for the motorcycles in my future, so, back in 2002, I let the Commando go. I’ve been fine with the departure of every other machine I’ve sold over the years and have never really wanted to get any of them back. But this one hurt.

The bike was sold new in California, and I bought it from the second owner, John Leisner. He’s the father of Andy, who is now our VP of sales and marketing but was selling ads for us at the time. Andy mentioned the bike to me in passing, but my only experience at the time in owning a vintage motorcycle was a ’75 Laverda 3CL. I had no idea about Nortons. So I asked a couple of “friends,” who told me this barn-fresh Commando wasn’t that great a deal, then nonchalantly asked where I’d seen it. As 1 said in the short story I wrote about this bike in the December, 2002, issue, I proceeded directly to the bank and withdrew cash.

The Norton was greasy, dusty and in serious need of tuning, but even with it popping and misfiring down the road on rotten tires and with a slipping clutch, I could detect the essential goodness of the motorcycle, its unharmed soul. Indeed, it had covered just 9000 miles at the time, and prior to being put away wet, had seen thoughtful service from learned hands. All the nuts and bolts were correct and not rounded off. The engine oil was old, but clean, just like that in the primary drive.

This picture was taken just before I sold the Commando. It felt like I’d spent a thousand hours polishing the alloy to its high sheen. I’d sanitized most of the bike’s insides, too, through careful disassembly and cleaning. I even rebushed the fork. It was, perhaps, the best it had ever been in its life. It had taught me much about what motorcycling was like in the late Sixties and early Seventies and given me many great adventures on the road.

And just about the time everything on the Commando was nearly perfect, the shelter situation popped up and I sold the bike to a nice fellow, Max, who was looking to get back into riding after limited experience as a youngster.

So it went away and I wept in my new, but empty, garage.

A few years later, I tried to track down the Commando, but Max had moved and I knew not where.

Gone.

Sure, there were others for sale, but every time I half-heartedly looked at one, it just wasn’t the same. My friend Bill Getty even lent to me a nice red Commando to use and work on, but there was something missing.

So I sort of gave up and tried to let the scar tissue cover the wound.

But it all got blown wide-open when we got an e-mail in the hotshots@cycleworld. com mailbox. It was from Max: He wanted to sell the Commando back to me, having moved on to a Ducati ST2 and other more modern bikes.

I called Bill. He’s great for advice on bike purchases because he probably owns about 80 motorcycles. In other words, I knew I’d get the right answer. “If you’d put away a dollar every time you told me you wanted that bike back, you could have bought it 10 times over,” he advised. “Buy it.”

Thanks, pal. I knew that I could count on you!

It’s back home again, with about 3000 more miles on the clock. Its essential goodness remains. It was grimy, the alloy had gone dull and it needed clutch work, tires and tuning, just like before. It’s been a huge pleasure to work on the bike again, and I’m looking forward to my first two-up ride with my wife, Jen.

A Norton Commando moves powerfully and makes deep, primal sounds. The kind of sounds that echo and haunt you a long time after you hear them last.