01-30-2023, 05:31 AM
(01-30-2023, 01:45 AM)m in sc_imp Wrote: I see plenty of museum, or near museum quality bikes being used regularly in the groups i deal with. I don't buy that logic, you can keep a bike nice and use it without 'riding it into the ground' and turning it into a beater no matter the rarity or the age. Its like saying a stuffed elephant is a good alternative to them roaming free. its not, IMHO.
what good is a bike sitting on a shelf for 10 years in some guys man cave rotting away? I've seen that happen as well, and it takes its toll, usually worse than using them by far. i get that with a few specific ones, including the original Z1, the brittons, etc .
an example, local guy to me has one of these. one of the rarest bikes ever, a Saxon laverda. its 1 of 5. ever. this is the bike that resulted in a lawsuit, and bmw put them out of business over the telelever front suspension, so therefore it also has historic significance. I took these out at a local bike night, this guy has 5 or 6 laverdas, and he rides them all.
Or one of my old bikes, which I 'lost' in the divorce, and on its way back to me now, a US import 74 Moto-Morini Strada.. 1 of 174 ever brought in in this configuration. it was a basket case, i restored it and yes, i absolutely rode it quite a bit, and will again.
the idiot i got it from was trying to turn it into a chopper. this is the day i bought it.
I could continue examples, for pages, but I mean I deal with stuff like this on a regular basis. I jus thappen to like smaller bikes by preference. I've worked on a few z1's they really aren't my cup of tea (top heavy). And that's also why the F model CB came out in 75, which IMHO, is a better bike, certainly handling wise. .02
Naw... It's more like saying that keeping a few in the zoo maybe isn't so horrible if many of the remaining elephants are all getting turned into cafe racers or choppers or are rotting away in barns for another 30 years. I certainly wasn't advocating that they shouldn't be ridden, and personally couldn't imagine doing it any other way. I'm just not sure that somebody overpaying for an overly blingy restoration is all that terrible. And there isn't anything that says that this particular bike won't be ridden by whoever bought it. I doubt that the overall market for Z1s is going to be impacted by this particular sale.