02-11-2015, 07:47 AM
(02-05-2015, 12:09 PM)Guth_imp Wrote: For me, the photo of Capos 1970 T120 illustrates why I think Honda was wise not to try to recreate any one specific design from the past. The look of the current Bonneville pales in comparison to the originals. The proportions just aren't right. The beautiful lines of that 1970 bike are lost in the new bikes with their bulbous tanks, oddly angled pipes and larger engines. The models sporting 17" wheels look worse to my eye than the T100s. Not because of the spokes, but because the size of the wheel/tire just throws the balance off that much more. Keep in mind that I consider the Triumphs of the late 60s to be some of the most beautiful bikes ever built. Simply awesome looking machines. So Triumph set their own design bar really high. I also happen to be pretty particular about stuff like this.
Those of you who have been around this forum for a while are familiar with the fact that I'm not too crazy about the look of the larger tank on the CB1100 deluxe. Same deal - the lines of the tank pass muster in some photos, but in others the curves just look bloated. I would be hard pressed to find a photo of that 1970 T120 that didn't look darn near perfect to me from almost any angle. Stunning machine.
Before I come across as being too hard on today's retro standards, I would add that I still find these designs more attractive than the alternatives. The Bonneville of today is still a more attractive bike to me than say the Daytona 675. Things just start to fall apart for me a bit when the comparison to the looks of the old bikes comes into play.
I'm not going to talk about oil. I was looking at my today retro, the CB1100 14 Standard, my "Black Beauty Edition" and thought I'd take up threadspace musing about about modern retros, a class of bike she well represents just as the new Bonnie and Yamaha and even the stunning Kawasaki W series do.
When you look at her close especially from the back and then along the unbroken line flowing from the top of her seat and onto her beautiful fuel tank and side covers, you realize she and her Delux sisters were sculpted into a form nothing like their older siblings, sculpted to a form that is both beautiful and functional, I think superior so to the CB750, and while that bike is beautiful, it's form is more functional than beautiful, a large CB360 with extra cylinders, which is not bad since that is beautiful bike but chunky beauty rather than a sculpted form of our new Cbs, they reminding us both of where they came from but also leaving much of that past behind in amazing and modern mechanics and electronics and also in a modern take, a modern form, a new CB that leaves the old behind for new roads, new rides and new memories.
I think more or less this is true of all of the new crop of modern retros, the Bonnie and the new Yamaha small displacement retro that is leaping out of showrooms for the past year or so. The new retros capture the essence of their ancestors while greeting us with a new soul in the machine.