06-02-2019, 06:19 PM
(05-21-2019, 11:10 PM)cooldrum_imp Wrote: 50 years ago I was getting ready to enlist in the Air Force. I was going to college and my draft number was 6. I wanted to better the odds of coming home so I enlisted. I'm grateful to this day of being around and still riding.
My bike at the time was a '67 305 Scrambler. Growing up in Oakland and the Bay Area that bike took me everywhere and even a road trip down Highway 1 through Big Sur and then the Pacific Coast Highway.
I'll be riding that 305 today, yep, still have my 1st bike along with a 2013 CB and a '74 CB 750 in Orange just like you remember. They're all watershed bikes in my opinion. A testimony to Honda's engineering and visionary design.
I was having coffee with a riding buddy yesterday and I brought up why other existing motorcycle companies before Honda didn't make and bring an inline 4 to market for "mass production?" His answer was change and complacency. I'm thankful Honda took the leap and the others followed.
Keeping the rubber side down CD
The story of the demise of the British motorcycle industry is a painful one, but in 1967 I visited Triumph's factory in Meriden. It was a hive of activity, crates of 'bikes waiting to be shipped, all stations on the factory floor manned and the whole place buzzing - they literally could not make enough motorcycles quickly enough to satisfy the world (chiefly USA) market. Oh, and pinstriping was still done by hand! Wheels and all, by one old guy and two younger guys.
That was the time the unions decided to threaten strike action for more pay. Management caved in, but used funds for "development" to buy off the workforce. There were then no funds to develop new machines. Bert Hopwood developed the three-cylinder engines IN SECRET, so management wouldn't find out!!
So that brief story encapsulates typically why Britain lost the race. That they still managed to win Daytona, TT, etc., was a miracle. "Slippery Sam" was a great racing 'bike and still exists, in the National Motorcycle Museum, I believe.
I visited the factory again in about 1976 and it was heartbreaking... In total contrast to my earlier visit, just a couple of dozen people working, rows and rows of empty, silent workstations on the factory floor - virtually nothing being made. This "co-operative", backed by the Government, struggled on for a few more years. The name 'Triumph' was eventually bought by a building magnate, John Bloor, and the current Triumphs are built in a totally new facility.
This https://tinyurl.com/y6sz2g9q might be interesting for some of you in the States.