These classic motorcycle stories are getting to be a bit monotonous, I tell you. It all starts off when someone (who is bent on making my life difficult) would have heard of a ‘Norton or something like that’ doing the rounds in some part of town. Then it’s followed by an endless series of phone calls. Once that’s done, and the said bike is located, the owner is subjected to the ‘What BSM is all about’ regime followed by a slightly hesitant ‘So could we meet up tomorrow at about 6 am?’ After which comes the big question: ‘And er... ahem, would it be possible to ride the bike?’
Arriving on location the next day is always a bit of a nerve-wrecker. What with me being Murphy’s favourite child. Anyway, once the bike does arrive, it heads straight for the camera, after which my real job begins – riding the classic. After my fifteen minutes of fame, it’s to the breakfast table with the owner, where I spill out my standard set of questions. You know, stuff like, how many years he’s had it, its competition in its prime, model year, blah blah blah, all this with an absolutely riveted expression – something I’ve perfected over four years of earning an engineering degree. Then comes the perennial ‘How easy is it to maintain?’ bit.
And that’s when it gets really predictable. Old bikes are a sensitive issue. So when I get the ‘Oh, she’s given me no trouble at all’ routine, an imaginary (thankfully) ‘Yeah, right’ bubble appears over my head. Don’t get me wrong, I ain’t demeaning these guys, but there is a reason why stuff like CDI and CV carbs exist.
This time around though, things were a bit different. You see, when I hopped on to the 1967 Honda CA77, I was so instantly comfortable, I could have well been riding a machine that had just rolled off a production line. A bit of an exaggeration maybe, but the fact that I hadn’t stalled, come close to falling off or bust a knee to get a forty-year old motorcycle going, should tell you how effortless it was. Heck, I didn’t even miss a gear on that five-speed rotary gearbox.
The answer to why Honda is the largest two-wheeler maker in the world is pretty clear once you ride the CA77. Leave aside the aesthetics for the moment; this 125cc twin is as effortless to ride as an Unicorn. I kid you not, I could have put this thing in a comparison test with the 125s on sale today and it would have creamed them with regards to refinement.
But in the sixties, there wasn’t much room for a motorcycle like this. Even though it sold well, it was way too small to be taken seriously. Besides, the motorcycles that real men rode broke down once in a while – a quality that somehow gave the machine ‘character’. However, impressing the hot dogs was never really the whole point of this bike. Remember people, this was the time when the general impression of a motorcyclist was an armful of tattoos and a mean bandana for a uniform.
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