ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

The idea is fascinating. Take two examples of traditional European engineering and technology from the 1960s and early 1970s and bring them face-to-face with a pair of revolutionary Japanese bikes from the same era.

You might think the outcome is a simple one, reflecting traditional motorcycling history: the difference between ‘Old School’ and ‘New Wave’ approaches to motorcycle design and manufacture. The almost stagnant thinking of European factories against the innovative dynamism of manufacturers from the Far East but, in fact, over the course of several days with a quartet of vintage machines, turns out perhaps our Euro classics aren’t so easily beaten. The ‘Old School’ has life in it yet…

The older we get and the faster time passes, the more likely we are to slip into prejudice and nostalgia. The most famous cliché is that everything was better in the old days, contradicted soon afterwards by musing on how the British motorcycle industry, represented by Norton’s Commando 850, drove itself to ruin through antique technology; BMWs like the R90 S were destined for old men; and the Japanese newcomers – such as Kawasaki’s H1 500 Mach III and Honda’s CB750 – ultimately helped wipe every other brand off the map. But the truth is a bit more complicated than that.

SPECIFICATION

BMW R90 S

ENGINE:

Horizontally-opposed ‘Boxer’ twin, 898cc 4V, four-stroke

POWER:

67bhp @ 7000rpm

WEIGHT:

215kg

PRODUCTION:

1973-1976

Wild Times!

The mood of liberated ecstasy surrounding the arrival of Kawasaki’s H1 500 Mach III and Honda’s CB750 in the late 1960s was understandable, because they fit right in with the radical climate of the era and its worldwide student uprisings, Pop Art, the assassinations of Martin Luther King and JFK, Woodstock, the Moon landing and plenty of sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll.

The Honda and Kawasaki were also symbols of growing affluence; a free-spirited impetuosity and flicking two fingers at the establishment. As if sensing the time was right, the Japanese – until then purveyors of mostly low capacity machines – suddenly spearheaded a slew of new and affordable large-capacity performance models into a market that, until 1968, consisted of British parallel twins, Bavarian Boxer twins and American V-twins, all adapted from pre-war technology.

Initially, Japanese manufacturers crept steadily into the Western market with small, light motorcycles tailored, on