Motors: The interest is growing

Interest is growing down. That sounds a bit strange. Don't you grow up? Okay: first all classic enthusiasts wanted their dream bikes from back then. Think of the fat - well, once 650 cc was 'thick' - British twins, the BMW R69S, the big Harleys, the Honda CB 750, the Kawasaki 500 and 750 cc three-cylinder and the Z900's ...

Prices rose

The prices of these engines went up sharply over the years. And now, partly due to the fact that prices have been climbing like monkeys over each other's backs in the last few years, they have become a sort of priceless. A truly perfect BMW R69S was recently sold for € 27.500. And for the perfect Honda CB450 Black Bomber we also saw five-figure prizes.

Apples also hang from lower branches

With all the interest focused on the top, the 'lesser' motorcycles remained largely in the forgetting book. An 400 cc Kawa three-cylinder? It stopped. The CB250 and CB 350 twins from Honda? The little Guzzi V-twins? Nobody wanted them. An acquaintance bought an almost spotless Kawa 400 for a euro per cc. That was only three years ago. But also a BMW R50 or R50 / 5 could count on no interest whatsoever. Until ... Until the top players really only became affordable for investors. Then the need made the market less critical. Or let's say: more tolerant. And that gave very new insights. And so suddenly the Honda CB400 F, once praised in England as the first well-steered Japanese motorcycle, suddenly became quite an interesting thing.

Medium weight wasn't that heavy yet

Because until the mid-1970s, an 350 or 500 cc was still a medium-duty machine. And in the eighties you were seen on a Yamaha RD350 LC as a very serious motorcyclist. And now the interest in those once ignored motorcycles is starting to tighten up. And that is only a faulty development in terms of price.

Because for the rest, in the current traffic image it is not really necessary for a classic car enthusiast to have 80 + hp on board. And then we are not even talking about people who buy a modern engine from 150 + hp to enjoy all that power on the parts of the road where you occasionally can drive 130 km / h.

Motorways are the least interesting for us, motorcyclists. But with the TomTom on the winding route setting and with a classic up to 500 cc under your ass, you can make the most beautiful kilometers

The cons

You can't get away from it: "Every advantage is a disadvantage." The lighter motorcycles from the sixties, seventies and eighties were designed at a time when adult Northern Europeans were still between the 5-10 cm lower than that currently is the case. is. Such a less heavy engine can therefore be a bit small. Also because we, classic motorcycle enthusiasts, are now about twenty kilos heavier than at the age of twenty. You can be criticized for that.

I experienced it myself when I arrived on a Honda CB125. Okay. That is a very light motorcycle. But the remark "Look, there you have Dolf on a motorized hemorrhoid !," you are not really comfortable

Such a thing can already be a good purchase