Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 4 - 2020 i Cycle World

Safe to say in 1962, when founding Cycle World publisher Joe Parkhurst started the magazine, he hadn’t envisioned how big a truly independent motorcycle publication that served the reader first might become. And before his death in 2000, could he have envisioned how the next 20 years would change publishing? No, 2000 was not 1962, and 2020 definitely isn’t 2000. Yes, the changes have been remarkable, and I am thankful that our mission to bring the best writing and testing to motorcycle enthusiasts has remained constant. Our mission remains inspired by what Joe Parkhurst wrote in the first issue, published in January 1962: “Cycle World is dedicated to the cycle enthusiast, no matter what he rides. Whether they be full-size motorcycles, scooters, or minibikes, they are within our realm of…

One thing you have to say in favor of COVID-19—if you’re semiretired and somehow still among the living—is that it gives you a lot of extra time, not only to ride motorcycles, but also to practice guitar. I was noodling around on my ancient Gibson ES-335 electric in the garage-band corner of my workshop the other day and, as usual, gazing across the room at my latest two-wheeled acquisition. It’s a 2020 Royal Enfield 650 Continental GT I bought last spring, done in a paint scheme that Enfield calls “Black Magic.” This is essentially a cafe-racer-style motorcycle with low bars, gold trim on the tank, and an optional solo saddle. I also added a set of Enfield-exclusive S&S mufflers, made in Viola, Wisconsin. Yes, Wisconsin-made pipes on a motorcycle from…

Ahead of the R 18’s release, BMW looked to two custom shops to provide the public’s first view of the engine. As Custom Works Zon’s Departed and Revival Cycles’ Birdcage stirred our imaginations, these master makers also provided feedback, allowing for a more easily customized motorcycle. By showing unique models of the R 18 prior to the final product, BMW let the consumer envision what the bike could be before the company defined it. The 2021 R 18 debuted with a unique consideration of home customization. An easily removed subframe and entirely steel bodywork lay the base for serious modification, while universal fitments on things like foot controls and handlebars allow for quick minor changes. Robot-painted pinstripes and an exposed nickel-plated drive shaft evoke the 1936 R5, simultaneously representing tradition…

The adventure motorcycle segment kicked off in 1980 with BMW’s R 80 G/S. At the time, many wondered who would want an overweight, undersuspended dual-sport. Turns out, more riders wanted one than anyone would have guessed. The segment has gained more power and long-range touring capability over the years, along with more mass and girth to wrestle when off-road. Now a new generation of adventure bikes has come along to buck the trend of bigger is better, altering what and how far are possible when the pavement ends. Leading the charge are two models inspired by modern rally racers: Yamaha’s Ténéré 700 and KTM’s 790 Adventure R. No longer do ADV bikes have to be overweight and undersuspended. Both motorcycles are powered by parallel-twin engines, both are equipped with long-travel…

Just about the time manufacturers figured out basic electronic ignitions and how to keep oil inside engine and transmission cases, there began an ongoing chorus of “bikes are so good these days, you can just pick your favorite color.” Not true, never has been. Motorcycles are amazingly good, but product differentiation, improved technology, tightened regulations, and the ever-moving line of excellence mean there are always discernible differences and meaningful “bests.” These 10 bikes are just the latest examples of how far we ’ ve come, and when you compare them to where we were even five years ago, it’s clear there is no end to improvements in performance, safety, and fun. KTM 890 DUKE R BEST MIDDLEWEIGHT STREETBIKE Leave it to KTM to continuously “evolutionize” its platforms in search of…

Whether he was sailing his ketch on the Pacific or driving his Ferrari 275 GTB, Joe was always thinking of his next ride. Through all the business of publishing, from the shaky early days when Joe Parkhurst sold everything to start Cycle World to the time in the late 1960s and early-’70s when the magazine hit it big, his pure love of riding remained at the center of his being. Whether he was sailing his ketch on the Pacific or driving his Ferrari 275 GTB, Joe was always thinking of his next ride. In order to have another opportunity to saddle up with his industry friends, Parkhurst began the Cycle World Trek in 1975. This invitational off-road ride first held in Baja California (and executed nearly every year since in…

Before Cycle World Vol. 1, No. 1, in 1962, motorcycle magazines were just mouthpieces for the industry network, but Joe Parkhurst changed all that. As Peter Egan once said, Cycle World was finally a magazine “for those of us who wanted to buy motorcycles rather than sell them.” Parkhurst put it simply in his later years: “I was just a guy who worked on magazines, loved motorcycles, and could never find anything worthwhile to read about them.” He had been art director at Road & Track, long our sister publication, and was editor and art director at Karting World, the first high-quality magazine on that subject. “Editorial integrity and quality, though essential to the success of a magazine, were not readily accepted by an industry that had never ever heard…

The defining engine of American motorcycling for more than 100 years? The Harley-Davidson V-twin. The form of this engine we know today is as expressed by the Milwaukee-Eight Big Twin—still a large-displacement 45-degree V-twin turning on rolling bearings and covered with the fins that define air cooling. Despite these traditional features, which have been retained over many years to satisfy the preferences of those who own and ride them, these machines meet the same standards for noise, emissions, and in-service durability that apply equally to the most recent of designs They are the product of 84 years of adaptation of product to ever-changing conditions of use. When the beloved “Knucklehead,” or EL, of 1936 came into being as Harley’s first OHV design, effectively doubling available power, many miles of America’s…

The phenomenon of riding the 2021 Honda Trail 125 ABS off-road is that everyone you see looks like Captain Overkill. Even that rider I saw on a Yamaha WR250R. “NICE BARGE, BRO! SEE YOU AT STARBUCKS.” I didn’t actually get quite that wound up. It’s simply that the Trail 125 brings the off-road chill, like, “Why do you need a 5,000-pound lifted Silverado with 37-inch tires and 4 billion LED lumens of light bars?” You just don’t. I’m not knocking giant trucks (OK, maybe a little), or remarkable dual-sports (I own and enjoy a 2013 WR250R), or adventure bikes. But the simple, light fun of a motorcycle like the Trail 125 makes you feel good in a pure way not matched by many vehicles. It’s the combination of its handy,…

Amid the women’s suffrage movement—five years prior to the ratification of the 19th Amendment—daughter-mother duo Effie and Avis Hotchkiss took a journey that would cement them into motorcycling’s history as the first women to take a motorcycle/sidecar across the US and back. On May 2, 1915, these two women departed Brooklyn, New York, for the Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco, aboard a sidecar-equipped 1915 Harley-David son F-11 motorcycle. According to the 1916 Harley-Davidson Enthusiast, Effie stated, “We merely wanted to see America and considered that the three-speed Harley-David son for myself, and sidecar for mother and the luggage [were] best suited for the job.” Not only were these women riding during a tumultuous social movement, but they also faced other problems on their transcontinental expedition. Effie had learned how to…

Here I am, writing the last print “TDC” column of a series that began by accident 38 years ago in the exasperation of the late Phil Schilling. In 1982, he planned a set of new monthly columns for Cycle magazine, to be written by staff in rotation. No one in the office wanted the tech column, “TDC,” so it just wasn’t getting written. As planned, it was deadly dull: “Maximizing the Life of Your Battery” or “Prepping Your Bike for Winter Storage.” Useful, maybe, but dull as simonizing Dad’s car. I had begun to write occasionally for Cycle when editor Cook Neilson asked me to write about my 1972 project to go AMA roadracing with an English rider on my homebuilt Kawasaki H2R 750 triple. Response to the article was…

One Sunday morning in the summer of 1977, I was sitting in my living room in Madison, Wisconsin, reading the paper and scanning the motorcycle classifieds, as usual. One item that caught my eye that day was an ad for a 1964 Honda 50, a C100 step-through model, for a mere $100. Hmm…a slow motorcycle, yes, but a bona fide classic. The little bike that started it all. Introduced to this country in 1959 as the Super Cub, it took America by storm and enabled you to “Meet the Nicest People on a Honda”—instead of duking it out with Marlon Brando or Lee Marvin. Unbreakable, good-looking, leakproof, nicely finished, and capable of an almost unheard of 200 mpg, it was everything almost all other motorcycles at the time were not.…

It is a comforting fiction of our settled life that intelligence must be identified in early childhood and cultivated by professional educators to produce the leaders and creators of the future. Yet there are schools without classrooms that focus intelligence just as effectively. For Kenny Roberts, three-time world champion in 500cc Grand Prix roadracing, that focus came from riding. “If it hadn’t been for motorcycle racing, I’d have been just another guy in a rusty pickup truck on his way home from work in the almond groves,” he once told me. If you get to know Roberts even a little bit, you quickly discover he has no use for the human politics of playing the hero. He can be funny, irritable, annoying, or deliberately insulting in quick succession. Yet the…

“Vintage motorcycle racing has taught me that you can’t always have absolutes in things,” Kenny Cummings says as he regards the 1936 Norton International sitting on a lift at his third-floor workshop in a massive old industrial building in Jersey City. Cummings is a racer, a musician, and the gregarious owner of NYC Norton, a two-man enterprise that specializes in high-end Norton restorations and vintage racing. “I love the ride, I love the race, but I also love the production side of things. There’s very much these fundamentals about it. It’s been a push-pull thing, growing up as an artistic kid,” Cummings says by way of explaining his affinity for both the ordered, objective world of the workbench and the unpredictable world of vintage racing. “Art is all about not-absolutes.”…