Car or bike: Who among us hasn’t asked the question? After all, don’t we like practically anything that goes zoom? As long as glistening chrome, shapely metal, a snarling exhaust and a purposeful stance are involved, the resulting machine will likely be irresistible to most of us.
But should it matter if that machine has four wheels, or only two? …
Among our other vehicles my wife drives her beloved 1950 MGTD and rides her 1971 Honda CB350 Four nearly year round in, almost always, sunny Northern California. We restored both and they look like new but are definitly drivers with not a lot of power but a lot of fun. Drive 'em and ride 'em - don't hide 'em.
The obvious answer is to use the bike for quick adrenalin fixes and four wheels for the longer jaunts. This keepw the classic Triumph Bonneville, BSA 750, or Honda 305 Super Hawk (my personal want) tolerable, which longer stints on the saddle don't. Six hours on even the most comfortable motorcycle is really overexposure to the elements.
In 2001 I drove my 76 MGB from Memphis, Tennessee to Saint Joseph, Missouri. It's a distance of 600 miles, taking the short route diagonally across Missouri rather than the Interstates, I-55, I-70 and I-29. It was the week before Sturgis and the route from Memphis to Springfield to Kansas City is the central corridor for those bound to the Black Hills Moto-festival. It cuts through the Ozarks and has some of the nicest curvy four lanes in the entire region. About every ten miles there is another delightful village to slow down for and maybe stop for a meal or shopping. Even doing the 60 mph speed limit is fun, but the traffic generally exceeds that by 10 to 15 miles an hour which is... a beautiful sensation. I came up behind a group of ten or fifteen riders. My wife was driving our other car and leading the way. She passed the entire group, which was doing the speed limit in the right lane. The weather was perfect, 70 degrees and Simpson skies. The late afternoon Sun's golden tones washed the tree lined road way. As I cruised by the woman on the back of the last bike in the parade looked with the greatest longing at my empty passenger seat.
There is a reason that those of us that rode in the 1960s built Tritons and Tribsas. The Turner engines were strong but the triumph frames were poor. Besides riding to the Ace or Busy Bee cafes some of us actually raced on the the many race tracks around Britain such as Brands Hatch, Snetterton, Mallory and Cadwell Parks and even in Londan at the Crystal Palace track.
Of the contemporary brands the Norton "Featherbed" frame handled the best, probably followed by the BSA Gold Star frames, especially when equiped with the Eddie Dow suspension. If you raced a standard Triumph you would end up at the back or just as likely in the straw bales. The answer was to put a Triumph engine in a Norton or Beeza frame. In those days I'd put my Dresda Triton up against most other bikes up until the Honda 750F changed everything.
In the 1960s a Triumph car was a much better machine, as long as you avoided the early swing arm Spitfires and GT6 models. But also cost a lot more to buy. These days any compact hatchback commuter vehicle would blow them into the weeds. That's why I have a Buick engine in my Triumph TR7 Spider, with massively updated suspension and brakes.
Oh, and I keep my Benelli 750 SEI for the occasional ride up the coast and a small Honda TLR200 to ride around my property. Now I ride much more defensively.
J.G. ~ You bloody well know what perfect pairing was missed here! Comparing a Triumph TR6 with a... (wait for it...) Triumph TR6! Yes, as many door-slammers here might not realize is that the nomenclature for the single-carb 650cc Triumph motorcycle was indeed 'TR6' (as opposed to the 'T120' Bonneville, differentiated by no more than an additional Amal carburettor (spelled correctly, mind you). And comparing 1969 TR6 (4 wheels) to 1969 TR6 (2 wheels) would have been simply too delicious for me to resist when I was publishing British Car & Bike in the 1980s. The machines were genuine contemporaries and potentially more than one buyer of a new TR6 also had a new TR6 in his garage! Sort out that sentence! LOL
So comparing the 1969 Triumph car with the far-more advanced 2010 Triumph Bonneville SE motorcycle was basically comparing a British sports car to a similarly-named retro-modern motorcycle. Not that I didn't enjoy the insights discussed here (I own a few classic British cars and almost too many British motorcycles) comparing the 2-vs-4-wheeled experience (best line: "...a barrage of tiny wet bullets." Totally nailed that one!) and that in of itself was a great read.
And now, while both you and Tim no doubt mutter, "that Dave D. can be such a PITA," I'll retreat back to my gare-awge and spin some spanners on some right-side-shift anachonism.
In reply to JG Pasterjak :
Are you nuts? ( said with humor ) Minnesota we have 6 months of winter. Snow, Ice, freezing cold weather to 40 below. Insane people won't venture out for those 6 months on a motorcycle. A sports car would be tough enough. But at least they have heaters. Some form of rudimentary way to deal with weather.
I used to travel with pride in getting my MG or whatever sports car I owned through snow most cars wouldn't venture in but I cannot see putting my transportation up for 6 months of the year. I did own a variety of motorcycles. Every summer. And sold them in the fall. But even then in pouring rain they were left at home or quickly parked under the first available bridge or whatever until the rain let up.
Easy solution - in areas with significant winter weather, you don't ride a Triumph, you ride a Husky with knobbies on...
In reply to frenchyd :
In my first Minnesota winter after relocating from the UK I enjoyed cross country skying out my back garage door into the Hennepin county park trails system. But the second year it got too cold too early and we had no snow all winter other than some powder that just blew around. In frustration, on one of those glorious clear sunny Minnesota winter days I warmed some oil and poured it into the Benelli SEI crankcase. It fired right up so donning my riding gear I took off south on country road 18 from Plymouth towards Edina. That day I really discovered what wind chill is! The air temp was around -15F but at the then speed limit of 55 mph the wind chill must have brought that below -50F. I didn't make it to St Louis Park before I turned around and headed for home. So yes, I was nuts that day!
In reply to bkwanab :
Back when I rode more than I was in a car, my lowest ride was 20 deg F. That was riding from middle NC into TN. Wasn’t too bad, with the right gear on. The lowest I ever left the house intentionally just to ride for fun is prolly high 30’s. You sir, have me beat by a lot!
In reply to JG Pasterjak :
Great trip down memory lane for me. I did a mild restoration on a 69 TR6 back in the 80's when i operated foreign car shop. Same British Racing Green. I live in western north Carolina and touring the mountain roads in the TR6 an awesome experience. First vehicle i learned to drive was my Dad's 62 Chrysler 300 and I believe that is one in the background in the junk cars shot. During high school I rode a 65 Honda CB72 250cc motorcycle. Great speeding ticket magnet! Love that motorcycle and survived riding 4 years in south FL without any broken bones Thanks for the memories.
Broadspeed.
After owning a TR3A, TR4 and TR6 over many years I advise new owners of TR6's to be aware of two dangerous things. The first is frame rust where the alloy rear axel supports bolt to the frame with under engineered bolts and secondly, the attachment of the rear hubs into the same alloy support using fine thread bolts into aluminum. Both of these situations are killers and need to be inspected often. British engineering wasn't at it's finest with the TR IRS!
Vintage motorcycles are the solution for the tinkerer who likes variety but only has room for a car or two. You can park a lot of bikes in a single stall garage.
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