Tag: 1960s motorcycling

ExNotes Book Review: MC’s Street Bikes of the ’60s

By Joe Berk

Full disclosure up front:  I’m a longtime contributor to Motorcycle Classics magazine, and I love reading every issue.  Every time I read the latest edition I think they’ve outdone themselves (both with the writing and the photography) and I wonder how they are going to top it in the next edition.  And then they do.  Full color, full page, lots of pages, and high-quality paper.  About the only other magazine that has managed to keep the doors open and continue to do a similar high-quality job is RoadRUNNER.  I’ve written for RoadRUNNER in the past, too, and you might be wondering if maybe I am a little bit biased.  I am not a little biased; I am a lot biased.  I love both these magazines.

Every so often Motorcycle Classics will publish a compendium of stories from past issues on a specific topic.  I’d never purchased any of these until recently, and then I picked up two of them:  Classic Bikes of the ’60s, and Classic Road Trips.  This review is focused on Classic Bikes of the ’60s.  We’ll publish a separate review on Classic Road Trips in the near future.

About now you might be wondering:  Why buy the special editions?  If you have been buying the magazine all along, wouldn’t you have each of the stories in those back issues?  The answer, of course, is yes.  But for just a few bucks, I’ve got all the stories concentrated in one place, and I don’t have to go digging through 6 feet of shelf space and a couple of hundred issues to find a particular story.

Classic Road Bikes of the ’60s is, for me, indeed a special edition.  I came of age in the ’60s, and the stories in this issue are on the bikes I lusted for when I was a teenager.  Every bike is one I dreamed about, and wow, they’ve got some great stories in this edition.  It has feature pieces on these motorcycles:

    • 1967 BSA Spitfire (one of the most beautiful motorcycles ever made, in my opinion…like the one Tommy Smothers rode back in the day)
    • 1966 Honda Dream (I recently wrote about the Dream, too, in this same magazine…Gresh owned three of them).
    • Velocette Thruxton (the stuff of dreams, truly one of the world’s stunning motorcycles)
    • 1969 Ducati 350 (I confess…I never quite got the fascination with Ducati, but hey, there’s no accounting so for some folks’ tastes)
    • 1962 BMW R60/2 (in creamy white with black pinstripes, which is magnificent)
    • 1963 Royal Enfield Interceptor (the grand-daddy of my current bike…a kid I knew in high school had one of these).
    • 1961 Harley Duo Glide (the look that inspired a generation of Harley designs, and one that has never been matched)
    • 1966 Honda CB450 (the black bomber; great technology, atrocious styling)
    • 1967 Triumph Bonneville (absolutely the most beautiful bike in the world, with a sound to match)
    • 1965 Bultaco Metralla (I once had a friend who though a Bultaco was something you eat)
    • 1966 Norton P11 (also commonly referred to as the Norton Scrambler, it was the 750cc Atlas engine in a Matchless 500cc frame)
    • 1969 Kawasaki 500cc Triple (ah, an awesome machine…I rode alongside a guy who had one of these on my first international motorcycle ride back in 1969)
    • 1973 Moto Guzzi V700 (close enough to the ’60s to be included here…I always wanted one…they sound more like a Harley than a Harley does)
    • 1968 Yamaha Big Bear Scrambler (this one is so beautiful it graces the cover of the special edition magazine)
    • 1968 Triumph Trident T150 (too little too late…it couldn’t compete with Honda’s CB750, but it was nice)
    • 1969 Norton Commando (a “Parting Shots” story about a ride on the famed commando)

Classic Road Bikes of the ’60s is a great read and a worthwhile reference.  Like I said above, you’re getting great photos, great writing, and great entertainment.  When you buy your copy, I’m certain you’ll agree.

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Dream Bikes: The Honda Dream

My Dad and I saw our first Honda ever in 1964 at a McDonald’s in East Brunswick, New Jersey.  It was a 150cc Dream, the smaller version of the bigger CA 77 305cc Dream.  I was 12 years old at the time.  In those days, it was a fun family outing to drive the 20 miles to Route 18 in New Jersey and have dinner at McDonald’s (that was the closest one), where hamburgers were 15 cents and the sign out front said they had sold over 4 million of the things. And the Honda we saw that day…Dad and I were both smitten by the baby Dream, with its whitewall tires, bright red paint, and the young clean cut guy riding it.  True to Honda’s tagline, he seemed to be one of the nicest people you could ever meet (although admittedly the bar wasn’t very high for nice people in New Jersey).

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Dad and I started looking into Hondas, and that included a trip to Cooper’s Cycle Ranch near Trenton.   Back then, it really was a ranch, or at least a farm of some sort…the showroom was Sherm Cooper’s old barn.  The little Hondas were cool, but the big ones (the 305s) were even cooler. A 305 was the biggest Honda available in the mid-1960s and Honda imported three 305cc motorcycles to America:  The CA 77 Dream, the CB 77 Super Hawk, and the CL 77 Scrambler.  The Dream was not designed to be an off road motorcycle (that was the CL 77 Scrambler’s domain) or a performance motorcycle (in the Honda world, that was the CB 77 Super Hawk).

Of the 305 twins,  It’s probably appropriate to discuss the CA 77 Dream first.  The Scrambler and the Super Hawk were intended to appeal to motorcycle enthusiasts; the Dream was a much less intimidating ticket in (into the motorcycle world, that is).  The typical Dream buyer was either someone stepping up from a smaller Honda, or someone who had not previously owned a motorcycle.

Honda first used the name “Dream” on its 1949 Model D (a single cylinder, 98cc two-stroke).  No one knows for sure where the Dream moniker came from, but legend has it that someone, upon first seeing the Model D, proclaimed it to look like a dream.  The C-series Dreams first emerged in Japan in 1957.  Pops Yoshimura built Honda engines with modified production parts that ran over 10,000 rpm for 18-hour endurance races, proving the basic design was robust.  Some say Honda based the engine design on an earlier NSU engine, but Honda unquestionably carried the engineering across the finish line.  Whatever.  When’s the last time you saw an NSU?  Another big plus was that Honda used horizontally split cases and that (along with vastly superior quality) essentially eliminated oil leaks.  The other guys (and in those days, that meant Harley and the Britbikes) had vertically split cases and they all leaked.  Honda motorcycles did not, and that was a big deal for a motorcycle in the 1960s.

There were several differences between the Dream and the other two Honda 305cc motorcycles.  The Super Hawk and the Scrambler had tubular steel frames and forks; the Dream used pressed steel for both its frame and fork.  The Dream was a single-carb motorcycle; the Super Hawk and the Scrambler had twin carbs.  The Dream had large steel valanced fenders, the other Hondas had more sporting abbreviated fenders.  The Dream was the only 305 that came from the Honda factory with whitewall tires.  The Dream had leading link front suspension; the Scrambler and the Super Hawk had telescopic forks.   The Dream used the Type II crankshaft (so did the Scrambler) with a 360-degree firing order (both pistons went up and down together, but the cylinders fired alternately).   The higher performance Super Hawk had the Type I, 180-degree crankshaft.  Like the Super Hawk, the Dream had electric starting (the Scrambler was kick start only).  The Dream came with a kickstarter, too, but why bother?  I mean, you weren’t going to be mistaken for Marlon Brando when you rode a Honda Dream.

The Dream’s 305cc engine had a single 23mm Keihin carb and it produced 23 horsepower at 7500 rpm (not that the rpm was of any interest; the Dream had no tachometer).  With its four-speed transmission and according to magazine test results, the Dream was good for between 80 and 100 mph (depending on motojournalist weight, I guess).  The Dream averaged around 50 mpg, although in those blissful days of $0.28/gallon gasoline, nobody really cared.   Honda Dreams came in white, black, red, or blue.  With 20/20 hindsight, I wish I had bought one in each color and parked them in the garage.  My favorites were black or white; those colors just seemed to work with the Dream’s whitewall tires.

Honda built the Dream until 1969.  The Dream retailed for $595 back in those days, but a shrewd negotiator could do better.

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