Down Memory Lane: Jawa 350 vs Yamaha RD350

The Jawa 350 and the Yamaha RD350, both of which were sold in India in the 1980s

For as long as I can remember, my life has pretty much revolved around motorcycles. Through school and college, instead of paying attention to my studies and trying to make something of my life, all I ever did was ride motorcycles, read about motorcycles, and watch 500cc motorcycle GP racing on TV. Years later, when it was time to go out and get a job, I’m thankful I was able to get one where part of my work entailed riding motorcycles and writing about them.

In 2005-2006, when I was in Pune, working with BIKE India magazine as executive editor, I wanted to do a story on the Jawa 350 and the Yamaha RD350, two bikes that came to India in the 1980s, did not do very well and were ultimately axed from their respective manufacturers’ line-ups. Though the bikes did not do well then, there are revered among enthusiasts now and the RD350, especially, is practically worshipped by fans of two-stroke engines.

For that story that I wanted to do – not a 1:1 comparison test but a feature where I wanted to ride both bikes back-to-back and write about the experience – I got in touch with one Mandar Phadke, who owned not just one but both of these bikes, which is unusual to say the least. The very polite, softly-spoken and unassuming Mandar Phadke was, at that time, the vice-president of the Pune-based Yezdi and Jawa Owners Club and had more than 30 motorcycles in his garage, each of those bikes maintained with religious fervour and ridden regularly. A large chunk of his motorcycle collection included Jawa, Yezdi and CZ machines, but there were also Triumphs, Nortons, and a rare Russian-made Jawa-derived HMH 500. How on earth does one source parts, service, and maintain 30 bikes, and find the time to ride each bike regularly? When I asked him, Mandar just smiled and shrugged in his unassuming manner.

From his collection, the two bikes I wanted to ride were his immaculate 1984 Jawa 350, a direct import from the former Czechoslovakia (Mandar had bought this bike before Yezdi started producing the bike in India) and his equally pristine 1984 Rajdoot Yamaha RD350. With a lot of hesitation, I asked Mandar if he would agree to let me ride these two bikes, and he agreed right away. In fact, not only did he agree to let me ride his bikes, he even came along for the photoshoot with the BIKE India team. It was early in the morning on a weekend and after a while it rained quite heavily, but Mandar stood his ground and even offered to help us clean the bikes up for the photoshoot. What an amazing guy!

So, here are some excerpts from what I wrote about the two bikes after riding them extensively.

Jawa 350: Eastern-bloc Wonder

While Mandar’s Jawa 350 was a private import from Czechoslovakia, a very similar bike – the Yezdi 350 – was also made and sold here in India for a very limited period of time, by Ideal Jawa (India) Ltd. Powered by an air-cooled, two-stroke, 343.5cc parallel twin, which made 21 horsepower, the Yezdi 350 was a relaxed, long-legged cruiser – a basic, honest, no-frills machine that was suitable for long-distance touring. Ideal Jawa (India) Ltd., which started operations in 1961, did very well up until the mid-1980s, but then the Indo-Japanese 100cc bikes arrived in India and Jawa/Yezdi machines gradually fell out of favour. The company shut shop in 1995 and today, details on the Yezdi 350 are hard to find. The bike was launched in India in 1987-88, which was perhaps not the right time for it since everyone wanted one of those Indo-Jap 100s in those days. That said, the bike offered excellent value. In 1988, the Yezdi 350 was selling for Rs 20,500 (ex-showroom) as compared with Rs 18,090 for a Yamaha RX100. The Yezdi had a two-cylinder engine that was three times bigger and twice as powerful as the Yamaha. Incredible!

Coming back to Mandar’s Jawa 350, it had the same 350cc parallel-twin later used in the India-spec Yezdi 350. But in the Jawa, it made a marginally higher 23bhp. Both bikes used a single Jikov carburetor, and a maintenance-intensive CB points ignition system. As I got on to the svelte, slender Jawa, it felt… quaint, by modern standards. In a nice way. The bike felt no heavier than, say, a Pulsar and the fuel tank was as slim (or maybe slimmer) than what you get on some 150cc machines these days. Riding on 18-inch wire-spoked wheels, the Jawa 350 weighed a very reasonable 149 kilos and felt quite light. You start the bike with a kick lever that’s positioned on the left, and which also doubles as the gearshift lever. Mandar’s Jawa had, at the time when I rode it, done only 1,100km from new and was in excellent mechanical condition. It started on the first stroke of the kickstarter and emitted a very distinctive exhaust note – ringing, snarling, nostalgia-inducing two-stroke music.

The years seemed to have done little harm to the mechanicals – the clutch felt light, and the four-speed gearbox felt reasonably smooth, though lever travel was much more than what you get with modern bikes. The bike pulled away with no fuss whatsoever, and quickly got up to an indicated 80km/h. The Jawa was fitted with relatively narrow (3.25x18 front, 3.50x18 rear) tyres, made in Czechoslovakia by some company called Barum, and these tyres were all of 22 years old at the time when I rode the bike, so of course I had to be extra-careful and could not even think about pushing the bike. But at a mild canter, the old Jawa felt like it would just go on forever. The suspension – telescopic front forks with 150mm of travel, and rear shock-absorbers with 80mm of travel – felt softly sprung. And with small brake drums (both front and rear) handling the stopping duties, you need to make up your mind well in advance about if, how and when you need to stop. Some magazine road tests of the 1980s say that the Jawa 350’s top speed was around 125km/h, which may well be correct, though I made no attempt to find out. Mandar said he had no trouble cruising at 115km/h on this Jawa, but I was happy to sit at 80km/h and just enjoy the waves of nostalgia that it brought about for the 1980s.

At the end of my 45-minute ride on the bike, I felt the Jawa 350 isn’t really about power and performance, handling or cornering prowess etc. In its time, this would have been a relatively simple machine, ideal for low- to medium-speed cruising and long-distance touring at moderate speeds. The Yezdi 350 that was launched in India closely mirrored the original, Czech-spec Jawa 350 – the engine was the same, though bodywork and graphics were different. The Indian version also sported a half chainguard, rather than the fully enclosed chain on Czech Jawa. Minor differences apart, the riding experience could not have been very different.

Yamaha RD350: Rice Rocket

What performance bike enthusiast in India hasn’t either owned a Yamaha RD350 or lusted after one? The late, great RD350 was launched in India in 1983 and production lasted until 1989 – only a few short years, but what a time that was! The bike existed in an era when disco was cool, loud clothes were hip, hairstyles were terrible, and riding loud, fast, smoke-spewing bikes was the manly thing to do. Yamaha had actually launched the RD350 in other parts of the world back in 1973 and the bike, in its original guise, was powered by a 347cc two-stroke parallel-twin that produced 39 horsepower. By the time it made its way to India in 1983, the original air-cooled RD350 was already outdated in most parts of the world and to add insult to injury, it was detuned to just 30bhp for India (which went further down to 28bhp from 1985 onwards), either in the interests of improving fuel economy or maybe due to the poorer quality of petrol available in India – I don’t know. But despite that, the RD could have just as well come from outer space as far as the Indian market was concerned, which, in 1983, was still stuck somewhere back in the 1950s/60s.

Despite not being the latest, greatest thing in the world, when it came to India the Yamaha RD350, with its 160km/h top speed, was by far the quickest, fastest thing on two wheels on Indian roads. Back then, no other motorcycle – including the likes of the Yezdi 350, Enfield Fury 175 or the Yamaha RX100 – could keep up with it. Mandar’s 1984 RD350 was a ‘high torque’ model – meaning that it made a full 30bhp, as opposed to 28bhp which later Indian models made. Mandar, a fanatic when it comes to restoring bikes to their original condition, had kept his RD in mint condition, with original rear-view mirrors, chromed sari-guard, huge crash guard at the front, original Rajdoot badges and MRF tyres.

I used to ride a friend’s RD350 occasionally when I was in college, in Lucknow, and getting reacquainted with a properly-maintained RD was a joy. Booting the kick-starter made the bike come alive immediately and the familiar ring-ding-ding exhaust note brought back memories of my misspent youth – memories of drinking, brawling and riding motorcycles much too fast. But while I had definitely calmed down over the years, Mandar’s RD sounded angry as ever. ‘What’ve you got?!’ it seemed to say to me, scorning me, goading me to ride the way it was meant to be ridden – hard. Accelerate as hard as you dare. Redline it through each of its six gears. Shifts must be well timed and lightning quick. Its chrome-plated crash guard, sari-guard and Rajdoot badges notwithstanding (I would have chucked the lot had it been my bike), Mandar’s RD350 was, when I rode it, still the delinquent wild child it must have been back in the 1980s. It hadn’t changed. It still demanded all my attention. And rewarded me with its glorious, sustained bursts of manic speed and acceleration, accompanied by that rasping, screaming, sawing, pedestrian-scaring soundtrack. Practicality be damned – the RD was for smoking all comers, for showing who was boss. And like an ageing rock star who refuses to give up his debauched lifestyle, Mandar’s RD350 insisted on doing things the way they were done in the ’80s, and I loved it for that.

While riding the RD again, after a break of many years, was a great experience, I have to note that mechanically, things have moved on and some things about the RD just did not feel right anymore. The drum brakes were decidedly feeble, having none of the ‘bite’ and power of modern disc brakes. The suspension felt underdamped, though it might have been due to the fact that the bike was more than 20 years old when I rode it. The riding position felt tall and precarious. And the bike’s stiff, old and narrow tyres (3.00x18 front, 3.50x18 rear), with their old-style tread pattern, inspired little confidence. Modern running gear has taken new motorcycles’ cornering and braking abilities to another level, but I still loved riding the old RD anyway. There’s also another thing. Maybe the bike still was the wild child it used to be earlier, and maybe it was just me who had become older, slower, less willing to risk life and limb. In any case, for me, the Yamaha RD350 remains simply incomparable – its place cannot be taken by anything else in my heart, and in the hearts of countless other motorcycle enthusiasts in India and elsewhere in the world.

Today, the Jawa and Yezdi brands have been resurrected by the Mahindra Group and they are now producing a range of retro-styled motorcycles that aim to revive some of the Jawa/Yezdi magic from the 1970s-80s. Of course, the new bikes have a four-stroke engine, since emissions norms killed the two-stroke back in the 1990s. The new Jawa / Yezdi bikes look okay and might even produce competent performance, but I seriously doubt if they can ever replicate the magic of the old, two-stroke Jawa 350. Regarding Yamaha, the company doesn’t seem to be doing much in India these days. They do have the racy little R3 in their India line-up, but it’s too expensive for what it is. After they stopped producing the RX100, Yamaha seems to have lost its way in India, even as other brands like KTM, Triumph and even Royal Enfield have surged ahead and are now running at the front with their brilliant range of bikes. Can Yamaha and Yezdi/Jawa ever regain their former glory in the Indian market? I honestly don’t know.