Past Perfect: The Love for Retro Motorcycles

Modern bikes styled to look like older machines - what's not to like?

For motorcycle manufacturers, retro design is definitely a thing right now. The trend is at least partly driven by Gen-X buyers who have relatively large disposable incomes and who are yearning for bikes that look like the ones they fancied in their youth. Nothing wrong with a bit of rose-tinted nostalgia, when some of these retro-styled machines are actually not bad at all.

Please note, the new, retro-styled bikes only look like machines from the past. Apart from the styling, everything else – engine performance, chassis and suspension, tyres, brakes, electricals and electronics – these bikes are fully modern. And that’s a good thing, because these days, unlike how it used to be 50 years ago, everything just flat out works and works well. Engines are more powerful and reliable than ever before, oil leaks are a thing of the past, tyres really stick to the tarmac with the kind of grip riders could only dream of in the way-back-then, suspension is adjustable and actually works without wallowing all over the place, and brakes make the bike stop, period. Also, electronics like ABS and traction control have taken rider safety to a whole new level, which was unthinkable a few decades ago.

So, if modern bikes are so damn good, what’s with the pining for old(er) motorcycles? As the writer and poet Percy Shelley said two-hundred years ago, ‘We look before and after, and pine for what is not.’ The English poet was no biker-boy but, as it turns out, what he said also goes for motorcycles. Give bikers a bunch of modern, fast and efficient motorcycles and you’d think they’d be happy. But, no, turns out what they really want is motorcycles that resemble the machines they lusted after when they were young, when the hormones were raging and bank balances were meagre. Horsepower costs money and most young motorcyclists simply don’t have large wads of cash to blow on big, busty bikes. But once they hit middle age and have been earning (and hopefully saving!) for many years, it’s time for payback. A dreary succession of years have been spent in office cubicles, the home loan has finally been paid off, the kids are in college and the wife is happy climbing the corporate hierarchy at her workplace. Time, then, to go and get the one that got away? Yes.

Even if it feels like it was just yesterday, the 1970s-80s are long gone and the bikes from back then are now categorised as ‘classics.’ And new bikes these days have scary things like TFT instrument panels that display complex menus and sub-menus of controls. There are things like adjustable suspension (manufacturers expect the average rider to know and understand compression and rebound damping and what these things do!), multi-level traction control and selectable riding modes; you almost need a degree in computer science to navigate the onboard electronics on some of the high-end motorcycles these days. So, it isn’t surprising that there are riders – usually older riders – who simply don’t want this level of complexity and want to go back to simpler times and simpler motorcycles.

Bike manufacturers know an opportunity when they see one. And nostalgic Generation X men pining for lost youth – and the bikes that look like a revival of their own teenage years – is too good an opportunity to miss. Especially since those Gen Xers, unlike a lot of perpetually broke millennials (avocado on toast, anyone?), have money to burn. And hence we now have a host of motorcycles that take their design cues from their 1970s and 1980s predecessors. Of course, these bikes are entirely modern from the mechanical perspective; it’s just that they are designed to look like they’re from an older era. Some of these bikes include the BMW R12 nineT, Kawasaki Z900 RS, Moto Guzzi V7, Triumph Speed Twin, Suzuki Katana and, the one that I love most (but which was discontinued in 2022), the Honda CB1100. There was also the utterly magnificent Kawasaki ZRX1200 but that also went out of production in 2016-17. In India, there is the Jawa 350, Royal Enfield Interceptor and the more recently launched BSA Gold Star, all of which look properly retro and do not offer particularly high levels of performance.

For most people who want one, retro-styled bikes are usually not about all-out performance. Instead, what most riders are looking for is oodles of style, allied with reasonable levels of performance. Fast, but maybe not all that furious. Definitely evocative of the Sony Walkman days. Watching Mel Gibson’s Mad Max on a VCR. Helmets with orange-tinted bubble-visors. Jim Morrison of the 1960s, Mick Jagger of the 1970s and U2 of the 1980s. Brigitte Bardot, Jacqueline Bisset, Michelle Pfeiffer, Sharon Stone, Diane Lane in their heyday. Cigarette-maker sponsorship in MotoGP. Barry Sheene in motorcycle racing, Lord March in F1. In short, everything that was cool back then. Retro-styled motorcycles are the modern-day Eva Amurri to the 1980s Susan Sarandon; all the best bits are still there, some are maybe even better.

Mad Max rides again!