► A legendary bike vs car encounter
► LJK Setright on two wheels and four
► A CAR+ archive story from July 1969
‘You haven’t got one of those have you?’ said the shop girl in a scandalised tone as she looked out through the glass door. ‘A nice Rudge now, a Scott or a Brough – that’s what I call a motorcycle; but that thing is terribly vulgar. Does it handle?’ She thrust her thumbs further down beneath the belt of her already perilously hip-hung jeans, striking an attitude obviously calculated to arrest the attention of her audience. Alas her audience numbered but one. Every other man in the shop had rushed out to the pavement to admire the Rocket 3 which stood at the kerb glittering with all the pride of 60bhp and £615.
Later that day when I had abandoned the rain-washed, greasy London streets in favour of the sunlit slopes of CAR’s private proving ground the same thing happened. No sniffy, hippy girls, but a crowd of admirers around the bike. Ground staff and office types, they all wanted to have a look over the big BSA, occasionally throwing out hints that they wouldn’t mind a ride. There is something special about three cylinders and a reputation for standard-shattering performance, after all. Mr Deputy Twite’s Lotus Elan (kindly loaned for the day by our friends Gold Seal) with four cylinders and a reputation for standard-setting handling, hardly got a second glance. I was conscious enough of it though when we set off in company around the handling circuit. The idea was that I should ride inches behind the camera car and Deputy Twite would bring the Lotus inches behind me – for not better reason than that Mr Photographer Perkins apparently likes these wide-angle short focus lenses with which to perform his spectacular feats of pictorial myopia. This was rather worrying, for the line that I wanted to ride round some of the tighter corners was different from the one that would be natural in a car.
Praise be, the BSA never departed from the line to which it was committed, even when blanked over so far that, as I was told afterwards, the footrests were within an inch of scraping the ground. I certainly didn’t feel that I was cornering fast – but then there is none of the awful stomach-swinging, nerve-straining, conker on a string feeling that you get when cornering fast in a car. I was merely conscious that I was well leaned over, having occasionally to duck my head to avoid roadside foliage when I cranked the big 750 past the apex of a corner, its road-hugging Dunlops tracking a precise line inches from the edge.
Just once Twite got a bit mischievous and went past me on the way into a corner, pressing on with a fine flurry of enthusiasm flying pebbles and enough opposite lock to suggest that he was going quite quickly. I let him get on with it: when you overcook a corner in a car you merely slide and scrub off speed, but when you overcook it on a motorcycle you fall off and any subsequent sliding and scrubbing is done on your ear or your backside. You get a fine sense of responsibility when you are riding a motorcycle and a clear and precise measure of the point at which you become a coward. This is no bad thing, though if you want tot brave you can go ahead in the knowledge that it is only your own neck you are risking, not that of any passenger or passer-by. The morality of motorcycling is unimpeachable. However, likewise the fun is undeniable. Away from the known lurking points of polyphemus Perkins it did not matter if the Lotus and the BSA got a bit separated. As we emerged from the handling circuit on to the back straight I trod the BSA into bottom gear and wound the twist grip until all three carburettors were wide open.
The acceleration was the most incredible that I have ever experienced. After a couple of seconds I hooked the thing into second gear, slid my bottom back along the seat and crouched down, hanging on like grim death to the handlebar grips. Once again that phenomenal push and that weird wailing, high baritone shout as the tachometer needle, inches from my noise, spun to register 8000rpm and it was time to snap into third. No vibration, no bumps, nothing but that gleefully rising engine note and the wind tearing at my clothing to confirm the speedo’s evidence that we were already doing a hundred miles and hour and had better either ease off or get into top gear and hold ever ore tightly. The tachometer needle flickered back to 6600 as the diaphragm clutch bit again but the speedo needle was still moving on steadily round the dial.
Anchor time. Shut the throttles, sit up, squeeze the brakes and let the eight inch front drum bear the brunt of hauling 480lb of motorcycle and another 170 odd of rider down from 110 to 20mph for our turn off the straight. At speed it had been as steady as a rock and steady too as we braked; but as we went on the bumpy tarmac that leads back to the handling circuit the BSA shook its head very slightly. The cure was simple, a half-turn of the steering damper as we pottered along at 1200rpm in top gear waiting for the Lotus to catch up.
The Elan was not really in disgrace. This BSA is one of the fastest production motorcycles in the world. To take it from stand-still to 100mph like that takes a quarter mile and a little more than 14sec. This is the sort of acceleration that will pin down a Miura and leave Elans gasping.
At higher speeds the car driver has the advantage. He is sitting in a wind-shielding cocoon, aware of his speed but not feeling it. Maximum speed of the Rocket 3 is really governed by the strength of one’s grip on the handlebars, as the riding position is not really in tune with the bike’s performance. The footrests were too far forward, the handlebars too high, wide and handsome in the American manner. The sit-up-and-beg riding position they enforce makes the pilot feel like a detachable air brake. For higher speed motor-cycling the riding position should be more akin to a racer’s: feet and seat well back, body leaned well forward, arms reaching almost straight to handlebars the same width as the rider’s shoulders. At low speeds your weight is taken on bars, seat and footrests, and as the speed rises you lean your body against the wind.
Does it sound precarious? Does the idea of speed on two wheels strike you as an outmoded fashion? Is not motorcycling a perilous, impractical, uncomfortable and anti-social activity, whose participants turn an almost blind eye to the relentless march of progress?
Everybody who has never seriously ridden a motorcycle will agree. Those who have been motorcyclists in their time will have known that magical union of the rider not only with his machine but also with the environment through which he rides it. Such men will never condemn motorcycling. They may excuse themselves from practising it on the grounds that they are too old, too fat, that the roads are too crowded or that it would not be in keeping with the dignity of their position; but secretly or publicly they long to be back on two wheels.
Perhaps they are just offering a touch of impractical romanticism as ageing men do. After all, how practical can motorcycling be? The quick answer is that is shouldn’t matter, and that motorcycling is something that you should do because you enjoy it, not because you have to. A motorcycle is a luxury to be enjoyed, not a necessity endured. I would never recommend anyone to rely on two wheels for all personal transport; but for the man who already has a sports car with which to satisfy his quotidiernal needs for business and domestic transport, a motorcycle needs for business and domestic transport, a motorcycle will complement it far better than most things. Except for one thing … remember the shop girl and her reinforced concrete antipathies? She is typical of motorcyclists: most of the enthusiasts are constructed of solid, unreasoned prejudice from the neck up. Because of this you can never trust the judgement of a motorcyclist, and you can never rely even on something as glamorous as this triple-breasted BSA serving as bait for feminine company. Kindly remember too that a motorcycle is a vehicle for one person to ride: carrying a pillion passenger is neither fair, safe, comfortable nor enjoyable.
Now then, assuming that you are content to rely in these matters on your own personal attractions and do not feel the need for some petrol-burning cosmetic; and assuming that along with this maturity you can enjoy the exercise of skill and judgement in staying just this side of the limits of adhesion rather than the boisterous revelry of trying to recover the loss of it – you may still be wondering about the practicality of motorcycling. What is it like in bad weather, for instance?
You must dress the part,. Unless the weather is fine and warm and can be relied upon so to remain you are going to have to dress up like a deep sea diver before you ride from home. Properly clad in a storm-proof, abrasion resistant suit, crash helmet, gloves, boots and goggles you will find yourself surprisingly comfortable when riding in any kind of weather, your body temperature never seeming too high or too low for it is so well insulated. A face mask may be a good idea too: if you have been riding fast the beat of air against your face will have chilled it and made it an immobile, expressionless mask, lips clumsy in speed and reluctant to smile. Remember these things the next time you see an apparently moronic looking motorcyclist.
For all the impregnability of proper riding togs, two wheelers can still be something of a trial in bad weather. The car driver may rely on the grip of his four tyres on the road for steering and traction and braking, but the motorcyclist relies on the grip of his two tyres even to keep his machine upright and balanced. As a motorcyclist therefore you will acquire a hypersensitive appreciation of road surfaces and when they re wet you may be uncomfortably aware of the theoretical ease of coming a purler. Take heart from the fact that good motorcycling tyres are compounded for the utmost wet grip without concessions to any other conflicting demands. By good tyres I mean Avon and Dunlop, who rank supreme.
The other uncomfortable thing about motorcycling, especially in wet weather, is that in crowded urban streets car drivers are too selfish or inexperienced to give the bicycle rider, be he leg powered or petrol engined, the amount of lee-way he would like. There are compensations, though, in the mobility and agility of the two-wheeler in heavy traffic that allows you to make appointments with the certainty of being able to keep them.
And it isn’t terribly dangerous. In fact the motorcycle, provided it be sufficiently powerful and of reasonably good specification, can be a remarkable preserver of life and limb. In the first place its brakes are often excellent. Better still there is the terrific low speed acceleration under which the motorcycle demonstrates the advantages of a high power-to-weight ratio. The seasoned car driver will employ acceleration as the preferred means of extracting himself from a potential accident situation but this is something that the motorcyclist is better equipped to do. Up to 50 or 60mp a good motorcycle will burn off any ordinary production car, and the sporting ones will leave even Elans behind from an initial get up and go. Only if you want to keep it up into the three-figure range do you have to get one of the Magnum varieties like the BSA Rocket 3 or a Norton Commando. And if avoidance calls for a swerve as well as for acceleration the motorcycle can be swerved with remarkable speed. Dunlop established during some tyre tests that a racing motorcycle can sustain 1.3g lateral acceleration: virtually as good as top flight Formula 1 Grand Prix car. All right, it was a racer – but there is far less difference in cornering power and control response between the racing motorcycle and the street variety than there is between their four-wheeled equivalents.
Nevertheless there may come a time when you will fall off, even a time when you will think it advisable to do so. To stay with the machine when a crash is inevitable is to invite injury; better to leave it to plough its own furrow and dissociate yourself from it. Even at 60 or more mph you may get away with nothing more than an abraded backside and a few bruises. This is why it pays to wear protective clothing when riding even in fine weather. The vulnerability of the man on two wheels is best minimised by ‘stepping off’, as motorcyclists call it, when good tough suiting and a smooth-surfaced ‘bone dome’ are as a life insurance as the car occupants’ harness. I have fallen off four or five times at speeds up to 40mph (a speed which can be fatal in a car smash) and the worst that I suffered was a bloody forehead.
Of course motorcycling is not entirely safe. It becomes less safe not more so if you seek satisfaction astride some footling, low powered economy bike. The motorcycle designed as a cheap substitute for shoe leather is the wrong king, offering all the disadvantages with none of the delights. Get yourself instead a proper mount that looks like a motorcycle and goes like one – better still something that looks and goes like a racing motorcycle – and you will enjoy life as no other land traveller can even hope to do.
There a few cars that offer something of a good motorcycle’s delicacy of control. The Lotus that played harrier to my haring BSA is perhaps the best of them, but for all the breathcatching sublimity of its steering it still demands a certain amount of rather undignified exertion. Until you have driven a good motorcycle you simply have no notion of how sweet controls can be. There is no slop, no sponginess, no inaccuracy in motorcycle steering: you may move the handlebars consciously at very low speeds but once you are decently on the move it is seemingly a matter of wishing the machine around a corner on a chosen line. Laying the motorcycle over, banking it so that it is balanced against the centrifugal force it requires scarcely any effort, unlike the heave of the steering wheel necessary to set up a car for a corner.
It’s the same with gear changes. There is not a car anywhere with a gear change as good as you can get in almost any motorcycle. The change on a two-wheeler is light, positive and silent, yet there is no synchromesh, no awkward gate, just a little pedal that you tread down or hook up with your toe an inch or two to engage the next higher or lower gear. And the ratios are beautifully close, those of a touring bike being comparable with those of a racing car, for the modest weight and sweet finger-light clutch of most motorcycles make a high bottom gear perfectly feasible. The Rocket 3 has frankly to be excepted from this generalisation for it is a real heavyweight, but it makes up for it in sheer blasting power so its gear ratios are still close. It also has a marked advantage over the majority of vertical twins and all big single cylinder jobs in that its engine is virtually vibrationless. It is also incidentally very easy to start, requiring none of the convulsive exertion that is sometimes necessary to kick lesser engines into life. Yet it is not by any means the only manageable tarmac spurner in the business, nor the cheapest. You may want something less big and flashing, less Americanised if you like – though you should be warned against going to the opposite extreme and getting a trials or scramble bike, for these things are meant for off highway horseplay and have nothing to do with engineering or elegance or practicality or safety or even motorcycling.
Because its devotees will never agree about their gods, motorcycling cannot become a religion; but it is a philosophy and properly pursued it is a discipline. Better still it is one of those rare activities which do the participants good while doing nobody else any harm. Try it: take your pick of the best in road burners, make sure it has the grippiest tyres, the smoothest brakes and the narrowest handlebars it will take, dress yourself properly and then go out and get to know yourself all over again.