When it came to changing the image of the motorcycle, the C77 Dream (opposite) and CB77 Superhawk (right) helped make it OK to ride a motorcycle, while the CB450 Black Bomber (below) cemented the motorcycle’s new image.
idea of the future is 1979. And the shock absorbers are — dig it — squares, square.
But it was a great touring bike. It could get you to spring break in Fort Lauderdale without needing repair, violating small-town noise ordinances or leaking oil on the floor of the tiki bar you rode it into to impress chicks. All this being un- heard of in an early ’60s motorcycle. Plus, it had an electric starter so you could let one of your bikini-clad admirers fire it up and run it into a palm tree.
Even better was the décor-free Honda Superhawk CB77, also an OHC 305cc four-stroke, but with a 180-degree crankshaft, dual carbs, 9.5:1 compression ratio, 9,200 rpm redline and an engine that (due to its four main bearings instead of two) did not, as was customary at the time, seize up like Congress during a civil rights filibuster.
By the time you got on a Super- hawk, you were riding a motorcycle that looked like a motorcycle — one of the prettiest of the era. But mom and dad weren’t quite so tickled with your conveyance. You could meet some other kind of people on a Superhawk.
And you did. My friends and I were mostly riding Suzuki and Yamaha 250s. Their two-cycle engines were cheaper and simpler, and a lot of speed could be gotten out of a small two-stroke if the tach needle was kept in exactly the right part of the power curve, which we almost knew how to do.
The Yamaha YDS3 handled beauti- fully, thanks to Yamaha’s racing division. And it stayed in tune, thanks, perhaps, to another division of Yamaha, which made pianos.
The Suzuki X6 Hustler was the first production bike with six gears, had nearly 30 horsepower and weighed only 297 pounds. Frankly, I found mine a little twitchy at 100 mph. At any serious speed you didn’t want to hit any pavement irregularities such as the lane divider paint.
But good as the light Japanese machines were, louder and dumber is always better when you’re 20. Would-be crazy weirdo bikers were back, and they were us. We yearned for the big Brit bikes.
A 650 Triumph Bonneville would turn the skinniest dweeb of a Chem major into Brando. The 750 Norton Commando had such aggressive looks that it appeared as if it could do you serious harm just standing still. And, with beer and faulty kickstand placement, it did so to a friend of mine. We were even willing to accept the fact that the British bikes didn’t work.
I believe there’s a college buddy of mine, class of 1969, who’s still behind the DEKE house trying to kick-start his BSA Gold Star.
Japanese manufacturers smelled what was cooking. The 1965 Honda CB450 Black Bomber left chopper riders tangled in their ape-hangers on the first curve and would have whipped almost all the British bikes, if any of them had been running. The Honda’s DOHC four-stroke twin with a 10,000 rpm redline made for a top speed of… you didn’t want to find out. The CB450 was a modern motorcycle in many respects, but it still had a pair of dirty-sneaker drum brakes.
The 1968 Kawasaki H1 Mach III became the fastest street bike
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