04-05-17, 07:20 PM
It seems in the biking world, that anything old, automatically gets classic status. Some of the Jap stuff from the 70's and early 80's was shockingly bad even when new but all that 0seems to have been forgotten about now. The old xs250s and 400s wouldn't pull the skin off the proverbial rice pudding and the equivalents from the other 3 were no better and they weren't even particularly reliable. A few years ago, when you could buy a decent 750 UJM for 800 quid they were worth having cos they were decent bikes for naff all money compared to the newer stuff but now that you can buy newer and far better bikes for less money (eg. 600 Fazer?) I don't see a lot to recommend them apart from nostalgia. Parts are increasing scarce and expensive, brakes and handling are way behind and they're more likely to strand you at the roadside. Some old Jap bikes deserve Classic status cos they moved motorcycling on and were hailed as brilliant in their day but they were all churned off the production lines by the 10s of thousands. So is a cbx1000 for example worth the £10,000+ price tag some people are asking?