Damage Limitation

In the region of thirty years ago, on the Jota, following an FZ750 to Thruxton, I hit 140. That is, according to him: my clocks were just a blur, like everything else around the top end on a 180 Triple, dimensionally like 1½ Triumph Bonneville 650s with Dellortos and double overhead cams. He’d tried to lose me and been surprised he hadn’t. At full throttle for a couple of miles I must have been at about top speed.

Otherwise I didn’t take her much above 125. That was where the clocks became a blur and holding on uncomfortable enough that ‘to do it’ was the only reason to do it, and after about the third time you concede that ‘you’d done it’. Also there was a speed weave shutting down at 125.

That was, of course, an unfaired Jota. And the point is: I really do see the need for fairings.

But apart from brief ownership of a Kwacker GTR, followed by use of company Beemers as a courier, all of which were boring (and the GTR also more uncomfortable than a 999), everything I ever owned or rode was unfaired (I don’t say ‘naked’, a marketing buzzword if ever there was one; and all power to those who sit around unselfconsciously with their distinctly average bits out, but that was never the image I was hoping to project on the sexy bikes I chose to be seen thundering away on!)

Anyway, so however it truly is; whether what you first encounter is the benchmark for everything else thereafter (like you suckled at the teat of a buxom, raven-haired beauty, so spent your life in ornithology seeking old crows and oversized tits), or whether there is inherent grace in its poise, or whatever: I think a motorcycle headlamp looks ‘right’ when it’s a, sort of, half-shell, on brackets of minimal practical proportions, preferably chrome, or at least with a chrome rim. Unfaired (the nacelle on Edward Turner’s T120 had a certain elegance, but still detracted from rather than enhanced the lines of the Triumph Twin).

Until recently, fairings looked like variations of barn doors, and until very recently, faired headlights like they’d been scavenged from a car. Gradually a modicum of elegance crept in, but the front end of a faired bike still had at least a vague appearance of either half the front of a car, or the whole of the front of a car squashed together to motorcycle width. Which is why I think Pierre Terblanche’s design for the 999 was the best solution to how the front of a faired motorcycle should look, to that date (I do think that current designs of two lights side-by-side but angled back – like the eyes of a cat-like predator – are better still - though the fairings generally show too little, if any, engine. With a Ducati one might imagine all the better to hide the flaking engine paint).

The point, as I see it, is that the solution to the unnatural marriage of motorcycle and fairing, progressed at initially glacial speed from the dire days of the Dustbin, is in ‘Style’. Without deliberate stylish flourish, the front end of a faired motorcycle always looks a dog’s dinner; just an unhappy compromise. Style is where it's at.

This revelation comes as a shock to me. As did initially realizing that I liked the front of the 999.

I don’t know what it said about me that the first bike I built from the ground up (probably hard to do it from the sky down) – the 250 AJS on which I passed my test – I put a modest-size chrome headlamp on it, and bought a pair of chrome wire brackets for a BSA scrambler to mount it with. I suppose I was interested in style even then, but didn’t know it (or more likely wouldn’t admit it even to myself: thus does life become a journey of discovering and undoing our prejudices and preconceptions, like private detectives, until the exposition when we learn who we really are, and then we die).

Well anyway I still didn’t think Terblanche was, let us say, a visionary. If he’d got it right once, that’s still only half what a stopped clock achieves. But that's not really the point of this post – this article? The point of this post is that, having made it - having put it out for the world to see - to make it a point of honour not to back out of buying a 900SS ie.

When I saw it head on, I recoiled. I winced internally. Then, within about half a day, it grew on me; and not like a tumour.

Style. The knee-jerk reaction is just that: an all-but-unconscious rejection of the self-conscious, of the shame of being seen to even consider accepting what the majority reject.

I have come to think that, along with the 999 front end, Terblanche’s design for the 900 Supersport injected is one of the best faired motorcycle headlight solutions to that point I’ve seen.

I don’t particularly care for the flashers or the mirrors – also, of course, items that back in the day, if fitted, I removed. nb. Both the Jota and T140 were supposed to have flashers, which I removed and they never failed an MOT. I know that won't work now, but I am thinking of replacements (and carbon cans).

So, now, with Terblanche, to my knowledge, having at least equalled the success-rate of the proverbial clock, I feel I’ve begun to understand him. And I’ve just about talked myself into buying



Oh yes, forgot to mention the colour!

 

That sums it up for me, Symon. Apart from the faint praise for the colour of sunshine. I think what you do is switch from looking through conservative eyes, to through the eyes of an art critic. And it's better than Tracy Emin's unmade bed imho. Fewer pubes too, probably!

 

There's a definite lack in the available emojis here. I want one that looks like an arse!

 

I'll have to go through that post later. The litre versions are quite rare, are they? I'm already thinking more cubes=better - but recite the mantra, again, about 140 being pretty bloody fast actually, and 80 horses more than adequate for fun on the road. With another 10 honorary ones thanks to the colour.

 

:arse:

 

Yes, I admit my post was long-winded, but at least the deposit I've followed through with was of the monetary variety!