JOHN ROOTH | What’s in a name?

My little brother Nicko has always had an eclectic attitude to his bikes. He’s the ultimate individual, not giving a stuff about names or brands, just going for whatever maximises his fun for minimum dollars.

Hence the mighty MZ 250 two-stroke that clocked over 200,000km of mostly city commuting before dropping all its bundles and refusing to start ever again. Then there’s the Guzzi Laredo, the 750 carburetted version of a Spaghetti Western – at least it was until he stripped it, bobbed it and painted it matt black. It’s sitting in the shed now; just needs new everything and a massive clean up. Flogged from a decade’s worth of 140km days commuting in city traffic. Nicko owns a car… he’s just not sure where he parked it.

With the Laredo running a solo saddle, he had to get something for the two-up distance work with his wife Cath. So he looked around before settling on a VTX1300 Honda. This is one of the weirdos – as usual – of motorcycling production. The VTX is a liquid-cooled V-twin that rocked the world back in 2001 when it came out as a 1795cc, the biggest big twin available. With cruiser styling based on an old Buick and enhanced with plastic chrome, Honda sold over 30,000 units in the first year alone.

In 2003 Honda bought out the 1300cc version. Nicko found one that had done a mere 24,000km in 15 years – not unusual in the looks-fired brigade – with full luggage and accessories for a piddling $5500. Apart from being louder than jack hammers dancing a tango, it’s proven to be the smoothest, most reliable, comfortable motorcycle he’s owned.

We ran it against my 1998 Harley-Davidson Road King for a comparison once. Both are big twins, both run single carburettors, both are long and low – although the Honda’s longer – and apart from the Harley’s twin discs stopping a bit quicker, they were much of a muchness. A lot of muchness, times two. The Honda comes with shaft drive, though – about a billion times better than the Harley’s toothed belt – and handles its vibration with internal balance shafts while the Harley’s engine and transmission unit is suspended in rubber mounts.

I know those mounts intimately, having dropped one on a ride through Lismore after the last floods. One big pothole and bang, the engine’s being held in by the exhaust system and precious little else. Cost me a week of wrestling oily bits and a few hundred bucks of rubber. Nicko was going to wash the Honda but had a beer instead.

Yet my Harley’s worth twice as much because it’s got the name. Pity that didn’t come with engineering. The VTX has 72,000km on it already and hasn’t missed a beat. The Road King goes wrong every second trip. The real piss-off is that these VTX Hondas, like the early Gold Wings, were built in America by Americans at Honda’s Marysville Ohio factory. Yep, for about 30 years Honda manufactured their big bikes in the same country they made most of their sales. Someone’s got to ask how come these bikes featured the sort of tech Harley still hasn’t managed?

Which brings us to that weird thing called branding.

There’s a bunch of you out there who won’t touch anything unless it has the magic Ducati name. Yes, you lot, in the green and red leathers, trying hard to avoid the laughter from the Guzzi crowd. Then there’s the Harley ranks split between chain wrestling bearded monsters with right legs thicker than tree stumps and salesmen in short pants, branded pink runners and full-face lids. Don’t you laugh, you BM Variables; there might be more GS models on the road than any other single bike but the cool kids are all going air head or else.

There’s a gang for almost everyone based on what you ride, or own, or merely want an attachment to. Look at Norton. In nine years they made less than 60,000 Commandos of various specs before the budgie fell off the perch in 1977, yet you see about half as many people every day wearing a Norton T-shirt.

What’s this all mean? Where’s it going? Yep, pretty much the questions most people who read my columns start asking early on. Well, it means motorcycling is still the coolest thing around, doesn’t it? We know it, we’re doing it, and nothing – nothing – will ever replace riding a bike as the only way to show you’ve truly arrived. Whatever the hell that bike under you is!