Baffle2 said:
Agema said:
For the same reason people frequently buy an Audi or Mercedes when a much cheaper Ford or Renault would do. It's about the image and the bragging rights.
Well... and those cars are nicer. I mean, I drive quite an old car, and cars don't do much for me, but if I was on the road a lot I'd want a car that was comfortable and nice to drive. And Audis have a generally good rep for reliability, which Renaults do not. Saying that, I loved my Ford Mondeo - heated front windscreen!
I got a lift in a Merc once. The centre console was like that of a spaceship, if spaceships were a thing (proper ones, from the future).
Ehhh ... I hate cars in general. They feel sterile. Motorbikes on the otherhand.... and the nice thing about motorbikes is that all motorbikes have their character that you can appreciate regardless of price point.
Like I still think the best all-rounder bike is the reasonably priced Moto Guzzi V7 Stone.
It takes everything great about motorcycling, refines it slightly, and just gives you that.
Clean, naked design. Tweaked centre of gravity, comfortable riding position, tweaked wheel circumference of the new V7s from the old V7 Stones of the pre-millenia which give it a slightly smaller turning cycle, but at improved handling on wet conditions. Brand new only set you back $10K US, but good secondhand from the 2011/12 models you can probably pick one about 5/6K.
Plus it's shaft drive, which everyone can (should) appreciate.
And it's ruggedly gorgeous. All of that instrumentation crap in cars ... see on a motorcycle you can appreciate a machine with clean instrumentation, ala above.
It's about elegance, not total, fabricated sophistication.
Nothing should remove you from becoming one with the machine. Where every shift of bodyweight, every tightening muscle, alters performance and creates poetry in motion. It's not about the numbers of buttons you can press and all of that feature rich garbage that will simply remove you from the experience of riding.
Don't you just want to pet it? See, that's a work of art in my opinion. Then again there's so much more to appreciate in the performance of a motorcycle. You're not just sitting in a box with wheels. Everything has to be just so ... just the art of creating a working machine that can handle counter-steering fluidly and create a decent centre of gravity while riding can make or break its handling.
Simply put, with a motorcycle loading it up with extras and fairing it doesn't need (and make it more expensive) may actually make something that is blissful to ride into a hack. There's a reason why to the untrained eyeit looks kind of ugly, but to a true artist of the craft they know beauty has layers.
It's why motorcyclists can look at something ruggedly industrial and naked like a V7 Stone and just appreciate it, fall in love with it ... and think it's gorgeous ... where as car drivers cannot get the appeal.
And once again, all at a pretty reasonable price point. That being said a younger (more ignorant) me would have been drawn to more high performance sports bikes. But as I was saying, every motorbike has its character you can appreciate... even if it's quirky and disagrees with you.
And if you just flat out want something that is bulletproof and will just
never die... you can't go wrong with your basement, bargain Diversion XJ series. The 600s in particular. Like, those are utterly uncompromising in their persistence. Bit slow but light, they're tough old birds that will always start unless the battery is dead or the fuel tank empty.
Seriously, I rode one through a sandstorm and one time a flood ... air filter was utterly fucked, you hand drain the carbie with a simple screwdriver, and you can re-tune them with a
rock ... and it still started, no problems.
And that's beautiful, too. You can appreciate it. I miss my old XJ ...
Never once got that feeling with a car. Particularly new cars. I can fixthem assuming not too complicated, but I can't appreciate them. Even supposedly all the 'hotness' of new models of high-range cars. You pop open the bonnet and you feel like you're looking at a machine where people could cut corners in utility and design, and have chosen to do so.
Nothing is as precise, nor has the same built in margins for error, northe same degree of human ergonomics and physics combined that a motorcycle has to have.
A lawyer friend of mine flashed out on a Benz coupe and threw about about 65K+ at it ... within 9 months she's getting that computer chip coded engine warning message. I wanted to have a look at it, and she indulged my interest, but I couldn't see any problems ... I'm stumped.
Well apparently that's just
normal.
And it's all these little niggling things in cars where nothing is as good as it should be, no matter the price tag. People keep telling me that partly automated factories and computer monitored machines will make them better, but frankly I think it's garbage. The perfect machine is one that marries precision to the imprecise. Brings order to chaos ... you can't code around imprecision.
Motorcycles need to be made with wider margins of error in mind. To be safe on a motorcycleyou sometimes need to act counter-intuitively. Sometimes you need to actually turn left to
be able to make a swift right turn to avoid a hazard... and that is as much art and organic realization and muscle memory as it is a mere explanation of physics.
You'll never have a driverless motorcycle outperform a human when taking thechaos of the universe into question. And that idea never escapes me when Ilook at these trendy, new, ultra expensive cars that everybody tells me are the future.
So I personally don't get people's fascination with expensive, new cars. Or indeed expensive bikes. There's beauty with a $1000 winter-hack XJ ... and you'll see it, too, when you actually get to know them. That relatively cheap V7 Stone is a good example of that, as well.
