John Wheeler reflects on 50 years of riding and the image merchants now dominating his beloved industry
It seems like yesterday, so sharp and clear are the memories of the first time I rode a motorcycle. That was 50 years ago. The bike, a humble 123cc James two-stroke with a 3-speed gearbox, drum brakes and plunger rear suspension. Second hand it cost me £60.
That humble machine opened up undreamed of horizons and transformed the ordinary business of travel. It brought the exhilaration and freedom which motorcycling has meant for me ever since.
Now that I have reached that age where I must have done all the stupid things it is possible to do on a motorcycle and survived, it's time to look back and consider how much motorcycles and motorcycling have changed in that half century.
Yes, bikes have changed a lot. But many things we think of as fairly recent developments are not so much new, as re-discovered. The 1901 Imperial had a disk brake and the 1914 Henderson had electric start.
Virtually all the machines you would have found in your neighbourhood bikeshop in the early 1950s were strictly road-going bikes. We'd now call them "naked" bikes.
There was no bodywork, except on the very rare example of the Vincent Black Prince. You could always see the engine.
These bikes didn't look, nor did they try to look as if their natural home was the race-track. If you wanted a trial bike, the odds were it would have been a home-made adaptation. You couldn't buy a machine that looked as if it belonged in a Grand Prix.
Since then the marketing men have come to realise that, if you can make it look like something you see on Eurosport, if you can claim power outputs and top speeds way beyond anything usable in real life, you will sell more bikes.
In the early 1950s few people had cars - and the few there were belonged most likely to doctors, solicitors, bank managers, accountants and priests. Somewhere between the two groups the motorcycle fitted in. It was everyday transport and, with a sidecar, became a family transport.
Motorcycle trials and club racing were popular but, most often, the bike you used for a weekend Clubmans race meeting was the one you rode to work on during the week. Anyone turning up to a Clubmans race meeting with his bike on a trailer would have been seen as unsporting.
Now, although for many the motorcycle remains a highly efficient means of transport, the answer to many a commuters needs, motorcycles in general have become more "recreational"vehicles. Perhaps half or more of today's machines are for weekend use and some only on dry days.
Reliability has improved beyond all measure. Fifty years ago if you didn't have to have recourse to the tool kit every 500 miles you were lucky. We now have machines so complex that maintenance is beyond most owners.
Despite many technical advances, relative to earnings, bikes are no more expensive. The 1956 BSA B 31, a 350cc ohv single-cylinder which had a top speed of 73 mph and gave 90 mpg at 50 mph, cost £200 17s 8d - or about €300 in new money. In that year a 17-year-old bank clerk would have earned £225 (about €340) a year. Thus a "middleweight" machine cost the better part of a year's salary. Today's equivalent costs around six months earnings.
By the same measure, petrol, which we think of as expensive, is cheaper. Broadly speaking today's average wage would buy twice as many gallons as it did in the mid-1950s.
My first insurance premium, all of £7 10s (€11.20) a year was the equivalent of one-thirtieth of my earnings. Today's figure would be closer to one-tenth for many.
To some extent this reflects the massive increase in vehicle numbers on the road - the more there are, the greater chance one of them will bump into you. 50 years ago there were 183,153 registered vehicles in the State. Today we have 1,937,429 - that's ten and a half vehicles today for every one there was then.
Fifty years ago the average annual mileage was much less than it is today. Try, if you can, to imagine what life would be like if 90 per cent of today's traffic simply vanished.
Rider training, still not compulsory in Ireland unlike the rest of Europe, is now available. How I wish it had been when I first started out. There was no such thing.
Had there been as much traffic then as there is today, I'd more likely be celebrating 50 years under a headstone than 50 years in the saddle.
Today, 50 years and well over a million miles later the magic of motorcycling is every bit as real as ever it was. Each and every ride is something to be looked forward to.
I wish everyone could ride for as long a time, go as far as I have, see so many places in so many countries and have so much fun. And I haven't finished yet!