Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1970's

'" i" lL ,.. M ~ r£ c: ..., " '" ;;: w Z w -' U > U Choppers Magazine (Hi.Torque Publishing Co., 16200 Ventura Blvd., Encino, CA, 91316) With about 70 pages and a circulation of about 70,000, "Choppers" is not tembly different from "Big Bike", a sister publication. Photography is fair. Writing is lively and openly opinionated. How-to's and product reviews are similar to "BB" and "Dirt Bike"; skeptical, realistic, practical. Custom Chopper (Cycle Guide Publications, Inc., 1440 West Walnut St., Compton, CA, 90220) "Custom Chopper" is a sister publication to "Cycle Guide". It uses good color photography quite effectively to present feature choppers in its generous 90-page format. CC likes to include people in the photos of custom machinery. Like "Cycle Guide", CC is astonishingly erratic. Useful, accurate information is mixed indiscriminately with outright bloopers. Wheat and chaff are both presented in generous measures. Answers to reader questions are helpful and informative. Some of the how-to articles are really outstanding and unique. There are few regular features. Taking one thing and another, CC is the best of the information-oriented chopper magazines. Cycle (Ziff-Davis Publishing Co., One Park Ave., New York, NY, 10016) Backed by the mighty distribution facilities of Ziff-Davis, "Cycle" has zipped into the lead in motorcycle monthly circulation. It is, by far, the most mechanically complicated magazine in the field: fold-out covers, inserted postcards, fold-out-and-out-and-out advertisements, included posters, square-back binding, you name it, "Cycle" has it. "Cycle" is the "Sports Illustrated" of the motorcycle £ield ...entertaining and ephemeral, titillating and transient. During 1972, "Cycle" shifted its editorial base of operations to California but it still bears the stigmata of slick, mass'produced, mass-eonsumed New York City journalism: Designed to be the kind of magazine you can't put down until you're through, it is therefore the kind of magazine you throw away when you are through.One occasional exception to this is the technical article which, when done at all, is usually done very well. The magazine is clearly designed mor~ to be "interesting" than informative. More so than any of its competitors, "Cycle" is a master of the tricks of the mass media. "Cycle" tries very hard to shape reader opinion, .but not with the bluff braggadoccio of "Dirt Bike", the stumbling embarrassment of "Cycle Guide", or the cutting sarcasm of "Cycle News"; rather, "Cycle" employs the sinister style of "Timetheweeklynewsmagazine" itself: its opinions are the revealed word of God, and the reader had better consider that source most carefully before daring to reject those inspired though ts. Despite its posture of normative infallibitlity, "Cycle" 's often strikingly expressed opinions seem designed mainly for their impact, and little else. A "Cycle" road test is a series of fleeting impressions, snap judgments, sweeping pronouncements, and isolated arcana that flows beautifully the first time you read it, looks good on the second reading, doubtful,on the third, and so on downhill the !DOre you study it, until it eventually dissolves into a fuzzy, unfocused picture of the test bike being as blurred and ultimately meaningless as the surre·alistic photography "Cycle" so much prefers. "Cycle"'s regular features are few in number and marginal in scope and quality. Everything is done for effect, not for substance. Race reports, for example, are so sketchy and selective that the only need they can possibly fuflfill is the reader's urge to read race reports. Despite all the slick, plastic tricks of "authenticity", characters in Heyde"'s personality features exist on a trans-humane plane like movie stars or professional baseball players ...demi-gods among men, aliens among Tellurians. Starting with the well-designed contents page, the leader progresses through a typical issue in fits and starts, here his eye caught by an "arresting" photo,. there his fancy tickled by a "striking" phrase, until suddenly, unexpectedly, there's no more. "Cycle" does not have much editorial mass and the reader is left frustrated, unfulfilled, lusting for next mon th 's issue. If you prefer spectating an exotic dancer to grappling a sweaty whore, "Cycle" is for you. If you believ~ in "Time" and Walter Cronkite, you'll believe in "Cycle". Cycle Guide (Cycle Guide Publications, Inc., 1440 West Walnut Street, Compton, CA, 90220) CG gives you a lot of words-n-pitchers for the money, some issues running to as much as 140 pages, well-filled with editorial material. There are numerous regular features, road tests, and technical articles, but little in the way of outside-word news (insurance, government regulation, etc.). Graphic design. features clean, highly-readable type, average black and white photography, and color photography which, while infrequent, is very good. CG's performance on road tests, technical articles, and how-to's can be best described as spotty. Its coverage is broad, qualifying it as a general-interest magazine. To amuse yourself on a rainy afternoon, dig out a stack of CG's and read the last paragraphs of the road tests, especially the last sentences. Evidently CG has a policy of providing an incisive summary at the end of each test, but this policy doesn't carry over into practice at all. Whatever the opposite of uincisive" is, that's what these concluding remarks tum ou t to be. After extensive testing, CG always manages to discover that racing bikes are nearly ready to race out of the box but aren't very good for casual cow-trailing; that trail bikes are nearly ready to cow-trail out of the box but aren't very good for street riding; and that street bikes are nearly ready to street-ride out of the box but aren't very good for racing. Will surprises never end? CG ought to hire a professional phrase-monger from "Cycle" for its road test punch-lines are as feeble as a new-born bunny. "The Bonneville is a fine machine that could be improved." Oan.) "Suzuki 250 is a quality machine that needs some easily made engineering changes." (Feb.). "It would be well worth the time to take a look at the 1972 XS-2" Oune). "The extremely high resale value (of the Sportster), even after many years, makes it a good buy for those who can afford it." (May). Surely there must be a couple of motorcyclists - maybe even three - somewhere in this world whose desire to own a Sportster hinges critically upon whether or not its resale value holds up as well as a Volkswagen. Many CG road tests carry a dual by-line, but even those that don't are apparently written in two parts, at tWo different times, in two different places, by two writers who have never met. The rrrst writer provides a detailed· list of failures and shortcomings observed on the test bike. Afterwards, the second man writes a sweeping disclaimer that whatever is noted on a test bike is not representative of all units of this model, and a final wrap-up that concludes the machine is very good for its intended purpose but could use some improvements. CG's innovation in road testing is the flat-out six-hour-run on a road-race course. Unfortunately, CG does not understand the principles of endurance-testing so it derives little useful data from these six-hour-runs. CG is noted for how·to articles profusely illustrated by photographs ranging in quality from excellent to egregious. On closer examination many of these projects tum out to be shucks. Some supposed how-to's are merely disguised advertising for an accessory manufacturer, machine shop, etc., and are not remotely feasible for the readers to execute in their own garages. Some seem desirable and do-able, but are outlandishly costly; instead of frankly titling such articles "How To Pour Two Million Dollars Down a Super Rat Hole", CG coyly conceals the costs. Many of the "how-to's" are merely reports on personal one·of-a-kind projec.ts that make interesting reading but are hardly likely to be duplicated by anybody. Despite all this, CG does contain much practical, useful, how-to information. You have to pick and choose carefully. Technically, CG is the most erratic magazine of all. Sometimes it presen ts valuable factual information available nowhere else; other times it commits horrible blunders and transmits terrible misinformation. If you believe everything you see in print, the odds will be in your favor, but be warned. Though the number of pages of editorial material is large, most consists of photos and is quickly scanned. There is a good selection of regular features, most of which are good, but none consistently outstanding. Editor Bob Braverman's long, windy articles about his exploits are nice if you like long, windy articles by editors about their exploits. Wife Barbara's occasional exploit-articles are more fun for their novelty, and are neither cloying nor chauvinistic, which probably proves something about female exploitation. CG is not a good magazine and it's not a bad magazine. It is both at once. It will be interesting to see whether CG steers firmly in the one direction or the other in the coming year, or whether itjusts continues to fumble. Cycle Illustrated (Modem Day Periodicals, Inc., 222 Park Avenue South, New York, NY, 1003) With "Cycle" writ large on the cover and "Illustrated" barely visible, CI comes off as a pepper-tree copy of the real "Cycle". Cl alternates publication dates with sister-title "Motor Cycle World" (Where could they have got that title from?) and, despite the internal ads that claim CI emphasizes dirt bikes while MCW emphasizes street bikes, I am Wlable to discover any systematic difference between the two titles. See "Motor Cycle World." Cycle Sport (Cycle Sport Publishing, 29 Burley St., Danvers, Mass., 01923) Do you have a secret hankering to be a magazine publisher? Read CS and take heart. With little more than an IBM Executive typewriter and a local Greyhound bus station (You plug the typewriter into the electric shaver outlet in the men's room.) you can produce a monthly just like CS. All black and white, photo-offset at the comer Quik-Print shop, 132 pages, 50¢ cover price, coarse-screen halftone illustrations, and a full collection of outdated race results. CS's biggest regular feature is the letters column; everything else is reporting on obscure local races. Why CS is a magazine-format monthly baffles me completely. As a monthly magazine it is simply awful and doesn't remotely compare to any of the other magazines. It's so bad compared to any of the others reviewed in this Read Test that it's in a class by itself...way ...down ... there. But that's exactly the point. CS shouldn't be a monthly magazine. Wbat it should be is a weekly newspaper, in which format it could develop its full potential. In its present format, CS is fighting a losing battle. Cycle World (Bond/Parkhurst Publications, 1499 Monrovia Ave., Newport Beach, CA, 92663) The original "new" motorcycle magazine that radicalized the early Sixties has mellowed into a mainstream role in the early Seventies. Specializing in fact-packed road tests, which it introduced into the field, CW has by far the most and broadest-ranging regular and individual features. Its monthly reports from Italy, Europe and Japan provide the most complete coverage of what the foreign devils are up to. Technical articles range from mundane how-to's to the most obstruse theoretical treatises, and are highly reliable, if only because CW is not bashful about permitting subsequent reader criticism via its Letters column. The unique Feedback column presents rider experience with various motorcycles, ignoring the usual silly furors between Hog-haters and Limey-haters, etc. If "Cycle" places entertainment ahead of information, CW reverses the priorities. If you like to read f all, you probably save it. If you're going to subscribe to one general-coverage magazine, CW has to be the one. While the quantitative road test data panel is the frustration of every com·peting editor, the text of CW's road tests is less than inspired, e.g.: "Gearbox action is smooth." Oan.): "Upshifting is very smooth." (Feb.): "Shifting action is smooth." (Mar.); "Buttery smooth Sportster box." Ouly); "Buttery smooth ...shifting." (Sept.). The art of presenting road test results is not yet so highly developed that no improvements remain to be made. . Graphically, CW seems to be moving more heavily towards full-page, full-eolor bleeds, an expensive printing process usually reserved for ads, and capable of striking results as in the September coverage of the Berkshire Three-Days Trials. Generally CW's illustrations, color, black and white, or line-drawing, are well done and, like the rest of the magazine, are slanted towards information content. When CW first appeared, nobirdy had aviar soar anywing to eagle it, if only because it actually told - gasp! - how fast motorcycles didn't go compared to their distributor's claims. Today it is surrounded by a horde of more special-interest books. Teen-age tyros may be attracted to "Popular Cycling", say, for a few years, but I suspect that the longer a rider's experience, the more likely he is eventually to tum to CWo (Please tum to page X) --- --~ ~- ~

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