Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1980's

Italian Style: The Cult of the Vespa Vespa scooters are as much a part of Italian culture as pLzza, VInO and spaghetti. The styling of these liule two-strokes has not changed significantly in two decades, and for years they've had a cult following in its country of origin. Current Vespa style can be sporty, as for those who pull the engine covers off their bikes to expose their 50200ccengines. With fan-cooling ducts in place the engines look like huge metal snails. The more dapper ride in carefully tailored shirts with the right hand on the throttle and the left on the hip, theelbow juuingjauntily on the side. In the pockets of their tight shirts bulge packs of cigarettes. The favori te accessory is a set of black or white plastic egg-cra te grilles that fit over headlight, taillight and all four turn signals. The real style leaders, of course, mount radios in the liule glove boxes behind the Vespa leg shields, wi th huge round speakers pointing back at their feet. Sometimes there will be murals on the little machines showing fantasy scenes of stars and summer nights. As you'd expect,.California scenes are popular. If You're Ever in Yugoslavia .. , 24 ( You know the old lines: "Sure, come to the house with me, pal. My wife/mother will be glad to put another plate on for supper!" Or, "Hey, my best friend happens to live in Bunghole City - when you get there, just drop in and tell him I sent you. He'll treat you like a king!" So you show up at your buddy's house, or in Bunghole City, and the reception is folded arms, icy stares and the bum's rush. Which leads us to: five days before leaving on our trip, a man I met at the dealership told me, "If you're going to Yugoslavia, you must stop in and see my father. Just bring along a case of beer and he'll treat you like a king." Sure. Three weeks later the sun in Yugoslavia was hot, and the road south of Senj glared off a steamy Adriatic. Our instructions had been to go the required distance south of town to a sign. At the sign turn toward the sea on a little road. At the village, stop the first person we saw and ask for Torno Pushak. Right. The single-lane split road glided a thousand feet down the rocky cliffs, and I perspired from more than the heat. The old guy was probably a retired wrestler with a shotgun, and he'd resent the fact that all we could carry between our two bikes was a miserly six-pack of green boules with no labels. The village unfolded beneath us at the last turn, tile roofs and whitewashed walls, a dream of Greece hundreds of miles to the south.We drew the KlOOs up in the shade by the kiosk on the waterfront as windsurfers glided by the islands. The first person who passed by was a woman dressed in black. 'Margery, my wife, said in English, "We'd like to find Torno Pushak." The woman called to someone in a window. I winced, hoping 01' Torno wasn't trying to take a nap. A boy of 12 came out. The woman spoke to him briefly and he waved for us to follow him. I cradled the beer boules in my arms, like an offering to the volcano god. Up, up, up we climbed on concrete steps, past lovely, undulating., mortarless stone walls, through sweat-inthe-eyes heat to the very highest, last house in the village. I gave the boy some coins. We were on our own. "Torno Pushak'" I called, hoping he was out butchering cattle or cracking fen e, rqc,ks in two with bare hands,. " , anything but lying in wait for these six-pack tourists who actually fell for one of the oldest lines in the book. A head peeked out the door, balding and lined. "We're from America," I said, "friends of your son." And Torno smiled, opened the gate, welcomed us in. I showed him my business card; he produced an identical card I had given his son some weeks before. But when he took the beer he shook his head. It was warm. He took the boules and produced some cold ones from inside his twostory, whitewashed home with the geraniums blooming in the windows. To make it short, we found a pension in the village where the four of us stayed for two days. The rooms were modern, the restroom down the hall, and the lady of the house would produce a beer or a meal wheneverwe asked for one. Our evenings were spent down on the waterfront where Torno mixed a liter of wine and a titer of mineral water to make "gemishe." The sun faded behind the islands, and Torno talked to us in slow, careful German which, with appropriate gestures and sometimes drawings, we understood! We spent two nights, with dinner each night and breakfast each morning, numerous beers and a tip (or the lady. h cost about $55 per couple! In Europe, the places to tay are pensions, zimmers and chambres, three words that mean preuy much the same thing in various languages - individual rooms in private homes you can rem at very competitive rates. True, the bathroom is usually down the hall, but often there will be a sink in the room. Breakfast is usually included, and consists of fresh bread with marmalade and butter, coffee or tea. But what is most charming about pensions (also called "bed and breakfasts" or "b and b's" in Great Britain) is that you stay in the same house as your host family, and it's usually quite easy to mingle with them and the other guests informally at breakfast or during the day. Hotels shut people away, but pensions do not. The Bad News The RIOO-series BMWs are now passing away, as the last ones will be built sometime this month. From this point forward, the only flattwins coming out uf BMW's Spandau assembly plant will be R65s and R80s, and the Europe-only R45. The old-line BMW faithful will regret the passing of the R 100, and so will several American accessory companies. These companies made a sizeable chunk of their business selling performance shocks to RI 00 owners, and fork kits, stronger aluminum upper triple clamps, frame bracing. You could always teJl if a BMW rider knew his stuff by inspecting his bike for these aftermarket fixes. A you can imagine, these companies are waiting in anticipation to see if the KlOOs will have similar flaws they can capitalize upon. The bad news is for those companie ; the following is an open letter to them: The Rloos will soon be gone. It's time to chuck your remaining supply of R-fixes in a box and truck 'em down to K-Mart for their Blue'Light Specials. Now, about that KIOO. Mostly bad news, guys. The upper triple clamp? Forget it. They come with a cast piece that looks like a gymnast's upper body. Frame bracing - are you kidding? They use the engine as a stressed member. The actual frame ain't big enough to hang your hat on. Front suspension? Here's your best shot- it works fine solo, but touring riders are going to want some air caps. Start crankin triose out. Rear? The K100s are different enough to be BMWs, yet work well enough to attract the Faithful. Shot in a field of flowers in the Italian Dolomites. h's hard to figure how, in this day and age, BMW can bring out a newgeneration bike without adj u table damping or air. There's something else you can work on. Best of luck in findinga new lineof BMW products to fill your catalog. Truly yours and all that, etc., etc. Traveling in Europe is", Traveling in Europe is finding five countries' coins in your pocket at once, and not having a clue as to what they're worth. Traveling in Europe is returning to your room after dinner, ducking under three days of wash hanging dripping from the ceiling. It's wondering what the waiter will bring after you've just pointed at the menu and smiled. It's being yanked back home by "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" on the pension radio, a Lennon medley at the pizza shop, European M-TV at a restaurant. Or a tour bus horn sounding like the crack of doom as you're entering a blind hairpin much too fast. It's the thrill of owing 20,000 lira to your riding buddy, and being relieved to find out it's only $12.00. Some Advice Our ride continued back into the Austrian and Italian Alps, back into the coolness and relative mountain sanity where there was not a Vespa always hanging on your shoulder in the city, or a car crowding into your lane. Back to where we could be comfortable in our two-piece leathers, to where there was a thrill a minute on the Alpine roads. Into Switzerland, into Germany, then to Holland, the ride continued for another couple weeks. Our advice to those thinking of Europe by motorcycle is to go as soon as possible, while the dollar is still high. Avoid hotels for the chummier pensions. Take a good rain suit, and spare face shields and screws if you bring an American helmet. Buy racy European leathers and boots. Learn some basic words in German and Italian, and in French if you go to France. Finishing Touches Back in Munich five weeks later, I surrendered our silver KIOO RS to BMW. And truly, I was sad to have to do so. The bike feels solid, all a piece; the Rloos feel rather delicate in comparison. J11e Kloosuspension is much The Glitches stiffer, but every bit as supple. StiJl, When the sun beat down in Yugothe KlOOs do need an adjustable susslavia it became humidly hot, and in pension. BMW will begin offering Nivomat suspension as an option, Zagreb's traffic an extra blast of heat blew from the engine when the BMW's but it's still an automatic system. When is BMW going to trust its cuselectric fan kicked in. The Kloo's tomers to do more than set spring __ radiator pours heat on your legs, and it will make a hot ride on a hot day preload? The KIOO is the right bike for very hot indeed. BMW, and the market, at this time. And engine resonance was a probIts looks are destined to be classic lem on our bike. At about 3200 rpm, with that enormous valve cover pokwhich corr ponds to about 55 mph, ing out the left ide. It looks different the vibes shuddered the left foot peg, and tingled the right hand grip. enough, and is different enough, yet Winding through the gears caused functions well enough in its own right, that people can buy them the resonances to scurry about the knowing they are for-real good motank and seat. Rudolph's Kloo had torcycles, not just kinda funky offresonances at the same speeds, but shoots that have, well, a different sort they were not as severe. Another K I 00 of message. rider reported that his bike was smooth Once BMW delivers these machines as glass at all speeds. Thirdly, the K-models have instruwith better vibration control, an adjustable suspension front and rear, a ment· glitches that manifest themradiator vented differently and instruselves in different ways. On our' bike, the liquid-crystal gear counter went ments free of glitches, it's going to be nuts, sometimes showing the wrong hard to find faulL with its new-generation machines. Just as BMW's ultranumber, sometimes throwing out modern, four-cylinder office buildrandom single-digit numbers at com- _ puter-think speeds. Rudolph's bike ing beats the usual glass box corporate had no problem; another Klooof our headquarters, the KIOO is beuer than the old Rloo in virtually every way. acquaintance lost the entirE; instrument Icluster - blakko, dead! •I• I • • • All.i~R~»(;I0l".are:finishi!1g tauehes.., ... & ~

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