When road test where road test!

[steven c]

1975 Cycle "Eight For The Open Road".
Pretty honest reviews.
https://yeoldecycleshoppe.wordpress.com/category/guzzi/

[fotoguzzi]

the good old days when Moto Guzzi was owned by Moto Guzzi... ?

[cookiemech]

Good find; I just read through it.

Spoiler alert:  They liked the R90/6 a lot, and the Harley pretty much not at all . . .

Sure was a different world back then in terms of the limitations of different motorcycles.

[Triple Jim]

Interesting reading.  Thanks Steven.

[john hooper]

 Cycle magazine back in the late 70 s early 80 s was the best read to be had i almost cried when it closed, no motomag since  has come close, at the time i had subscritions  for mags from every corner of the english speaking world and as an english man it hurts that the americans did it better.

john

[oldbike54]

Cycle magazine back in the late 70 s early 80 s was the best read to be had i almost cried when it closed, no motomag since  has come close, at the time i had subscritions  for mags from every corner of the english speaking world and as an english man it hurts that the americans did it better.

john

 Even when they wrote stuff like " the new Sportster has no discernible vibration" They did have Kevin Cameron , which made up for a multitude of sins .

  Dusty

[oldbike54]

Back then, they were riders writing, not writers who happen to ride a little.

 So Ienatasch , Canet , Hoyer , et al don't ride ? What about the semi retired Peter Egan ?

 Dusty

[oldbike54]

Sure they do, a dying breed in the sea of mass published reviews and tests that read more like PR and seem to excel at copy and paste.

Didn't mean or say "all".

 The enthusiasts magazines have always been full of PR . Actually Cycle World broke the practice of simply publishing what the manufacturers claimed . Go back and read copies of the Green Un , or the Blue Un , both highly respected English MC mags and tell me there wasn't a LOT of BS being written .

  Dusty

[canuguzzi]

Fixed it.

[Arizona Wayne]

Shoot, can't get the print big enough to read(425%). 

[Moto]

Even when they wrote stuff like " the new Sportster has no discernible vibration" They did have Kevin Cameron , which made up for a multitude of sins .

  Dusty

And the incomparable Gordon Jennings.

[oldbike54]

And the incomparable Gordon Jennings.

 Schilling and Nielsen weren't slouches either .

  Dusty

[Moto]

Schilling and Nielsen weren't slouches either .

  Dusty

No, sir, they weren't!

[SlowPokeYOCS]

1975 Cycle "Eight For The Open Road".
Pretty honest reviews.
https://yeoldecycleshoppe.wordpress.com/category/guzzi/

Here's a link update. The site has moved and old links won't work after June 2017.
https://yeoldecycleshoppe.squarespace.com/roadtestlibrary?category=Moto+Guzzi

[chuck peterson]

Thanks Steven 

[Chuck in Indiana]

Thanks for that, and welcome to WG..

[radguzzi]

I Still have three of those magazines as I owned SPs and the CX...

Best,
Rob

[RANDM]

The enthusiasts magazines have always been full of PR . Actually Cycle World broke the practice of simply publishing what the manufacturers claimed . Go back and read copies of the Green Un , or the Blue Un , both highly respected English MC mags and tell me there wasn't a LOT of BS being written .

  Dusty

Dead right there sport - IIRC they even admitted it years later.
Wonder if they'll ever admit to sending all their Monday and
Friday bikes to Oz!

Maurie.

[oldbike54]

Dead right there sport - IIRC they even admitted it years later.
Wonder if they'll ever admit to sending all their Monday and
Friday bikes to Oz!

Maurie.

 Damn , saw this thread and thought it was a new topic , had forgotten all about it  But yeah , there was a lot of pure bull poopie written in MC mags for years , probably still is  One observation , Guzzi riders always complain that testers don't like MG's , which is odd , because most Guzzi tests I have read seem to be positive .

 Dusty

[twowings]

IIRC, Cycle had a great hilarious article back in the '60's or '70s about how to interpret road test terms...

The one I remember best is:

"The controls fall readily to hand" = They fell off in our hands

[Hugh Straub]

When it comes to road tests, here is the Gold Standard against which all others are judged

http://www.latexnet.org/~csmith/sausage.html

Kind regards

Hugh

[Murray]

the good old days when Moto Guzzi was owned by Moto Guzzi... ?

De Tasmo was doing his level best to run it into the ground.

[RANDM]

IIRC, Cycle had a great hilarious article back in the '60's or '70s about how to interpret road test terms...

The one I remember best is:

"The controls fall readily to hand" = They fell off in our hands

I've seen the same article and in was hilarious. A mate has got oodles
of old mags and I saw it while working my way through some. I guess
we all knew they were wanking - just not how hard.

Maurie.

[oldbike54]

 Sorry if we already mentioned this one .

 In about 1968 Cycle , or MClist , or one of the main stream mags did a road test of a BSA Lightening . Seem to remember the title said something like , "The HOT one from BSA" . In the article it stated that during acceleration testing "The rider had a very hard time hanging onto the bars and keeping the front end from clawing the air" , or some such nonsense . Yeah , memory says the bike ran a 14 second quarter mile and would accelerate from 0 to 60 in about 6 seconds . Isn't that about how fast my old Jackal is?

 Dusty

[Dharma Bum]

Yeah, Dusty, but you have to remember that article was written in the late 60's.  Perceptions of reality were twisted on a routine basis by the chemicals on hand!

[oldbike54]

Yeah, Dusty, but you have to remember that article was written in the late 60's.  Perceptions of reality were twisted on a routine basis by the chemicals on hand!

  Oh dude , I was like you know , like really twistin on the throttle , it was really gnarly , then I started seein colors man , everything went all like weird and stuff 

 Dusty