REAL VS RETRO

Ah yes, things were better in the old days. Or maybe they weren’t. Nobody knows. Some say that Roger Federer is the greatest tennis player of all time. That might well be true, but we’ll never find out because we’ll never see him playing Rod Laver in his pomp, both of them using the same bat.

Comparing bikes across the ages is hard, too. Dynamically, a 60bhp, 217kg square-case Ducati 900SS from the 1970s isn’t a patch on today’s much lighter and much more powerful Ducati 900SS. You still would, mind. Well, I would anyway. Moto Guzzi never got modern in the first place, a non-move which now looks clever, but it’s not so easy for the Japanese manufacturers to reconnect us to times gone by because there’s such a huge gulf between what they gave us 50 years ago and what they’re selling now. Walking the line between true retro and what modern motorcyclists expect today is a tough ask for them, especially now that everyone knows their rights and will sue at the drop of a helmet if they can put any of the blame down to old design and/or materials.

Setting that legal nonsense aside, you need to be as faithful as possible to the original