Motorcycle Character

I’d like to explore the theme of what we think character means in terms of motorcycles, after all the term is thrown around by riders, owners and reviewers with complete abandon, the assumption is we can all put our fingers on what character actually means, well sorry, but I struggle a bit in defining the concept.

Potentially fragile but lots of character?

Allow me to perhaps be a little contrarian, or at least a bit annoying and don’t take any of this too seriously.

Some may think character as a euphemism for “a bit s…”, or an excuse made by owners to justify a misguided buying decision…like it’s not totally reliable but it has so much “character”, I just had to have it.

I actually had a female rider recently speak of her Ducati in such terms, something along the lines of “well it’s in the shed getting fixed most of the time, like any Ducati, but it has heaps of character”…..mmm, well maybe she had a point.

Character is just a shortened version of characteristic, in other words we likely mean the bike in question has an aspect that makes it different from other similar items.

I guess being “bloody unreliable” could then be called character if indeed your steed was supremely unreliable compared to the competition.  But, I think most owners would struggle to find such a characteristic desirable or even endearing in the long term, unless they were completely masochistic.

So what exactly do motorcyclists mean by character and why is it that most of the supremely well engineered and most proficient machines get dissed as “lacking character” yes I’m referring to Hondas.  Oh and by the way I totally disagree that Hondas lack character, I own several and love them all, maybe I should remove some important parts and make a few ill informed mods so they can become characterful machines.

I mean come on, poor bloody Honda, they spent decades producing all manner of near perfect for the time machines only to be passed off as “characterless” by “those in the know”, You know, those who’d rather spend their weekends fixing their bikes instead of riding them, but I digress.

So does having character mean:

The rider has to make allowances for some wicked issue, like diabolical handling or a lack of functional stoppers?  Is a bike that is always plotting to kill you at every corner one that could be classified as characterful?

Perhaps the the bike needs some obvious deficits, like it wouldn’t pull the skin of a custard in first gear, or perhaps the gearbox is better regarded as a mystery box where a tap of the left foot is occasionally accompanied by the gear you expected. Maybe it makes more noise than a rock crusher and is just as deafening.

More positively the bike might be unbelievably pretty, regardless of practicality or functional requirements, lots of Ducatis seem to fall into this camp…I get it but my creaking bones would be lucky to survive a short trip to the coffee shop without a second trip to the physiotherapist on most classic Ducatis.

The bike does one thing better than most others, it might be faster accelerating, more comfortable (scrub that, comfort seems secondary when talking character therefore rendering my Goldwing completely boring), have a better exhaust note, a super sweet instrument panel and so forth.

Is the motor is a concrete vibrator pretending to be a motorcycle, that provides a massage to all bodily components which is completed just before the electrics vibrate right off the bike and it comes to rest in some inconvenient location the NRMA have never heard of. Yes, we know which brand I’m talking about, don’t we.

Conversely maybe the bike is stupidly ugly, guess what ,the old Honda CX500 was not often called the plastic maggot for its great looks, yet now people pay stupid money for barely functional example and proceed to turn them into cafe racers, who said Honda didn’t make bikes with character?

Could it be that the bike is utterly dangerous unless treated with kid gloves and even then it has a psychotic bent so twisted it threatens to bend you into a pretzel by simply taking off from the stop light.

Maybe the bike is built really poorly, you know a real dunger, a heap of excrement that has fittings from every possible thread and nut and bolt type ever offered to mankind and electrics that “Lucus the Prince of Darkness” would have been embarrassed to offer up.  On the other hand it might just be incredibly well made and finished to level way beyond its station as a means of two wheeled transportation.

Could it be a machine so devilishly complex to service that every trip to the mechanic is followed by an application for an extra mortgage and the parts to keep said machine in fine fettle are made of unobtainium.

Hell I don’t know….but I think think this character thing has something to do with being a bit different from it’s peers and probably also beauty, and possibly demanding a bit more from it’s owner.

Maybe perfection doesn’t cut it, a perfect bike just does what’s asked when asked, the owner doesn’t have to commit to the machine, it demands nothing special. After all, those perfect bikes in any market segment will likely be pretty similar because the true path to perfect performance and operation is pretty narrow and the end points are going to be very similar.

But I’m happy to keep my dull, boring, characterless Hondas, bikes that start when required, stop when needed and hold their value despite just regular maintenance.  But you almost certainly have other ideas, so let me know so we can visit the topic again next edition.