Your First Road Bike/s?

My 16th birthday was in December 1974. The mid 70's was the hey days of the sixteener special sports mopeds. Probably like any kid with an interest in powered two wheelers, I would have loved to own one once I turned 16, but my parents were working class (read quite poor). We never wanted for anything growing up, but luxury items were few and far between back then. I was youngest of three kids and my only income, as I was still at school, was a couple of quid a week from doing a local paper round. My parents certainly couldn't afford to buy me one.

The machines to have were of course the indominable Yamaha FS1E, the Suzuki AP50, the Honda SS50 and there were also a few 'exotics' the Fantic Cabillero looked brilliant to me and one kid at our school turned up on his 16th birthday on a Garelli Tiger, which I thought at the time was the epitemy of 'cool'.

As my birthday approached I had to set my sights lower although I was determined to get some form of powered two wheeler. Dad was a member of a local working mens club. He knew I wanted a moped. He had had bikes when he was younger, but I don't recall us having one after I was born. Talking to an acquaintance in the club one evening, he came home and said there was a chap who was selling a moped. It was a step thru, I'd never heard of the make. It was a Demm Dove. Apparently an Italian brand. The guy wanted the princely sum of £35 for the little bike. We went to visit him at the weekend and a deal was done. Dad negotiated £5 off, so the bike returned home with me. Mum and Dad had given me £16 for my 16th birthday and I had the other £14 saved up from my paper round and other jobs I did on a local farm in the holidays.

The Demm certainly wasn't the coolest moped out there, not by a country mile, but it got me that independent transportation I think most of us yearned for back then. It was slow, even by moped standards. The speedo stubbornly refused to go above an indicated 30 mph on the flat and usually the Dove maxed out at a heady 28 or 29. Headwinds would reduce its maximum velocity even further of course. Downhill with a following wind it might touch 40, but it was not in the league of the aforementioned sports mopeds of the time. Fast forward 6 months to the summer of 1975 and I was already thinking about what I might be able to get in the way of a 'proper' motorcycle when I turned 17. At that time learners were restricted to bikes of 250cc and below. Just like the 'peds, there were certain bikes everyone wanted. The Yamaha RD250, The Suzuki GT250, both parallel twin 2 strokes, but the one I really would have loved was the three cylinder Kawasaki KH250. Honda had brought out the CB250G5 but that was relatively expensive too. So reality struck once again. I left school after my O level exams and started work as an engineering apprentice with the heady sum of £20 remuneration per week. After paying my mum housekeeping money and running costs for the Demm etc. I managed to squirrel away about a fiver a week, but it was never going to be enough to buy a flashy 250. A Great Uncle of mine passed away that summer and I received an unexpected inheritance of £225, which was a small fortune to me back then. Even so I still thought a 250 would be beyond my reach and so just like the Demm moped, in a way I had to set my sights lower. This time it would be a new bike though, I was determined of that much. Reading test reports of the various bikes available in the weekly bike mags of the time. No internet back then of course. I thought a bike of around 200cc would give me performance not too far short of the 250's so I looked at the candidates. Yamaha had the RD200 with electric start! Even the 250's didn't have that. Suzuki had the GT185 which despite having a slightly smaller capacity engine than the Yam made a touch more power according to the stats although claimed top speeds were more or less identical. Like its larger brother the GT250, it had Ram air, a piece of tin plate attached to the top of the cylinder head fins. Honda had the conservative looking CB200 with that weird piece of plastic running along the centre of the fuel tank. I actually quite liked the look of the Honda, but it was slow in comparison to the Yam and the Suzuki and top speed was everything back then to me. Sadly there wasn't a British option either in 200 or 250cc form. The venerable BSA Bantam had gone out of production a few years earlier and I think the C15 had gone sooner than that. There was the exotic Ducati 250 Desmo single, but that was way more expensive than the Japanese 250's so that was never a realistic option. AS my 17th birthday approached I made my decision. We went to the local Yamaha dealer and I placed a deposit on a Blue RD200B. The price I recall was £408 on the road. With my inheritance money and my savings I was still about £100 short, but Dad signed as guarantor on a 12 month HP deal and on 19th December 1975 I rode away for the dealership on my brand new bike. I loved the Yamaha. It would do an indicated 85 mph flat out with my skinny 9 stone frame flat on the tank, but it would cruise along at 70 easily and it became my ride to work commuter, my holiday transport when going camping with mates the following summer in the Lake district and riding to and from my girlfriends mum and dads house most evenings after work. I passed my test in February of '76 so I could take my then girl friend on the back and we went all over the country on that little bike. 18 months later it was knackered. I'd done almost 18,000 miles on it, so a thousand miles a month since it was new. It probably needed new piston rings and perhaps a rebore but I didn't have the facilities or the know how back then to do that for myself so I p/x the Yam for a CB350 Honda but that's another story for another day.

Over to you, what was your first road bike or bikes, if like me you had a moped at 16 and what are your recollections of those machines?



A Demm Dove, not mine I hasten to add, but mine was the same colour and everything.

Sadly I don't have any pictures of the Yammy either but here is some blurb from the time.