Vintage CB360T vs Modern CB300R – Motorcycle Evolution Test

Two men walk into a Honda dealership. Grandfather leaves with this, a CB360T, because the year is 1975. Grandson leaves with this, a CB300R, because the year is 2020. Two identical fellows, two identical choices, but two generations apart. The question is, who got the better deal? I know two things about my grandpa's time. One, every school was built a trans-Siberian trek from its neighboring houses. And two, everything was built better. Looking at these two can confirm. Chrome, chrome, chrome, chrome. Plastic, plastic, plastic, plastic. Hand-painted, hand-painted, hand-painted. Sticker, sticker, sticker. Here's the tool chest and Bible that motorcycles used to come with. And now you get right. I'll permit you to say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. You may also say that beauty is beholden to the age of the eye. But you can't say that whatever care went into molding these diameter flared pipes from a single sheet of metal is matched by whoever made that. What we just witnessed was mostly weight and the greatest advancement in modern motorcycling. Our old bike is 175 kilos. The new one, 142. And Canadian standard units, which involve mixing every known metric with a hockey stick, that comes out as 73 pounds lighter. See, the thickness of engine castings has dropped over time from centimeters to millimeters. When our grandfathers sloshed aluminum into their molds, it mixed with oxygen to form a layer of aluminum oxide. Then they sloshed some more. Then some more. The resulting engines were speckled throughout with oxide and that made them weaker. So they were built thicker and heavier to compensate. But grandson has a high-tech hypoxic lab. So only a sliver of aluminum oxide forms. Then he injects from the bottom. So the oxide rises instead of mixes and can later be skimmed off the top. The result is an engine, a swing arm, any cast aluminum part can be made stronger than previously possible and thereby slimmer. It's night in the city and I'm on my way back home. I'm in on my favorite thing. Because modern engines can withstand more pressure, even the small singles are fast. But old yeller has rabies on its side. See, this is a twin. It makes similar displacement with a teeny tiny pair of pistons. You can rev the little tits to a rabid 12,000 RPM, whereas our new bike bangs its head off the limiter at 10.5. Embarrassed, Sonny? Gramps is 20 kph faster with four more horsepower. But once you remember that power is proportional to RPM, that kind of makes sense. Hence the hilarious 250s of yesteryear with four bottle cap pistons revving to 19,000 RPM and making an unmatchable 50 HP. The only downside, and it's a big one, is that building a second cylinder is nearly as expensive as building a second engine. Once upon a time, manufacturers happily threw that money at us. Less so today. Current discs are wholly and therefore unafraid of water, like Jesus. See, these prevent hydroplaning by letting liquid escape. Also weight, also heat, and they scrub the pads, creating friction cleaning and even more stopping force. All that pinched by four pistons and pinned at peak power by ABS. Old discs are pinched by one piston and have the refinement of a paving stone. You'll die before you ever need to replace one of these, but they don't stop very well, so that day may come sooner handling emergency situations like our politicians. The other thing you'll notice is that wheels have definitely shrunk in the wash of time. See, tall spokes look glamorous, but they make for big-ass gyroscopes that resist turning due to their angular momentum. Do the math and you'll see that the force required to tip a wheel is proportional to its mass and its radius squared. So a lighter alloy wheel with a shorter radius is exponentially easier to deserves some credit. But one look at grandpa's pogo stick shows that there's more to this tale. Suspension? Perhaps. Damping has come a long way, though a spring is still a spring. It's frame stiffness that is the real improvement. Two points on your motorcycle are most stressed. One is the steering head, another is the swingarm pivot. The more directly we connect these dots, the sharper our chassis will be. See the advancement? We used to stretch our noodle along a circuitous route, asking it to support the engine halfway. But modern motorcycles draw a straight line and use the engine as part of the frame. This is like a nice rigid kayak, and this is like putting your kayak inside a rubber dinghy. Very different outcomes for cutting a line. Two men walk into a Honda dealership. Who gets the better deal? Grandson pays $5,000 today, and grandpa pays $875 in his day. Adjusted for inflation, that works out to $4,200, so still $800 cheaper. But surely our new feature standards account for those $800. LED lights, LCD dash, EFI fueling, liquid cooling. So, fairly speaking, you're paying the same price for a better bike nowadays. That's fair. Our industry has done a fair job, but have they done the right job? See, wages have been stagnant for 50 years, but the cost of living has not. It's all well and good to say after 45 years, we're charging the same money for more motorcycle. But what we actually need is the same motorcycle for less money. This is still hella fun. Give me 1970s performance, use your advancement to build it into a 2020 budget. Can you do this for three grand? Because that will sell motorcycling to the next generation. Until then, grandsons are getting hosed, because grandpa got it right. No, I won't listen to any of that jazz. Growing up is just a drive. Oh, yeah. Well, growing up is just a drive. Growing up is just a drive.