My evening is planned... Pass the popcorn... ...

I lost it at "Boy's Toys."  Quick peeks to fast forward and I see it is about racing and toys.  Back around 1915 15-20% of all motor vehicles were motorcycles.  By 1925 motorcycles dropped to less than 1% of motor vehicles.  In early '60's Honda started building/selling toy motorcycles, the number of motorcycles increased to about 5% of all motor vehicles.  Late '80's they started pushing sport bikes and the deaths jumped.

But that "history" is about the toys, not that small minority the used motorcycles for mere cheap transportation.

old_rider wrote on 12/08/13 at 11:39:35:


I didn't post this to cause problems with the wife!  I watched the first hour of it after she went to bed last night.....and the rest this morning before she got up.

Not sure whether I quite agree with some of Paladins comments about "the small minority who use motorcycles as cheap transportation". The motorcycle provided this for many years in many countries throughout the world, and continues to do so. For example, in England for much of the first half of the twentieth century car registration was based on one English pound for every RAC/NACC rated horsepower, a very significant sum in those days. Motorcycles were exempt from this taxation, as far as I'm aware and therefore were the only way many Englishmen could motorise. This also accounted for the popularity of the side car in England. In New Zealand from 1945 to 1984 new cars were expensive and prior to 1980 difficult to buy. Motorcycles weren't and I brought my first one for those reasons. After 1984 the government changed the rules and allowed the import of second hand cars from Japan. The steering wheel was on the right side, motorcycle sales collapsed and remained collapsed until about the mid 'nineties when baby boomers began buying them as toys.
Asia and many developing countries have significant populations that simply can't afford cars, but can afford anything from 50cc Honda step throughs to about 250cc bikes. These people are buying transport not toys and you only have to look at some of the posts on this forum to confirm this. India apparently uses motorcycle registrations as a measure of it's prosperity.