A personal look back at the Indian two-wheeler revolution of the eighties
When the eighties rolled in, I was an impressionable 15-year-old who took forever to cross the road. Standing on the pavement, knees a-quiver, I’d perpetually be straining to see what the next motorcycle to pass by would turn out to be. Admittedly, what the eyes would finally spot would be pretty mundane by today’s standards. But hormones, wide-eyed wonder and the love of two-stroke smoke can paint a Technicolor halo around the most ordinary of machines.
In time, the engine proved easy to modify for more power and it totally dominated the racing scene as well. In skilled hands, the RX100 was a complete hooligan. There are very few 40-somethings in the corporate world who haven’t owned or ridden one. Fewer still don’t have glowing memories of those days, of that exhaust note, of the first time the front wheel rose into the air of its own bidding — and of the weak headlamps and weaker-still brakes.
1984 was the year when the AX100, the CD100 and the Kinetic Honda DX all arrived in India. But it still wasn’t the most fundamental year of the decade for the enthusiast.
(This story appears in the 22 January, 2010 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)