Another year
and the Scottish Motorcycle Show continues to get smaller. Perhaps it’s timing?
It is the first major show of the year, but it used to be great. Being so early
in the year it was a big deal. You went and looked at all the new models, and bought
all those little bits and pieces for your bike that you needed for the summer.
You got yourself a new helmet, or a jacket, or some new boots. Mail order is
all very well, but it’s nice to actually try stuff on and see what the quality
is like up close. Unfortunately, most of the smaller vendors have been priced
away from the show in recent years.
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| The Loadsamoney Stand |
Anyway, this time
around it was split into two main halls, with a bit of an auto-jumble (swap
meet) linking the two. The first had the big retailers showing off their new machines,
the usual assortment of clothing outlets, tour companies, book sellers etc.
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| Royal Enfield Stand |
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| Apparently this is still how you market bikes in the 21st Century |
The
second hall comprised the club stands. Shiny older machines being shown off by their
proud owners, which is nice and one of the few reasons that many people still
attend the show.
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| Ducati 500 Pantah |
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| Norton Commandos |
I arrived as it
was opening and had a wander around before it got too busy so as to try out some
of the newer bikes for size. All the main players were well represented either
directly or by a local dealer and, my, haven’t motorcycles gotten complicated
and expensive recently? Some of those on offer have more on-board computing
power than the space shuttle and cost more than my first flat. Or, maybe I’m just
getting old?
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| Triumph Tigers |
Triumphs especially
seem to come in two sizes these days. Huge adventure bikes and surprisingly
small roadsters. If I had the money, I’d probably have myself a new Tiger, although
the Street Scrambler and Street Cup versions of the standard Bonneville are
nice too. There were lots of interesting machines on the trade stands, some familiar,
some not so much.
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| Triumph Street Scrambler |
As it began to
fill up I made my way over to the club area and wandered around a bit before
dropping by the Z1 stand and finally the MZ Riders Club stand for a bit of a
sit down and to catch up with some friends (see later post). See, I told you that I was getting
old.
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| Honda CD185 Benly |
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| BSA X75 Hurricane |
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| Moto Guzzi T3 California & Watsonian |
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| Indian Junior Scout 500 |
I did do
another couple of circuits later as I was looking for a set of decent bar-end
mirrors and possibly a jacket. However, nothing caught my eye and I eventually left
with a couple of freebies instead, a keyring and a plastic puck to put under my
centre-stand.
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| AA Patrolman BSA M21 outfit |
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| AMF Harley Davidson 125 |
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| Not sure what the shoes represent |
The problem of
living in a big city is that most of the new machines can be seen at leisure in
one of the many bike shops scattered about within easy reach. That means that I
am being asked to cough up a fair bit of money to come along and possibly buy
stuff while looking at other people’s old bikes.
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| Rickman Metisse |
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| It's good to have a sense of humour |
Truth be told, I could
probably do the latter better just hanging about the car park taking stock of
the bikes people rode up on. Actually, that’s just what I did before heading
home, and an interesting cross-section it was too.
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| Lonely MZ ETZ250 |
Anyway, roll on
the summer.
