Not all Wingers are as shy as this!

It easy enough to understand that people can get hooked on GoldWings, in that many owners keep their bikes for a long time and generally keep them in good condition, which is why GoldWings are usually a good second hand buy, even when they are well over 20 years old.  They can still provide comfortable and reliable touring.

In a series of Articles I will be covering various aspects of buying a GoldWing, starting with an exploration of the reasons why people buy GoldWings, especially their first one.

Is it the huge visual impact and presence which these stunning bikes have?  Even the early, un-faired models are impressive on the eye and will often attract a crowd of admirers wherever they are parked.  So is it mainly the visual appeal – or can it also be for more practical reasons: the bike’s exceptional comfort, its ability to tour effortlessly over long distances and carry a lot of kit, its riding appeal or its array of features and gadgets?

It can of course be a mixture of all these things but what was the first thing that caused Wingers to buy one?  So I decided to ask around and find out.  And I got some interesting answers.

One Winger friend had been out of biking for some years while bringing up young children, then bought a bike which he and his son could ride off road, enjoyed it and fancied returning to road riding, had always fancied a Wing, so in consultation with his wife bought a GL1100.  He subsequently owned a GL1500 for a few years and now has a US spec GL1800 which he and his wife still enjoy riding together.

A long-time Winger and his wife enjoy their second GL1800

But I know another Winger who became so captivated by a picture of a pearl yellow GL1800 which he saw in a magazine shortly after it came out that he decided there and then to have one – so he set about learning to ride a motorbike, which he had never done in his life before.  Clearly for him it was love at first sight.  In only a relatively few months he was the proud owner of a Pearl Yellow GL1800, one of a batch of six which were specially re-painted before delivery by Appleyards in the UK because that colour was in demand and was only sold by Honda in America.  This Winger was an unattached bachelor in his thirties at the time and he was (and hopefully still is) earning good money.  So he was free to treat himself  to all sorts of specially obtained, and in some cases specially made yellow accessories for the bike.

He wears yellow riding gear and a yellow helmet, for which he had to do quite a bit of searching and personal importing at the time.  It was even rumoured among his Winger friends, posibly as a wind up for the benefit of their wives, who were itching to do some match-making, that under his clothing he had parts of himself tattooed yellow and adorned with exotic gold accessories.  But that, if there ever was any truth in it,  remains his secret.  At any event he was exceptionally keen on yellow.  He has since got married and started breeding successfully; I’m not sure how much the yellow Wing had to do with this achievement but he still owns his UK spec Pearl Yellow Wing, which is now eight years old, so it could have been her favourite colour – and maybe they now have a yellow pram too.

Another Winger, and another man of means, bought a new GL1500SE as his first Wing in 1998, not having ridden a motorbike for over twenty years and having originally been a scooter rider – a full blown Mod in fact, riding a white Lambretta which was absolutely festooned with mirrors.  His idea was to try a new hobby which he and his wife could enjoy together.  The wife had a test ride behind the Salesman and said “that wasn’t as bad as I expected” – which happens to be about as close as his wife ever gets to sounding enthusiastic, so a positive result.

Wingers love to pose!

My friend said he thought he would need some refresher training before trying to ride a Wing himself.  “Get your leg over it and give it a go”, said the salesman, using the Yorkshire version of  ‘How to Overcome Customer Objections’ sales technique.  So he did, no mean feat in his case, being a tad vertically challenged – but then Wings are reasonably accommodating in that respect.  And after a solo test ride, the new brand new bike was ordered more or less on the spot.   Well done the salesman.

This Winger said recently that despite owning a whole series of GoldWings (and having done well over 100,000 miles on them) he still thinks of his Wing as a grown up version of his Lambretta, which he loved to bits when he was young.   I now have this image stuck in my mind of him drifting off to sleep, dreaming of his Lambretta and his ankle-length anorak – I must remember to ask if the anorak’s still in his wardrobe.  He currently rides a white GL1800, US spec.

Another friend is the exception to the back-to-biking brigade, in that he has had a series of bikes throughout his adult life, rarely being without one for more than a few months and never for more than 3 or 4 years.  He had sold his last bike a few weeks earlier when he drove past a bike showroom which had a GL1100 in the window.  He stopped to look at it, bought it on the spot without a test ride and then rode it home, leaving his car to be picked up later.  No consultation with is then Partner, but she did subsequently ride pillion on it without complaint.  Over time he changed Partner and changed his Wing too (several times) but has never been without a Wing since buying the first one.  He has now been (very happily) married for some years and admits to finally having grown up and settled down, like his mother always wanted him to do.  He and his wife are currently on their second GL1800, a US spec bike.

Everyone I have mentioned so far has been a Winger for some years and although they all now own GL1800s, only two started off by buying a brand new Wing.  Most people buy second hand to start with and often one which is well over ten years old.  Most will then change their Wing for a better or more modern one (modern ones are not automatically better) as they learn more about them and as they gain confidence in the value of their new hobby.  Effectively most people dip their toes in the water before they invest in a newer (and therefore really quite expensive) Wing, even if they could have afforded it from the outset.  And as Steve Fox’s Article demonstrates, an older Wing in good condition doesn’t depreciate much at all – which makes it a more secure way of protecting your savings than putting them in a deposit account these days!

Dave & Jan from GoldWings North Wales

And by no means everyone developes the appetite to buy newer and newer Wings; lots of Wingers choose to stick with the older ones, now seen as Classics, because even the oldest ones remain capable, providing they are properly maintained, of reliable and comfortable use.

Lots of people still stick to a GL1500 because it’s a proper GoldWing, which is seen as having more imposing presence than a GL1800.  Some Winger believe that the GL1200 is the proper GoldWing, or the Gl1100 or the GL1000; it’s a question of personal taste as much as budget.  I know two Wingers who could afford to buy a GL1800 but choose to stick with their beloved Gl1500, which still does everything they want from a Wing.  There’s pride in owning a GoldWing of any age and you will have the respect of other Wingers whether yours is old or new, as long as you look after it properly and especially if you ride it well.  More about which GoldWing to consider buying in a later Article.

So it’s fairly typical that that bikers come back to biking, in their forties and fifties, and choose a GoldWing as a way of doing it in comfort and because they like the look of a GoldWing.  And many of them want something their wives can enjoy using with them.  The wives like the the appearance and the comfort of a Wing.  Only a minority of first time Wingers jump in at the deep end and buy a brand new one from the outset, I just happen to have come across two of them.

I suppose I fit the general pattern too; my first Wing was a 1984 Wineberry GL1200 Interstate which I bought about eight or nine years ago from a work colleague.  The attraction was purely visual and I new nothing of GoldWings, apart from the fact that this one has “GoldWing” on what I now know to be its battery cover.  I just liked its imposing appearance.  I had seen it occasionally when he rode it to work and of course I admired it, as almost everyone who comes upon a GoldWing in a car park does.  When I heard he was selling it, under orders from his wife to reduce the number of bikes in his garage because they were relocating, I fancied it – like I might have fancied owning an ostentatious Cadillac convertible.

It was the sheer magnificence of  it which grabbed me.  And when I mentioned it to Management, as she is known in our household, she took to the idea remarkably enthusiastically. Indeed she became more keen on the idea than I was initially, until she discovered how frightening it could be riding behind me as I was trying to get the hang of things.

I had no thought at all of making a GoldWing a serious or long distance form of transport, it was just something we both liked the look of and felt we could try out as a new pastime together.  I had no knowledge of a GoldWing’s  handling or performance as a motorcycle and when I first took an interest in it I had no idea whether I could ride it.  Although I was then in my mid fifies, I had negligible experience of motorcycling. Although I did at least have a motorbike licence.  I had passed my test on a BSA Bantam 125 when I was about 30, so about 25 years previously, in the days when the examiner stood on a street corner and watched you ride round the block.

But all I had ever done after that was potter around experimentally on a few old British bikes, riding a maximum of fifty or sixty miles or so on a nice sunny day.  My most recent two-wheeled adventures had been the very occasional trip on a Honda C90, which I bought to hang on the back of our motorhome as auxiliary transport.

Despite my wife’s very positive reaction to the idea of owning a Wing, I was still pretty nervous about whether I could ride it and whether she really would like being a passenger on one.  I arranged to take her with me when I went to see it and we rode there together on out Honda C90, wearing our scooter-type helmets and our matching motorhomer’s anoraks, me thinking this was a way of showing that we were proper bikers.

First I got the Seller to take my wife for a short ride – from which she returned with a big grin – and then I had a pillion ride, and finally I rode the bike myself.  I didn’t try anything ambitious but I managed not to fall off.  I even managed to do a somewhat hesitant (and probably fairly wobbly) turn at the banjo end of the culdesac where he lived.  This satisfied me that I probably could learn to ride this beast, so the deal was done.  As we shook hands on it, I remember the Seller tactfully suggesting that before we showed ourselves in respectable GoldWing circles, we should think about a change of riding gear.

Gordon (short for Flash Gordon because of his abundant chrome embellishments) joined our family.  I sold Gordon within a few months (via a dealer on commission, ending up with more than I paid) when I had the chance to buy another, grander  GL1200 – a much more elaborately equipped (and chrome-embellished) 1986 GL1200SEi, a veritable Barbara Cartland of motorcycles, this bike was named this bike Gloria.

So in general, at least among the Wingers I know, the decision to buy a first Wing is often a joint decision between rider and wife/partner, at a time of life when they have started to acquire the time, resources and appetite for a return to biking.  They buy a second hand Wing  initially and sometimes quite an old one to try out the new, joint hobby for size, even if they could have afforded to buy newer or brand new.  Wingers, or probably their wives, often give names to their bikes too.

And most people who get into Winging tend to stick with it; once you have met other Wingers and found them to be a remarkably friendly and welcoming bunch, it can become a very durable hobby.  People buy trikes rather than give up Winging and some carry on into their seventies and even their eighties.  I only know one guy who bought a Wing and then changed back to another bike – and even then he said would have kept the Wing if it hadn’t been for financial pressures to downscale.

So does this mean that Wingers are mostly “Howard and Hilda” types; sociable but slightly boring middle-aged couples who wouldn’t say boo to a goose?  No proper, roughy-toughy bikers among this lot then?

Well maybe some of us are verging on the respectable.  But the Wingers I have mentioned here have varied backgrounds.  One gentle lorry driver and his church-going wife, one former Hell’s Angel whose wife is into cutting up feet, one van-driver Man’s Man who has run someone off the road in his time and the longest-suffering wife in history (but he does as he’s told when push comes to shove, same as the rest of us.) one smooth-talking salesman who wear pinnies in his other life and his nursey-nice wife,  one manager and his managing housewife, one businessman-cum-amateur bike mechanic and his scary-but-kindly wife who works in a hospice – and a trainee Minister of Religion and his amazingly still-sane and supportive wife.  This sample also includes a former kart racer, a car racer, a musical roadie, not to mention one guy who is still a habitual cat persecutor.

And the really nice thing is that these people, or at least the ones who know each other, are all very good friends.  They would all tell you that Wingers are almost all very friendly and welcoming people, especially to newcomers.

So, Wingers all, why don’t you tell us what led you to buy your first GoldWing?  There must be a few interesting stories out there somewhere………..