Steve Cooper
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Hidden Gems: Honda SL350
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Steve Cooper introduces us to one of the prettiest – and most underrated – of Honda’s 1970s offerings. Some would argue that, when Honda dropped the hugely successful CB72/77 for its follow up K Series 250/350 it somehow cheapened the brand. To a point that’s correct, but for good reason – the outgoing models were…
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Hidden Gems: Honda CB400N
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Well, this one should raise some eyebrows! Steve Cooper is, as the young folk put it, dissing one of the Japanese classic scene’s sacred icons and bigging up its oft reviled successor. Honda’s numerous 350/360 twins of the 70s were never the company’s best work and, realistically, they were little more than rehashed existing models.…
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Yamaha YR2C: when Yamaha joined the street scrambler trend
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Steve Cooper looks at how Yamaha took its all-new YR1 and jumped aboard the 1960s street scrambler trend. In 1967, Yamaha’s Iwata factory rolled out its most significant machine since the 250cc two-stroke YDS1 of 1959. The all-new Yamaha YR1 350 two-stroke twin was a ground-up design featuring a vertically split crankcase and a clutch…
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Japanese Street Scramblers: Kawasaki W series
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Kawasaki’s 1960s foray into four-stroke street scramblers produced just one model, but, as Steve Cooper explains, it was definitely a machine with merits. Kawasaki’s W series parallel twins stem from the Meguro Company that had produced similar 500s from the early 1950s. Towards the end of the decade a power unit very reminiscent of that…
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Japanese Street Scramblers: Suzuki T500
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Written by Steve Cooper, this feature looks at Tim Hart’s Suzuki-based street scrambler, inspired by the Stinger 125 and built using a GT500 engine and custom high-level expansion chambers. Constructed from used parts and developed over a ten-week build, the machine blends period styling with performance upgrades. Many have pondered as to why Suzuki never…
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