My Honda Super Cub

From Wikipedia...
The Honda Super Cub, is a motorcycle with a four stroke single cylinder engine ranging in displacement from 49 to 109 cc (3.0 to 6.7 cu in). Having been in continuous manufacture since 1958, with production surpassing 60 million in 2008, the Super Cub is the most produced motor vehicle in history. The Super Cub's US advertising campaign, "You meet the nicest people on a Honda", had a lasting impact on Honda's image and on American attitudes about motorcycling, and is considered a classic case study in marketing.

I bought my all-white 1964 Honda 55 Super Cub in the spring of 1966 for a hundred bucks. At the time, I had absolutely no idea "The Cub" would later be renowned as the most produced motor vehicle in history. To me, it just was the cheapest "motorcycle" I could find. Now I know calling it a motorcycle is a bit of a stretch, but it did have a motor and two wheels so it does qualify, but just barely. I bought it in Penticton, and my friend Bruce gave me a ride there on his Yamaha Catalina 305 to pick it up. The trip down was a LOT faster than the return. Bruce's bike could easily cruise at more than the legal limit, whereas the Cub's maximum cruising speed on the level was about 40 mph, much slower on the hills. Bruce showed great patience by matching my speed all the way back home. I'm sorry to say I lost touch with Bruce soon after high school. We'd been friends since grade five and he was very helpful and supportive when my Dad died suddenly in 1968. I know he went on to university and became a teacher. Last I heard he'd settled Prince George – I wonder where he is now.

Getting The Look Right
I didn't ask my parents if I could buy this little bike, I just did it. After the uproar over its purchase died down, I set to work making the Cub less wimpy-looking. First to go was the plastic leg guards. Next I "bobbed" the back fender – this entailed hacksawing it off just below the taillight. Now we're getting somewhere! Fortunately the heavily side-valanced front fender was made of plastic. So it was easy to shorten and cut off the sides, ending up with a slim "sport" fender like the Honda S90 had. It was still just a Cub, but now I didn't mind being seen riding it. Only one thing was left to do... get rid of that big suffocating muffler! In my search for a new exhaust pipe, I made a wonderful discovery – one of the chrome-plated wand sections from the family vacuum cleaner fit perfectly onto the Cub's head pipe. I now had a straight pipe exhaust that both looked and sounded great! I must confess I never did admit to "repurposing" part of the Hoover. I can still hear my stepmom grumbling to herself, stooped over as she worked the vacuum missing half of its wand – sorry!

Cheap To Run
Now that's an understatement! The Cub did 175 miles to the gallon! In the year and a half I rode it, I can remember only one time actually PAYING to fill it with gas. It was when, for some long-forgotten reason, I decided to ride to Kamloops, a distance of about 105 miles. It took a full tank of gas to get there so I had to fill up for the return trip. A full tank of premium, cost me 34¢! (A gallon of gas back then cost 40¢ and those rocket scientists reading this would quickly deduce the tank held less than a gallon.) Normally, when the Cub needed gas, I'd stop by a service station when one of my friends was working a shift – if the boss wasn't around, they'd let me drain the pump hoses. Three hoses would fill it up!

All It Took Was A Dime
I tried to keep it a secret, but somehow my friends found out the key was broken off in the ignition switch. A dime was the perfect thickness to fit in the groove over the broken key and turn the ignition to the ON position, an easy kick and away it went. If I discovered the Cub was missing, it would either be visible two or three blocks away, or it would re-appear in ten minutes or so, with John, or Dennis, or Gerry aboard, grinning mischievously.

Top Speed, 50 mph Drafting
I rode that little Honda with no mercy. It was almost always at FULL THROTTLE. Top speed, with me sitting up, about 42 mph, if I bent over with my chin on the top of the handlebars, I could get to 45. Drafting behind a bigger bike, it would go 50. Great fun, but at that speed the engine was revving much higher than it ever was designed to do. The valves would float, meaning their springs couldn't close the valves quick enough to maintain contact with the rockers. Top speed runs often ended up bending the pushrods. I got pretty good at quickly pulling the top of the engine apart and removing said pushrods. Then on the kitchen table, I'd roll the bent pushrods back and forth, prodding them back to straight. I can't help but smile when I remember the family sitting down to supper at a table that many times, an hour previously, had looked like a workbench in a motorcycle shop.

How Things Change
When I first started riding motorcycles, a lot of my friends had Honda 90's or Suzuki 80's (top speed about 60 mph). Next up were bikes we would have called mid-size, Suzuki 150's and Honda 160's (top speed nearing 80 mph). A really big bike would be a Suzuki 250 X6 or a Honda 305 Super Hawk (top speed 100 mph). When the Honda 450 and the Suzuki 500 came out, we just couldn't understand why anyone would need a bike that big! 
Nowadays there are 125 and 250 motorcycles and scooters around, but real street bikes now start at 600 cc. These rockets can easily exceed 155 mph (that's 250 kph). Let's not even talk about big sport bikes like the Suzuki Hayabusa which has a top speed in excess of 190 mph (300 kph)! I'll admit sampling that kind of performance would be invigorating to say the least. But do we really need a motorcycle that can break every speed limit in North America in first gear?
It was a simpler and I think happier time back when I was riding that Cub. There was no internet, no iPhones, no GPS, TV's were black and white with one or two channels, pant legs and ties were slim, and to every 16-year-old boy's delight, skirts seemed to get shorter every year! Our family rented a nice three bedroom house for $85.00 a month, gasoline as previously mentioned was 40¢ a gallon (or about 9¢ a litre), a nice steak dinner at Mr. Mikes was $1.49, and the base price for a new Corvette convertible just over $4,000.00. In the almost fifty years since then, nearly everything has changed. That is, except the Cub – worldwide, Honda still makes about four million of them every year... Wow.