I only bought my R1200CLC because she was the nakedest touring bike I could find and because the deal was absolutely unbeatable. At the time, I would have agreed with you wholeheartedly. I thought she was ungainly and odd. Since then, everyone else has convinced me that I must have been dead wrong.
You can believe this following or not: If I ride this bike eight miles to work and eight back five days a week, then four out of those five days someone will roll down their window at a stop light to tell me what a beautiful ride she is. This is the literal truth.
If I stop for gas people stroll over from their pump to admire. If I walk into a store I return to find people gathered, telling their friends how much they like it. People want to sit on her. Drivers hold a thumb up as they pass. I am not making this up. Nor am I the only one. All C owners experience the same thing. Ask them. If you park in a line of HD owners, they all gravitate. For sixteen years I was a high school football official. I once emerged from the locker room to find three cheerleaders stroking her tank. This is the truth. Old people, young people, working men, suits, braided beard bikers, housewives, perfect strangers. Everyone. Carefully coiffed trophy wives will roll down the window of the Escalade to tell me they admire this bike. I stopped at the cigar store the other day, the guy had to come out and see.
Is it like rap, an obviously ugly commercial racket sold to gullible youngsters? No. No one ever advertised this bike. Does it satisfy some favorite stereotype? No. It is unique. Is it beautiful? People seem to think so. It must be something innate in the shape of it.
I have been riding 55 years and have probably owned thirty bikes. I've never had anyone admire a bike like this. No, not even my V65 Magna. My daily commuter the last four years is usually a sweet K75, purrs like a kitten, runs like a deer. You know how many times anyone has ever admired her?
Never.
Bricks are a bargain to buy because they look like a frikkin brick, not because they are loaded with engineering flaws. Not by a long shot. No one wants them cause they're angular and the engine looks like a chunk. Soon as bricks hit the road, even beemerphiles said what a headache, and demanded their boxers back. BMW caved. Even those hideous GSs with their aftermarket tragkorbs looking like diamond plate medical waste bins demand inflated prices. You can pick up a fine brick for a song. But ten, twenty, thirty, fifty years from now, these chromehead cruisers will be a highly sought collector's item. Truth.
Ugly? I thought so too. After a while, I got the message.
Don't shoot the messenger.
