They say everything you need to know you learn in kindergarten. Today’s Nice Price or Crack Pipe Honda will let you relive those halcyon days, circling the playground on your trike, that is, if its price doesn’t make you think its seller needs a time out.
If you’re not caught up on AMC’s The Walking Dead then I’m not going to tell you whether preggo Maggie is a widow or not. Nuh uh, ain’t gonna’ do it. What I do want to point out however, is just how big a bag of dumbshits everybody on that show is made out to be. They go walking pretty much everywhere, or maybe riding a motorcycle, leaving themselves exposed to the bites, scratches, and probable stank-breath of all the titular dead folk.
If they had half a brain among them - it would probably be delicious. They would also wise up and realize that the best way to keep Zeke at bay is with a zombie apocalypse, death from above, re-kill ‘em all and let god sort ‘em out ride like yesterday’s 1995 Mitsubishi Eclipse Zombie Slayer on a jacked-up Nissan 4X4 frame. Damn straight you’d want to be high and dry in something like that when every day is Thanksgiving and you’re the main course.
Staying alive apparently couldn’t be cheaper either, and with its pittance of a price that Mitsu eclipsed the competition with a solid 65% Nice Price win, the second such result this week! Now that we’ve settled on how to survive armageddon, let’s go for the gold.
Honda once called their CB750 the ‘King of Motorcycles.’ Toppling a king is a tough task, but when they introduced the 1,000-cc flat four Gold Wing in 1974 Honda touted it as the ‘King of Kings.’ I think that’s what the religious folk call Jesus however, so we’ll just leave that alone.
Whatever you want to call it, the Gold Wing is a vastly different take on motorcycles than the CB750 and the rest of Honda’s line that came before. The Gold Wing was the company’s first ever water-cooled production engine, and one of the first fitted with an honest to god fuel pump. The line was initially comprised of four cylinder bikes but that expanded to include the 1,500-cc SOHC flat six GL1500 in 1987.
The half-millionth vehicle to roll out of Honda’s Marysville Ohio plant in 1991 was appropriately a GL1500 Gold Wing. This one was built there two years later and has had some additional work done to it since, in the form of a two-wheel rearend set up that has its advantages and disadvantages.
These bikes tip the scales at well over 800 pounds, so they are freaking huge and heavy. Part of that weight comes from carrying around six cylinders of pancake mill and a reverse gear on the transmission, but part of it derives from the fact that these bikes are loaded from the factory. This one has a full faring, a car-like instrument pod, radio, CB-good buddy, knee ventilation, and a host of other things to help make the highway a home.
Add to that the trike kit and you get extra storage, an onboard air compressor and the luxury of never having to touch the ground at stoplights. Ooh la, la!
Of course adding two wheels in the back means a completely different riding dynamic and the only way you’ll lean in the corners on this bike is when you’ve lifted a tire and are about to topple over.
It’s a good thing then that the trike kit is said to be removable, the task only taking five minutes and six beers. You might want to return it to factory specs for the mileage as well as the seller says the trike deducts 12 mpg from the two wheeler’s 42.
I don’t know the maker or the quality of this removable trike kit, but it’s little secret there’s no shortage of companies out there willing to do a three-way with whatever big-ass bike you might have.
What I do know is that there are 85,700 miles on the clock on this one, and the bike looks to have never been laid down sally. It’s been garage kept and claimed never to have seen the rain so stop asking, John Fogerty.
The asking price - trike and all - is $5,450, which if you price these things you’ll discover that (a) there’s more of them than you imagined, and (b) this is on the low end of their pricing spectrum.
But, is it a deal? That’s what we’re going to find out. What do you think of this Gold Wing trike and its $5,450 price? Does it seem worth that to you? Or, does that price for this trike have you asking, are you kidding?
You decide!
Portland OR Craigslist, or go here if the ad disappears.
H/T to picoFarad for the hookup!
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