Two-Wheeled Chic

A couple of years ago, Star Koerner was a 33-year-old Chicago bachelor with a prosperous life-insurance business and a weakness for sports cars. One day a friend who was going out of town lent him his little lightweight Japanese motorcycle. "The first two nights I had it," says Koerner, "about 18 girls asked me to take them for a ride. I said to myself, 'My God, I've got to have one of these.' " Since then he has acquired not one but three and not at all incidentally a wife. The Koerners belong to a motorcycle club called the Streeterville Scramblers, whom Koerner describes as "the most unlikely motorcyclists you ever saw, mostly professional people and businessmen who've always had the forbidden-fruit desire to try it, but were afraid of the image."

Forbidden fruit or not, the Japanese look in motorbikes is a hot new trend in U.S. transportation. They are buzzing all over the place--putt-putting up and down San Francisco's hills, snaking doctor, lawyer and merchant chief through the thromboid Los Angeles freeways, threading Chicago's Loop at rush hour, beating the parking problem on Manhattan's Madison Avenue. In suburbs, they bring home the bacon and buzz off to the neighbors. In hunting country they go camping and trail-riding. On campus they go on dates and even (when it rains) into dormitories. West Coast beaches have been swarming points for these polychrome mosquitoes all summer long.

Tweeds & Pinstripes. The single man most responsible for the craze is an energetic, 58-year-old blacksmith's son named Soichiro Honda, who began putting motors on bicycles after World War II, soon developed a lightweight motorbike of his own design. Honda machines beat the best in Europe's Grand Prix races in 1959; then, under the high-octane direction of U.S. Sales Manager Jack McCormack (now with rival firm Suzuki), Honda went after the U.S. civilian.

McCormack was not interested in the black-leather-jacket set. He peopled his ads with hair-in-the-wind young lovers, bowler-hatted executives and pert grandmas--along with the slogan: "You meet the nicest people on a Honda." From a standing start, sales revved up to $31,921,995 last year and an estimated $67 million this year. Two other Japanese firms (Suzuki and Yamaha) have jumped in to share the bonanza, and their combined sales will amount to about $28 million by year's end.

All three make a light, 50-cc. model with a top speed of 60 m.p.h. in a choice of snappy colors for less than $300. This is the most popular model for obvious reasons, such as the ability to say "fill her up" for 30-c- and cover about 180 miles before fishing for another 30-c-. Other models range up to 250 cc.--well under the roaring 350-750-cc. behemoths turned out by U.S. Manufacturer Harley-Davidson who, not surprisingly, last month rushed out its own $225 lightweight, made in Italy.

Plumes & Horns. The little buzzers are In; Vogue has started photographing Beautiful People sporting the latest screech in two-wheeled chic. But there is one jarring note: the unesthetic crash helmet, with its implications of imminent catastrophe. Perhaps plumes would help--or, for the aggressive male on the higher-powered model, Viking horns.

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