Ducati has the Paul Smart replica, Triumph has a "scrambler", Harley redoes the Glide concept. Its very cool stuff, if you were riding in the 60's. I have to wonder how old you have to be to know that these things are about. We're talking 40 plus years, here, and I'm being polite. How many new or reasonably new riders ever heard the word "scrambler"? This is a great concept. It's a bike that doesn't work that great on the road, because the tires and some other bits of the bike are designed to occasionally also go off road. However, the bike also isn't that great off the road, with less than knobbies. The Paul Smart bike is a very cool thing to have in the garage if you knew who Paul Smart was, and if it meant anything to you. I do have to concede that, since I think only 500 are coming into the US of A, maybe it will be a cool collectible. All Harleys hark back to 1936 in some fairly evident way, so the Harley maybe makes more sense than the others. Despite wondering who it is that recognizes this stuff, I have to admit that it would be fun to have in the garage for those who do know what it is. A scrambler is a good fool around Saturday morning ride, if you aren't very critical. The Paul Smart and the Harley would definitely brighten the conversation at the local drink beer and look at bikes spot. Of course, my favorite retro bike would be an update of those good old hop on and go anywhere, even to the store, bikes of the mid sixties. I guess what bike to update would differ for almost everybody. It seems to me that the real job of the retro bikes is to play to the memories that work with the fact that riding a motorcycle feels pretty much the same at any age. On the other hand, the coolest thing about the new bikes is how incredibly much better they are than the old bikes. The retro bikes do work somewhat better than the bikes they emulate, particularly because so much has happened with suspension and brakes in the last 40 years. | 
