Yeah, this is pretty much just a Moto Guzzi V7 reduced to it’s bare essentials. There is nothing ground breaking, and she even comes with a nostalgic story about “a trip to Southeast Asia, I rode a beat up Honda XL185 for a few weeks. Traveling light with only a daypack and not much of a plan, I found myself back in the game. I began thinking about a Hammarhead bike that could excel at the urban commute—and also break free for fast and light travel.” No, I don’t see the soul of a beat up XL185 in this build either, but apparently every bike has to hearken back to your biking beginnings to be significant (and sellable!).
What I see when gazing upon this Guzzi is steel. Raw, naked, bare to the wind and rain and sun, and that makes me smile. Steel, unlike plastic, has character and depth. It’s strong yet flexible, durable but vulnerable, and has a heft to it that plastics and composites just can’t match. I look at the gas tank, and I see more than just a vessel to hold liquid dinosaur. I see the history of steel: blacksmiths and miners and steel mills, tremendously tall smokestacks belching out billowing smoke, the acrid smell and taste of steel in the air. Steel from a blue-collar perspective, with all the positives and negatives left in, not whitewashed for some false sense of “authenticity”.
It’s probably not what Hammarhead intended, but it’s what I envision when I look at this Guzzi. To each their own!
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