The editorial in the latest issue of Dirt Wheels, hypothisizes that the tred toward heavy huge cush big bore utilities, is being fueled by droves ageing baby boomers. I absolutely agree! I see a trend toward huge "cruiser couch utilities", that actually get less and less sporty every year. And of course, you must have that big displacement to haul all those "beer guts" around!

It is really a laugher to call any of these machines "sport/utilities". A sporty machine is by definition light and agile, not huge and heavy. Only Honda is really honest enough to call their flagship Rincon an "SUV" (this turkey doesn't even have low speed engine braking!). Now, when you think of an SUV, does hard-core offroading come to mind? No way!

The other day, I met a bunch of "senior citizens" on huge utes out in the hills behind my house. Now, this is rough, rugged country with steep hill climbs and sketchy traction (it's right on an earthquake fault, and the hills are literally sheared right off). They were in way over their heads.........and somebody was going to have a rollover! They thought their huge utes would pull the hills, because after all "they are powerful big bore 4X4's". It didn't even occur to them that sport bikes fly up these climbs using momentum, and that grappling for traction on a 750 pound, heavy (top heavy) cruiser, didn't make a lot of sense.

Folks are going to be getting killed on these machines, and we are going to see the safety backlash that we had with 3-wheelers, years ago.