OCTOBER 2024

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A Far Cry from the Star of Yore

Finally, I got an opportunity to ride the BSA Gold Star and, at first glance, it was a bit of a let-down considering what the Gold Star stood for in its heyday. At that time, it was a premium brand from BSA motorcycles. The original Gold Star was one of the best looking motorcycles of that era with a completely aluminium engine with big fins for the cylinder block and cylinder-head and a nice chrome swept-back exhaust bend pipe. This bike has none of that; in fact, the exhaust system is swept out instead of back and the engine, clutch cover, dummy timing, and pushrod tunnel are painted instead of being buffed aluminium.

The engine is based on the Rotax engine that was used in the BMW F650 Funduro. The engineers at Classic Legends have worked on it extensively to mellow it down from the original bike’s performance in order to make it more tractable, for it to be able to run a high gear at low speed. In doing so, the engine has lost the punch that one would get from a big capacity single-cylinder engine. This was done to compete with the twin-cylinder Royal Enfield and pander to the Indian customer who likes to plod along in third and fourth gears in the city. In the process, the bike has lost the fun factor of a big single-cylinder. The chassis, suspension, and brakes are well sorted, though.

The TVS engineers have further improved the RR 310. They have used all their learnings from their racing programme to further improve the performance of the RR 310. Now they have taken it to another level.


Aspi Bhathena
Editor