Fast forward 30 years.

Japan is in the grip of a nostalgia rage, a retro stage - possibly fueled by nostalgia for more settled economic times. Elvis is alive in Japan, Beatles music is playing again, and Kawasaki makes inroads with a newly introduced W650, the descendant of the W1. The vintage British look is suddenly vogue again among the Japanese young. For pop culture, the Sixties were British. Fashion, music, literature, comedy, film and motorcycles seemed to sweep out of Great Britain and set the styles and standards worldwide for design and taste. The attractive W650 immediately caught the hearts of the retro followers: the W had been reshaped to look like the iron icon of the Brit era: the Triumph Bonneville. And it was re-engineered to ride like one, too. It was an immediate hit.

Originally intended for the domestic market, the bike quickly caught the eyes of European riders as well, and the demand encouraged Kawasaki to introduce the bike there in 1999. Thanks to the Internet, North America riders also discovered the bike quickly, and pressured Kawasaki into exporting a small quantity to this continent in 2000. The W650 is also known by the clumsy and forgettable titles of EJ650-A1 and A2.

Retro hasn't reached the same fever pitch in North America, however. It gets too easily corrupted by commercial forces - advertising companies bankrupt of new ideas who turn to plagiarize the past. They turn cultural icons and pop music into advertising images and jingles, discrediting both the item they use and the product they try to promote. But there is still sufficient people who aren't fooled, who either remember the Sixties for what they were, or who aren't fooled by the advertising veneer. They see the W and they smile. They cross the road to begin conversations about long-past road trips on BSAs and Triumphs, they offer technical tips about valve clearances and spoke tightening learned from their years with old Brit twins. They appreciate the W as a tribute, not merely a copy.

It's somewhat ironic that in the final year of this millennium, the 'newest' bike that has drawn so much attention is a close replica of a 30-year-old British twin, a whisper of bygone days and forgotten passions and fashions. Just to look at it recalls images of bell-bottom jeans, fringed suede vests, the music of Janis Joplin and Jefferson Airplane, of Derek and the Dominoes and the Beatles. It throbs to the beat of John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers, of Jimi Hendrix and Quicksilver Messenger Service. To ride the W650 is to ride into Haight-Ashbury with love beads and a poncho. It's Vancouver and the psychedelic Retinal Circus in 1968, Banff and the King Eddy Hotel in 1969, Montreal and Expo in 1967. It's Mods and Rockers and Hard Day's Night, and it's Miles Davis and Thelonius Monk cool. It's soul music and Funkadelic, James Brown and Junior Walker. 

That's the sort of motorcycle the W650 is: evocative, a palimpsest that speaks of today with the shadowy text of yesterday still visible under the modern lines. It dredges the memories out of the basement like a Nehru jacket saved in a plastic bag, long forgotten emotions and sounds we hid away when we became respectable. For the youngsters who weren't there when those days were new, who never lived through the glory and agony of the 60s, the W opens the window to that past. It's the way-back machine that transports them to a time before the corporatization of the world, to a time when there was still hope for a better, cleaner, brighter world, and the Woodstock festival was a musical celebration, not a promotional gimmick.

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