Using 4th and 5th gears, you’ll find the bike can sit at 90-120 km/h at anything between 3,000 – 5,000 rpm. The bike is full of character and charm and this engine truly is the single biggest highlight of this overall package.
Riding the BSA Gold Star 650
First things first, let’s ignore and put aside the marketing blitz around the “greatest single of all time”. Let’s also ignore the single vs twin cacophony and appreciate simply what the end product is, on its individual merits. The bike sports a heavily reworked Rotax origin, 652cc liquid-cooled engine that pushes out 55 Nm and 45 BHP – figures that hover around the same zip code as the Interceptor 650, being a smidgeon down on power from the latter and a hint up on torque.
Start up the bike and you are greeted with a raspy grunt which is nice enough at idle but not particularly exciting, specially if your benchmark is the smoother and bassy sound that the Interceptor produces. It does however sound really nice once you get going and while you’re astride on the bike and on the move.
First gear is rather short and you’ll find yourself moving into second pretty quickly to properly get going. Get past the 2,000 rpm mark and you are rewarded by a smooth, linear surge of torque all the way up to 5,000 rpm. Gear shifts are extremely smooth and coupled with the smooth and strong torque that this engine delivers, the bike feels extremely tractable and punchy as long as its sitting above this 2,000 rpm mark. Performance is brisk by any measure and this is a fast bike that’s rewarding to ride as well as full of character. If you’re going to judge the sound of this bike by standing beside it and revving it in neutral, you’re not going to be too impressed. But mounted on it, and working it through the meat of its rev range, you’ll be rewarded by a really nice sound which has its own unique grunt – very distinct from the smoother experience of a twin.
Performance has repeatedly been described as only brisk, but make no mistake, give it a solid poke and this is a properly fast bike between 2,000 and 5,000 rpm. While the character of the bike is one of a classic easy going cruiser, this is not just a bike for a “lazy, soak in the surroundings” sort of Sunday ride. I was regularly giving it the beans on the highway and believe me, you can have a properly fun time on this 650 single. Where bikes like the Interceptor are all about the higher mid and top end of the rpm curve, this bike is all about a really wide mid range of torque which will have shove all the way from 20-30 km/h to 100-120 km/h. It’s only once you get past the 5,000 rpm mark that the acceleration begins to slack off and while I have no doubt it can eventually claim its ~100 mph (160 km/h) top speed, the real rewards are all up to 110/120 km/h. This bike will do ‘all day’ cruising duties at 100-110 km/h with more than enough left in it for quick overtakes that need it to go up to 120/130 km/h.
Using 4th and 5th gears, you’ll find the bike can sit at 90-120 km/h at anything between 3,000 – 5,000 rpm. The bike is full of character and charm and this engine truly is the single biggest highlight of this overall package. It is an absolute peach and I had a ball of a time with it. At highway speeds, whether you’re cruising on country roads at 60-80 km/h or making short work of highways at 80-120 km/h, this bike can do both with ease and in whatever style you want it to – relaxed easy going cruiser style, thanks to the dollops of torque and tractability or the more urgent “twist of the wrist” thrills when you decide otherwise. While it is a 5-speed set up, I never found myself hunting for the missing 6th gear like you do in some bikes. The 5th gear felt more than adequate as a final drive at even higher end cruising speeds.
The front suspension is on point as well, but the rear suspension is its Achilles heel. It is way too soft and distinctly bouncy and if there’s one thing that’s going to temper your confidence of pushing the bike at higher speeds, it’s the unsettled and bouncy nature of the rear suspension. For a bike that’s otherwise beautifully balanced and would be a decent handler too, this rear suspension is a constant let down, whether when pushing the limits of the bike in a straight line or tackling curves. The slightest undulation can tend to unsettle the rider.
The second irritant of course, as previously mentioned, is the super soft seat. After a certain amount of saddle time, it gets so uncomfortable that its constantly overshadowing the overall riding experience while out on a longer ride.
That brings me to city riding, where a few points are of note. Firstly, the heat. This is a big capacity single-cylinder bike and you WILL feel the heat when you’re in bumper to bumper traffic – it’s not unduly uncomfortable, but it’s there for sure. I had collected the bike in peak hour weekday conditions from the Jawa showroom and this was the first thing that struck me about it – not that it surprised me though. The second is the tractability at crawling speeds. The bike absolutely hates being below 1,800 rpm and there were numerous instances when the engine simply cut off when the bike went well below that mark. The result is that you will find yourself slotting the bike in first gear a lot more than you perhaps normally would, to try and avoid stalling. But even after slotting it in first (and in some cases even dropping it in neutral), the bike would drop rpm and simply cut off at times. For a bike that’s likely to find favour more as a city runabout than a long distance, luggage laden mile muncher, this is an aspect Classic Legends definitely need to look into on priority. Constant stalling like what I faced can make city riding in heavy traffic extremely frustrating.
Overall then, peach of an engine, extremely characterful, brilliantly set up for most part, but let down a bit by the rear suspension and the super soft seat.
Refinement & NVH
This was the most pleasant surprise and hats off to the engineers who’ve got this together. The foremost concern that anyone has with such a large capacity single are vibrations. The teams at Classic Legends are on point here and have contained this brilliantly. The bike is incredibly smooth to ride at most usable speeds / rpm without any undue vibrations coming in the way. Whether you’re cruising calmly or giving it a shove, the bike is very smooth all the way up to at least 4,500 rpm. There is a hint of vibration that starts creeping in up to about 5,000 rpm, but again, nothing that’s unacceptable or disconcerting. It’s only beyond 5000 rpm that the vibrations really start making themselves felt, but by then, you’ve really extracted most of what this bike was designed for. Unless you’re specifically trying to find its top speed for academic purpose, you’re really not going to find yourself in that 5,000-7,000 rpm range too much. Full marks on this front then to Classic Legends.
Suspension and Handling
The suspension setup comprises a telescopic hydraulic fork in the front and simple twin shock absorbers at the rear. I think enough and more has been said on this front already though. The front suspension is fine but the rear suspension is quite bouncy and underdamped – enough to take away some of the rewarding character that the engine otherwise can deliver. The handling, otherwise, is decent – it’s not too sharp to turn into corners, but has just the right amount of feedback and response that I would expect from a bike of this nature. The 18-inch front wheel also lends it just that right bit of stability while on broken patches and going into turns that one might appreciate. Overall, I was fine with how it handled. But the rear suspension is just too soft and wallowy, taking away significantly from the overall riding confidence and comfort. This is perhaps one of the two most important aspects Classic Legends needs to find a remedy to.
Braking
In one word – excellent. The bike sports Brembos at the front and back – not ByBre as many might expect in this segment and price point. At no point did I ever feel under-confident dropping anchor in an emergency. The ABS equipped floating type calliper sports a 320 mm disc in the front and a 255 mm disc at the rear. The brake lever has good feedback and the overall setup provides sufficient confidence in pushing the bike.
Closing Thoughts
As a product, for most part, I am thoroughly impressed with this bike. This is probably the nicest offering to have emerged from the Classic Legends stable so far. It’s absolutely hit the mark on the design and styling aspects. It takes something to place your bets on such a large capacity single-cylinder and they’ve nailed what I would have thought is the hardest part of the package to get right. The engine, low rpm stalling aside, is absolutely on point – its smooth, punchy, remarkably vibration free for most of its operating range of rpm and serves dollops of torque in the most engaging manner. It does need to get a few critical aspects right – basically the rear suspension and the uber soft seat, both of which detract from the ride comfort and in some part, from the handling.
The only other aspect that’s a wait and watch is the expansion of its dealer footprint and establishing the long-term reliability of the product itself – again, key in inspiring customer confidence. They’ve made a very compelling product, which can easily be improved further by reworking some of these minor irritants. Address these, get the overall ownership experience consistently right and you’ve got yourself a winning formula that’s good enough to make a dent in the mid capacity classics genre.
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