Cars vs. Bikes

This was big in the eighties - car vs. bike pieces, usually run (a)by magazines struggling with sales so trying to broaden the readership base and (b)by publishers who had car and bike titles so got a buy-one-get-one-free deal from hard working journos.


But what did they tell us? Bikes faster than cars? When the family go down to the in-laws I usually follow on a bike, but reality bites when their prep consists of closing the car door, while I spend ten minutes kitting up and fiddling with U-locks. And sure, traffic jams don't slow a bike much but then car drivers don't stop under bridges to put on waterproofs if it rains.

Truth is bikes - especially old, Italian bikes - are great fun, but comparing them to cars is pointless. In fact comparing them to each other seems dubious, because most of us are old enough to think for ourselves: this comparison malarkey just seems to be an obsession with auto-publishers. After all, have you ever seen a food magazine boasting "Pear tart or Cornish pasties? Read our 10 page special investigation."

Thought not.