Vintage Honda Ascot a blast from the past

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 28/06/2019 (2630 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A few weeks back, there was a mile-wide smile on my face as I cruised down a dusty trail on my 1982 Honda FT 500 Ascot without a care in the world.

That first ride had been a long time coming.

Named after the famed Ascot Park, a dirt racetrack once located near Los Angeles, Calif., the FT500 Ascot was clearly designed to look like a flat-track racer — and back then 15-year-old me was pretty much convinced it was the coolest bike ever made.

Long before the internet, we had these nifty things called magazines, and I vividly remember the moto-journalists at Cycle raving about what a great little bike it was. It looked like nothing else on the market at the time, and as a dirt bike rider who was almost 16 and ready to hit the street, it was right up my alley.

Back in 1982, I was a punk-rock-loving, football-playing kid trying to pass the ninth grade (again), washing dishes at the Bombay Bicycle Club for $3 per hour and riding a near-dead Suzuki RM 80 dirt bike that was way too small for me.

My responsible and resourceful older brother, Allen, however, had somehow come up with the cash and convinced our parents he should ride a motorcycle on the street, and bought himself a shiny, nearly new 1981 Kawasaki GPz 550.

The following year, hours after writing my motorcycle learners test, I was riding Al’s bike down Pembina Highway. He was amazingly generous and easily bribed, so I rode that bike every chance I got. Within a couple of years, I was working the door at Scandals bar and roaring around on a Yamaha Virago of my own — and by then, was pretty much convinced I was the second coming of Arthur Fonzarelli.

In the more than 30 years that have passed since those days, I’ve owned at least 40 different bikes. Back in the early ’90s, sometimes I’d only own a bike for a weekend. Sometimes I’d sell a bike rather than replace the rear tire. Good, solid, big-displacement Japanese bikes could be bought for a few hundred dollars and insured for even less, so that’s what I rode. By age 25, there was no way I’d have ridden a Honda Ascot — my fragile ego would have never allowed me to own such a puny little bike.

Last year, though, when my friend Shawn Dunnett posted a photo on Facebook of the Ascot he’d just bought and wrote of how he was going to get his motorcycle licence, my mind flashed back to memory lane and the days when I wanted an Ascot more than any other bike on the market.

“Wow, I’ve always wanted one of those,” I commented, “let me know if you ever want to sell it.”

Dunnett and I became friends a few years back after meeting at the Sunday night cruise at the Pony Corral on Grant Avenue, and even after he moved to Edmonton a couple of years ago, thanks to Facebook, we have kept in touch. He’s a retired military police officer who always wanted to ride a motorcycle, and after a summer of succesfully riding the Ascot, he’d found a bigger and more comfortable Yamaha V-Star. Last November he offered me first right of refusal to buy it. Initially, I told him it wasn’t in the cards, but it haunted me for days and I finally messaged him and made the deal.

The money was sent to Dunnett via e-transfer in April, and in early May, another friend of mine, Brett Keating, who is also from Winnipeg but is working as a journeyman lineman with Nunavut Power in Rankin Inlet, was driving through Edmonton and picked the bike up for me on his way back to Manitoba for a visit.

Initially, most of my biker buddies thought I’d finally lost my marbles for good. There’s no way a grown man who owns a shiny new Harley-Davidson should be so excited about an old Honda 500. Then they saw it.

According to Keating, on the way from Edmonton to Winnipeg, guys were giving him the thumbs up on the highway and praising the bike when he stopped for fuel. Once it was home in my shop, many of my friends who have seen it can’t get over how awesome it looks, and those who have ridden it have all offered to buy it from me.

It’s not for sale.

The engine is an air-cooled 498 cc SOHC, four-valve single-cylinder, which is basically the same engine found in the Honda XR and XL 500 dirt and enduro bikes. The transmission is a five-speed. The brakes are single-piston disc front and rear. There’s no cruise control, no stereo, no ABS brakes and no windshield.

Although it qualifies for an antique licence plate, I’ll likely only ever use it off-road as a trail bike, and may put enduro tires on it. I’d also like to find the missing left side panel, and repaint the wheels the original black — but for now, it’s perfect just the way it is.

It’s a totally different experience than riding my Harley.

It’s quiet and slow and you’re totally exposed to the elements.

It reminds me why I fell in love with motorcycles all those years ago.

My buddy, Donny Swirsky, says I look like a circus bear when I ride it — but he’s just jealous because I can do wheelies!

willy@freepress.mb.ca