Dealership Photos from the 80's

[Trackburger]

Does anyone have any photos of any Trikes at dealerships in the 80's? Maybe you had your picture taken in the showroom when purchasing one or just a pic of the inventory outside??? Wishing I still had my old photos from back then as I know I had some. I'm not talking about a current dealer ship that has a restored one on display... but old pics from back in the day.

I'll never forget the day my Dad brought me in to the local Honda Dealership to look at the new models and pick up some brochures to google over at home and as we pulled up I saw a pile of cut up frames in the parking lot on the side of the building by the service bay...... Talk about making you sick to your stomach!!!:(

Thanks in advance!!!

[onformula1]

I wish I still had my pictures, most were in a fire and I know I had a lot of dealer & shop photos.

There was a very cool Honda and Yamaha shop in Flagstaff, AZ which is about 2 hours north of Phoenix, it was a very cool shop up in the mountains at that time it was a pretty small town and has a great riding place called the Cinders down the road. The shop was pretty small but absolutely full of trikes, parts, accessories and hop-up parts. Banners everywhere, stuff hanging from the ceiling not a inch to spare, the bikes & snowmobiles were over in the corner hiding out. The owner was really into trikes and people came from all over the state to buy from this guy. I often stop by and go into the store which is now a bicycle shop and just look around, it brings back the best memories, my wife tries to understand but it is tough for her. Shops like that are gone forever.

[onformula1]

Cool dealership pictures-

http://www.3wheelerworld.com/oldsite/KearneyYamaha.shtml

[Trackburger]

Thank for the link, saw those before but hopeing SOMEONE has a few polaroids to scan LOL

Wish I could go back in a time machine for a day.... man the 80's were great, I grew up in NH... there were trails down the sides of all major highways and more trails through the woods than you could ever see in a lifetime!!! Seemed everyone rode some type of bike, Companies had great advertising to get you to buy their product, factory racing, local racing....!!!

Now a days there isnt much if any of that..... everyones worried about getting sued. Just cant have fun like that anymore. Thanks again for the reply... anyone else???

[greenhuman]

I have a couple of Pacific Honda pictures. I will get the missus to scan them and I will post them tonight.

[Trackburger]

That would be great!!! Thanks so much!!!!

[atc007]

I hear you guys. Our main dealer back in those days is now a Vet clinic. I go by a few times a year. I Still hear the sound the fresh rubber made on the wood floor and concrete,depending on where in the shop they sat when I turned the bars . The smell of a showroom FULL of all the latest and greatest. The smell of Yamaha wax,,, They were a Honda/Yamaha/Suzuki dealer. Very heavily biased towards Yamaha! They used ALL their products. I have a couple bottles left from back then, good stuff. What I miss even more than having zero pics from our buys,is the work we did to earn that money. A World war,a farm built from rocks,and we don't have a single pic.. Ugghhhh. Hopefully someone comes up with something!!

[Trackburger]

Greenhuman... any luck on the scans!?!??? :Bounce

[BOB MARLIN]

This is from one of my wifes clients that is now called Mountain motorsports, but back in the 80's I believe is was "Ontario Honda" here in so cal.


220966

[atc007]

How cool is that! Lil 185S's in the back :)

[Trackburger]

Perfect!!!! Thats great!! Thanks!! Anyone else? Man I wish I had my pics.... I remember in 85 the showroom had just about 1 of each model and a nice 350 Odyssey.....

[Orangecnty250r]

I wonder what those 4 250r's look like now :(:( Hope they had a good life!

[BOB MARLIN]

What I found interesting is that the picture is dated august 1983 and those are clearly '82 models.

[86125m]

I wish I could get my hands on one of those first gen rs. In terms of looks they are my favorite of all the 250rs.

[Darius1502]

These were from an ATV and Motorcycle Expo back in late 84 or 85. They were posted on here a while back. Might as well be dealer pics:

22109522109622109722109822109922110022110122110222 1103221104221105

[6spdls1z28]

Wow that's awesome.

[Trackburger]

Great!!! Thanks for posting those!!!

[Darius1502]

Yep those are pure gold. Here are some that remind me of what a dealership would look like with today's photography (Courtesy of MacWorth RV & ATV) 22112322112422112522112622112722112822112922113022 1131221132221133221134

[Darius1502]

Here are some studio photos of a KXT 250 from either '86 or '87:2211352211362211372211382211392211402211412211 42221143

[Trackburger]

Thanks Darius, The pics are great but I couldnt get the links to work.

Come on guys/gals.... I know there has to be someone out there that has some pics from inside the dealerships mid 80's.....

[Trackburger]

Found these online..... Anyone else have any their Dad took while sitting on one at time of sale or any outside shots with them all lined up...???

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230386

[Trackburger]

Here are a few more I found on the web.......... PLEASE feel free to add any pics if you have them!!

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[Darius1502]

Here are a few more I found on the web.......... PLEASE feel free to add any pics if you have them!!

231311231312

WOW...these are so beautiful... MORE MORE MORE!!!!!!!!!!

[Trackburger]

Just seeing if anyone had come across any new ones???

[atc007]

I Miss Darius..

[El Camexican]

I Miss Darius..

Any time a big bore KTM comes up for sale in TX I think of him. Any idea what he's been up to?

[Big G]

I love seeing these old dealership pictures. Brings me straight back to the early-mid 80's when I was 8 years old and would kick tires at the small local Honda dealer.

[Red Rider]

I drove past my local Honda/Kawasaki dealership the other day, and the whole front display area was littered with side by sides.

[ironchop]

I drove past my local Honda/Kawasaki dealership the other day, and the whole front display area was littered with side by sides.
That's what ours looks like too. Both of them. We have a Honda dealership and a Polaris dealership and they are stuffed everywhere they can fit one at the expense of everything else.

I'm sure the commission is greater for those SxS's so who cares to sell a dirtbike anymore.

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[83ATC185]

I'm sure the commission is greater for those SxS's so who cares to sell a dirtbike anymore.

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I can't remember the last time i heard of someone bringing a new dirtbike home.

[350for350]

Those side by sides are like a biblical plague. They're everywhere you look!

[Trackburger]

Would love to go back to late summer / fall of 85 and have the choices of the 85/86 models..... Going to a dealership now a days is so different... selection is junk, prices are high, sales people are unknowledgeable.... the 80's were the S%#* !!!!

[atc007]

Any time a big bore KTM comes up for sale in TX I think of him. Any idea what he's been up to?

He's good. We try to keep in touch every once in a while. Such a great guy.

[atc007]

Would love to go back to late summer / fall of 85 and have the choices of the 85/86 models..... Going to a dealership now a days is so different... selection is junk, prices are high, sales people are unknowledgeable.... the 80's were the S%#* !!!!

It was amazing honestly... I live in a rural area. From our farm, there were well over 20 dealerships 2 hours from us,and I am missing a lot at 20. Honda of Wellsboro was our main haunt. It was a big dealership for back then. 3 main showrooms,all wood floors. They carried Honda, Yamaha,Suzuki. The place WREAKED,,like a skunk,,of Yamaha wax. I have a cpl bottles I put away from back then. That scent takes me straight back to good days ;). The sound of the ATC's front tire squeaking on a clean waxed wood floor. It's all burnt into my mind.

We started buying ATC's in 81,so I was there to see nothing but hard tails.. Then the Mighty 250R, then the 200X. I picked up on every nuance they would change. The controls, the gas tank caps. Every year and sometimes every half a year,would bring monumental changes. IIRC the 250SX dropped around June instead of the usual September release. It was always funny to see some dealers have zero of a fresh new model,and the next dealer would have 5 already out the door 2 weeks ago. Politics I guess :( . Dad would work between 3 Honda dealers price wise,if one pissed him off, we were out that door and gone. They learned VERY quickly,we were farmers,didn't have a bunch of time to waste and if they wanted Dads business, it better be a fair deal right up front or they wouldn't be seeing us for a long time. Some dealers would see us at the track sundays . I remember one asking how's that Big Red running. Dad looked at the ground,don't know, we traded it the day we left your place. He's on a 200X now...Great times for sure. I don't ever see getting back to a time anything like the 80's.

[shindig]

Yeah, I can remember going to one of the Honda dealerships in downtown Wichita and drooling over the big boy machines like the 200x, 350x and 250r. My parents wouldn't buy those for us because I had a younger brother, about 10 at the time, I was around 13. I ended up with a new 1984 Honda 200s and my younger brother got a 1984 Honda 110. Growing up in a more rural area, we rode those things all over the place. We had a old farmer (farmer John) that lived behind us and he would let us ride around his field all the time, as long as we stayed out of the crops. There was a creek behind the farm that we would ride through all the time and built up a pretty nice trail system through the wooded area. Fun times. I can remember when the creek would freeze over, we would take our 3 wheelers and skate all over them. Never once seriously hurt myself, maybe a bruised hand or foot would get caught under a tire or something. Good times. And it seemed everybody had 3 wheelers, unlike today where I know one guy that owns a quad. Just a different time.

[El Camexican]

I see we are cruising down memory lane, funny how that road seldom has any potholes :)

Being a little older than some on here my dealership memories start in the late 70s and end in 1985 back at the peak of it all when I got into streetbikes.

There was a dealership in Lockport MB that our parents would not take us to because the last thing they wanted was us riding around on bikes and trikes, so we would get together and walk down the shoulder of the highway to go pick up brochures and see the bikes. Walking down the unpaved shoulder of that 60 mile per hour highway was probably a lot more dangerous than anything we could have done on a bike, but I guess my parents didn't see it that way. I don't think I can describe the sights and smells any better than Bill, so I'll just say that it was worth the walk every time. We would tuck the brochures under our arms and spend the whole time walking home discussing which vehicle we would buy if we were able to and where we would ride it. Then we would bring them to school and pour over the finite details of every specification at lunchtime and point out to each other the various changes between one model year and another. Then one day the neighbor brought home a 185S and suddenly it was OK for everybody to have a three wheeler. Ours was the 1983 YTM200 that I still have, but there were others I got to ride like the little 2 stroke Yamaha's, a Big Red and a couple of Air cooled 250R's. The only time we ever saw anything showroom new besides Yamaha's was at the annual motorcycle dealers show at the convention center. At that show there were Honda's, Suzuki's and Kawasaki's as well, but those dealerships we're too far away to be walked to. Fortunately of all the kids in the neighborhood that was always one parent that would volunteer to round us all up in a station wagon and take us to the annual show. Unfortunately I have very few photos from back then and none of three wheelers :(

[ironchop]

I see we are cruising down memory lane, funny how that road seldom has any potholes :)


LMFAO.

We were discussing this at work with some Conservatives discussing the want to return to the Era of Reagan whereupon I busted out laughing.


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[atc007]

Excellence EL... It was just SUCH a different time.. Today with internet...Back then my only window to the world was ATV News ,3 wheeling and Dirt Wheels. Lance Bryson, Tom Wolfman Webb,Dean Kirsten and Phil Beckman took me with them to every race. I could give a flip less about geography,but I knew where every National was :) Every grass roots local track that posted results in the back of ATV News.. I was the only one at school that knew the compression ratio of each and every machine, the wheelbase etc.. I had a few friends who would "like" a new bike,but nowhere near my sickness,,recently called passion,...I like that better.
It is so cool to hear you had friends to share that passon with! This thread got the juices flowing today. Sitting on the very first ATC 250R minutes after it was uncrated, the owner ,Larry Knapp getting first seat and the mechanics second,,, then the few of us that were lucky enough to be there. That tank, those controls, that huge black gas cap,how SOFT everything was. How the kickstarter clicked in and out.. 20 feet outside that door,was my first ride on a ATC 250R ,My 85. I had already mastered how to go out in an afternoon and bend the axle, frame and everything else on that poor 200X. That R in low gear was like 3rd gear on a X to this 15 year old. What a rocket. We had a Suzuki dealer 13 minutes from us and a Yamaha dealer 15. Dad would have nothing to do with either one. ...God that Tri-Z... Golly what an incredible sexy bike when that dropped. Those lights, those factory gold wheels. But it was a Yamaha! ..El, Is your 200 THE bike your Dad bought? Gosh,if so,I will never pester to buy it again. That is awesome. I sold Dads last Big Red. Not a clue to who :( I must have 20,but not his :(.

[El Camexican]

The very same Bill. The next-door neighbor that had the 185S and his future brother-in-law (RIP) bought two YTM's in late 82 and my dad bought it off of the brother-in-law for 400 bucks a few months later when he decided to buy a car. I still have the bill of sale.

Speaking of smells I think the one most etched into my mind is that of hot mud and last falls stubble steaming on the fins of those otherwise odorless four stroke engines at night in the spring when temperatures were a fraction of a degree above freezing and we could no longer ride sleds. It was like the three wheelers with lights and fat tires had opened up a whole new world for us by allowing us to travel into areas where snowmobiles, dirt bikes and even rubber boots were never able to go before. Prior to the three wheelers those nights were spent sitting in the house waiting for summer to arrive and dry up those unaccessible areas.

[El Camexican]

LMFAO.

We were discussing this at work with some Conservatives discussing the want to return to the Era of Reagan whereupon I busted out laughing.

Now Nancy are you trying to say those days weren't sunshine and lollipops? LOL!

[ironchop]

Now Nancy are you trying to say those days weren't sunshine and lollipops? LOL!
Tipper Gore burned my WASP and 2Live Crew albums to protect me.... PETA and the Citizens for Decency or whatever were always trying to stop Ozzy from eating a bat...Nancy was being a giant buzzkill....Marijuana led to rape and murder.....People trampled each other to buy a Cabbage Patch doll......Two words for you. New Wave....AIDS and Nuclear Holocaust had everyone terrified....The Chrysler K Car..... Flock of Seagulls haircuts.....Penny loafers.....Rat tails or mullets....Should I continue? Lol

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[atc007]

The very same Bill. The next-door neighbor that had the 185S and his future brother-in-law (RIP) bought two YTM's in late 82 and my dad bought it off of the brother-in-law for 400 bucks a few months later when he decided to buy a car. I still have the bill of sale.

Speaking of smells I think the one most etched into my mind is that of hot mud and last falls stubble steaming on the fins of those otherwise odorless four stroke engines at night in the spring when temperatures were a fraction of a degree above freezing and we could no longer ride sleds. It was like the three wheelers with lights and fat tires had opened up a whole new world for us by allowing us to travel into areas where snowmobiles, dirt bikes and even rubber boots were never able to go before. Prior to the three wheelers those nights were spent sitting in the house waiting for summer to arrive and dry up those unaccessible areas.

God yes. Every word you said ! The odors of the engines breaking in,and the exhaust paint tempering. I always knew the smell of a Honda blindfolded. My buddies 1985 XT 200 got second place for that amazing break in smell lasting the longest, LT 125 got first. We all traipsed through the same trails,but that Suzook still smelled new at 800 miles or so. I always broke ours in, those crews just ran them wide open! What amazing memories...

[El Camexican]

Tipper Gore burned my WASP and 2Live Crew albums to protect me.... PETA and the Citizens for Decency or whatever were always trying to stop Ozzy from eating a bat...Nancy was being a giant buzzkill....Marijuana led to rape and murder.....People trampled each other to buy a Cabbage Patch doll......Two words for you. New Wave....AIDS and Nuclear Holocaust had everyone terrified....The Chrysler K Car..... Flock of Seagulls haircuts.....Penny loafers.....Rat tails or mullets....Should I continue? Lol

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Now that she's passed I wonder if Axel Rose ever got that custom bong he wanted?

[Bob B.]

You guys are killing me! I've become very sentimental for the past since turning 50. I too would visit every dealer within 40 miles of my house. I'd compare brochures/magazine articles and follow all of the racing news. I still wish I could have seen a pro race in 85', that would have been the the greatest!! My last new trike was a 350X, and as Honda called it in their ads, the "new king of the hill". I still remember how that machine smelled when started, very distinctive. I got a good job shortly after buying it and got into snowmobiles and fast cars so it was like new when I sold it in 92' for something like 700 bucks. I mean it was perfect never even flipped. The grab bar was worn down from riding wheelies for miles at a time but other than that it was perfect. If I could only have put it in storage........I remember the first trip to a Honda dealer to look at ATC's, I rode a 185s in the dealers side lot and ran over both feet. I couldn't turn it cause I was used to dirt bikes and my brain couldn't fathom turning the bars��, but I knew I wanted one. That was in Kittery ME, 1982 I think. I'm so glad I grew up when I did, I wouldn't have changed a thing. Thanks for bringing me back to the sights and yes even the smells!

[atc007]

If you get down my direction any time. Let me know, you can stop in and relive those memories :) Not the same as back then, but I'm working on it daily ;)

[Ghostv2]

If you get down my direction any time. Let me know, you can stop in and relive those memories :) Not the same as back then, but I'm working on it daily ;)

You gotta take up that invitation! Regina and Dave told me some of the stories about your place, it sounds like the dream.

Someone else was constructing a museum up our way, I wonder what ever became of that?

The last Honda dealership in my neck of the woods got torn down a long time ago. The same place my dad and pap got their 85' 200s and 200m brand new. I only have a couple memories going there as a kid in the 90's for parts. Sucks being born after the fact. But still enjoying them!

[Bob B.]

If you get down my direction any time. Let me know, you can stop in and relive those memories :) Not the same as back then, but I'm working on it daily ;)

I would love too see what you've done, sounds like it would be a worthy detour on my way to Gettysburg! My wife and I go to a nice BB there every year.

[atc007]

I would love too see what you've done, sounds like it would be a worthy detour on my way to Gettysburg! My wife and I go to a nice BB there every year.

Hop off 81 at Bingamton,1H45M and you're here,then take the scenic route down 11/15 to Harrisburg ;) . You're welcome anytime Ghost! I can set you straight on some "talk" ;). For that matter everyone but a few are welcome,just give me a heads up first!

[Ghostv2]

Hop off 81 at Bingamton,1H45M and you're here,then take the scenic route down 11/15 to Harrisburg ;) . You're welcome anytime Ghost! I can set you straight on some "talk" ;). For that matter everyone but a few are welcome,just give me a heads up first!

So you're by binghampton, NY? I'm down in Northumberland county in PA. A town in coal country called shamokin. Some people know of coal hill in Trevorton, that's only right down the road. But binghampton, NY is only 2 and a half hours away if that's where your talking about.

Anyone have any pictures of the Logos on their trikes from the dealership? This is one from shamokin Honda. The place where my dad and pap got their trikes from. His 200s has that logo going down the front forks. This is a picture from a TRX70 my buddy BRAPP had in his basement. He lives like 1 hour and 45 minutes away from me and it found it's way there. Pretty neat. I only found one other trike from the same dealership and my other friend got rid of it. Would like to find more someday.
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