Jawa Forty Two

We Say: More Choices For The Retro Bend Of Mind, This One Is Quite Singular Though.

- Debabrata Sarkar

Revival of heroes from the past is always going to be tricky business. You can’t do too much, because then no one likes it and you can’t do too little, because, well, no one likes that either. With the Jawa, it is a doubly difficult challenge. Ask anyone what they remember most about the old two-stroke motorcycles, and invariably they will point out the unmistakable sound of ‘Darling’ exhaust. For those who still expected that to be recreated, well, too bad. It’s time to stop living under the rock. This iteration of the Jawa, the Forty Two, is what Classic Legends sees the motorcycle as today. Or, you could have the standard version of the Jawa too, with a lot more of its retro charm still in place. Walking up to these motorcycles, one thing becomes evident, they look good. The uncomplicated colours and chrome on the Jawa just works and you tend to carry on looking at it for a while. You notice little details such as the oldfashioned headlamp glass, the single horn sitting just under it, the speedo flush inside the headlamp shell and the handlebar sticking out with minimal amounts of clutter around it. You get wider fenders, and twice the amount on pinstripes, which looks like a bit of an overkill. On the Forty Two, these bits have been swapped for a regular naked headlamp, the speedo forming a separate pod and the wider handlebar has been blacked out. No chrome bits here and the bunch of colours you can choose from are ones you don’t usually see on a motorcycle. The narrower fenders look pretty cool too as does the rest of the blacked-out theme.