Some Mangalore motorcycle aficionados have multiple bikes. Some of them use the bikes and some others ride them to keep them in running condition. Some collect motorcycles as they cannot bear to see them disintegrate. For other owners, the separation from their favourite toy is unbearable.
Calrock Fernandes of Bajpe, who has five bikes, said that passion drives bike enthusiasts to collect bikes. He said: “You don't feel like letting people to allow them (the motorcycles) to rot away.” He has collected five motorcycles, including a Royal Enfield Bullet from 1970, a Jawa from 1969, and a Classic from 1985. The oldest motorcycle he has is an old race bike called “Matchless”.
Manufactured in 1948, it is of British make. He said that he found it difficult to source parts for the motorcycle and started it on Sundays to keep it alive. But he valued the motorcycle and had retained it because, he said: “The one I have is rare and very few like it have survived. Other bikes are of 350cc but the one I have is 500 cc."
Shawn Fernandes has five bikes of which one is a Yezdi and one is an LML Vespa scooter, which he uses. What makes him collect bikes? Motorcycle owners get accustomed to a particular vehicle and then they do not want to sell it. “They get attached to you,” he said. In the beginning, the vehicle has a mind of its own and the rider is not comfortable using them. Later, the rider gets used to the vehicle so much that he does not want to part with the bike, he said. Arun Shiri has five bikes, including a Roadking, Suvega, two Lambrettas and an Enfield. He said: “I just clean the bikes and keep them.”
Sudheer has eight bikes, four of which are running and the rest are in “different stages of restoration”. He said that “it is a kind of attachment” to the motorcycles. He said he now bought the models which he admired in his teenage years but could not buy then. He said they are bikes with which he grew up but never rode them then. “There were very few then, until the Japanese bikes arrived,” he said.
