That is a great vintage shot. Thanks for posting that. Good times!!!

What a great looking Suzuki. My favorite color too. Blue.

Me, or part of me, in 1976 on my 75 Kaw F7 at 16 yrs old. 
Schlitz beer shirt with iron on patches on the jeans. LOL.
One day I will have to dig through the trunks of family photos and find the whole picture. 

I can attest to the power of the Kawasaki F7. bone stock the bike could give some 250 machines a real bad time. it lacked in handling and the one I rode was a 1971 model with the Hatta forks, they were billed as 101 ways adjustable but none of them was correct. the pork references were from Dirt Bike Magazine which called the Honda XL175 a pig and even had a large sow in a pig pen posing with the bike in a pen in the test. the other magazines were sucking up to Honda in their tests. the bike was not only heavier but made no where as much power the two strokes made.

the word "oink" appeared in a word balloon coming from the Honda exhaust tip.

Rick Sieman wrote about that "Honda" incident that happened when he was editor....  Honda allegedly threw a fit and threatened to never give them another bike to test, withdrew their substantial advertising money, etc.  I don't remember all the details but he ended up at Modern Cycle. 

Here's a quote I found from Rick about the Honda XL175 article...  I believe he was editor of Dirt Bike at the time.  Somewhere I have more info on what transpired behind the scenes:
"The Honda stepped on their corporate pecker with the XL175 in 1973. It was a real pile, leading me to run a photo of a large white pig right next to the bike in a pigpen. The subtitle of the test, in rather large type, said, "AT $2.98 A POUND, THIS IS EXPENSIVE PORK"
Still, a lot of folks loved the XL175. I hated it. Not only was it hopelessly slow, it was also the only four-stroke we ever tested that fouled plugs regularly. The regular testers were unable to climb even moderate hills. Some say that we got the legendary "lemon" but we rode others and remained in the full yawn mode."

It seemed rare after that point for a motorcycle magazine to criticize a new bike or product.  I didn't realize what happened when I was a kid...  but I do remember a "shift" to where most magazine articles seemed to sugar coat most everything. I was and still am a huge fan of Rick Sieman's irreverent and sometimes brutally honest writing style...  He was behind a lot of my favorite magazine stories and columns when I was a kid...  some have called him the "Mark Twain" of motorcycles.  He certainly didn't care about being "politically correct". 

Tragically that goes on to this day in the few magazines left in print. Manufacturers say if you say anything negative about our product we’ll stop advertising in your publications. Of course now reviews are near worthless, so part of the content quality is down, thus less subscribers and eventually less magazines. Among many other issues of course. Quite the cycle and a real shame, I miss brutality honest no nonsense reviews, nothing is perfect.

What's really tragic is it has gone beyond magazines and print media...  toe the line or risk being "cancelled". 

Order gizmo's on line... They ask for a review.. but nothing with condemnation..  We are in deep!
Sneezles61

Mark,
Thanks for that great informative post about Honda. I thought something smelled fishy. We need more people like Rick Sieman in today's world.

Reviews are like opinions, everyone has one, good or bad, has anyone checked reviews when looking for a place to eat, then you pick one based off reviews and it completely sucks and tastes like crap, wait service is crap? I’m pretty sure it is the same as well on motorcycles, what is a great bike to some, is crap to others. When I was younger and rode crotch rockets in the 80’s to me they were great, accelerated, stopped and handled great, my brothers friends thought they were crap, I felt the same way about their bikes at the time which were Harley’s that definitely did not accelerate, stop or handle well. To this day I own crotch rockets, Yamaha enduros, mx bikes and I own a Harley as well. It’s good we all have different opinions on what’s good and bad and different tastes or we would all be chasing after the same girl.