1951. Motorcycle diaries, the great "La Poderosa"

Ernesto Guevara is a very famous character nowadays and one of the most known faces on the 20th century. His life as a revolutionary working together with Fidel Castro in Cuba made him famous and caused his death. I will not get into any political discussion. Ernesto Guevara, el Che, was a great rider and we travelled around South America discovering a beautiful continent and becoming the man we was going to be.

In the picture above you can see him at the age of 22. That was back in 1951 when he decided to get a year off university before he finished studying medicine, and he went around the continent with his good friend Alberto Granado. Below, "La Poderosa", the machine they rode as can be found on the Che Guevara Museum, Cordoba, Argentina

They had glorious adventures in that trip as anyone who has attempted or done something like that knows, but you can easily find that on the book Motorcycle Diaries, written by Guevara himself on the first part, and continued by Granado later. The book is actually composed by two individual diaries so we have different points of view. There's also a well known film about it.

But I want to focus on the most important part for me: The Poderosa Bike.

Norton is another example of the great British Bikes of all times. Motorcycle started in UK and they taught everyone about it. By that time USA and Germany were also making bikes but nothing compared to the reliability and power of the british marks, famous by their speed.

However, don't think we're talking about today's Hondas reliability or anything similar. Old bikes had old problems and they stopped and had more breakdowns that today's bikes. That happened to Guevara and Granado in all their way and they finally left the bike unusable.

I also ride a 500cc and I can tell how well handling and good for travelling are. The half a litre range can ride easily and have a good mileage as they don't have a bulky engine, but they are powerful enough to go anywhere. But back in the 51 a 500cc was the top of the bikes so they weren't riding a moped at all.

I can imagine the feelings one get when travelling, specially when you have the option to take a whole year out just for fun and rides. They settled in some places and worked but they rode everywhere in all weather conditions. Some could say a bike like the Norton is not of the use of off-road riding and those weird situations but... why not?

I think Norton is a great bike that is fortunately producing bikes again, and you can use any of them as you please. As I see it, you do not need to buy a BMW to ride all over the world -no matter what Ewan McGregor did- but any bike would do if you ride properly.