Over the weekend, I had the pleasure of spending some time talking to the great Bill Horsman (
https://www.motorcyclingsa.org.au/bill-horsman-inducted-into-the-motorcycling-sa-hall-of-fame/ ), and he mentioned that he rode the first ST in SA. He also told an interesting story about it.
When Honda first introduced the bike to Australia, they sent six grey test bikes over (one for each state) and selected a test rider from, I guess, known motorcyclists. These riders were asked to ride the bike and put it through it's paces and report back. Bill reported that it only really had one problem- at over 100mph (160kmh) you had to push back on the bars because the windscreen formed enough of a vacuum behind it to actually suck you into it. Apparently this was fixed by putting a couple of triangular cut-outs somewhere at the base of the screen (I think, I haven't looked at an early 1100 screen). He also said that he never saw another ST that colour.
My questions for the brains trust are as follows.
Did the windscreen mod happen prior to release, or did the first ones have the above problem?
Did any of the six grey bikes survive testing and stay in the country, or did they either get returned to Japan, or have a date with the crusher?