The New Suit
My first brush with a Laverda came in 1984, winding through a eucalyptus grove on Shoreline Highway north of San Francisco, heading for Point Reyes Station on a Sunday Morning Ride, piloting my Norton Commando behind a then-new Laverda RGS 1000. I was only vaguely aware of the brand, having never seen a Laverda in the flesh, much less the exotic RGS. With its sculpted fairing incorporating an automotive-style fuel filler flap and a solo saddle with a removable tail fairing for two-up riding, it was like nothing else on the road.
Although it looked almost futuristic to me, in reality, the RGS was out of date when new. Launched in 1982 and powered by a 120-degree, 2-valve-per-cylinder 981cc air-cooled twin cam triple, it lacked the technical panache of the latest 4-valve offerings from Japan Inc., which was in an explosive era of technological growth. It was also comparatively slow, and worse, it was expensive, with a list price of just under $6,000, $1,500 more than faster, more powerful bikes like Suzuki’s GS1000S Katana. Magazine testers loved the RGS, but it floundered in the marketplace.
Hoping to shore up lagging sales, in 1984, Laverda introduced the RGS Executive, a touring-oriented package that featured revised, upright handlebars for a more comfortable riding position, “bat wing” fairing extensions to keep the rider’s hands out of the wind and dry, and integrated hard bags. Beautifully sculpted, the Executive’s bags were, perhaps ironically, hardly large enough to carry an attache case. Very few Executives rolled off the factory assembly line (possibly 50-75, most if not all painted silver), but the Executive bits were supplied to dealers anxious to move stagnating RGS stock. Unfortunately, a new suit wasn’t enough to save the RGS, which morphed into the SFC in 1985. Laverda shut its doors in 1989.
Twenty-one years after that first sighting, I finally got my RGS, a high-mileage but lovingly maintained 1983 model. With only some 250 RGSs sold in the U.S., ownership trails tend to present themselves, and a chance conversation turned up original owner John Laughney, who sent me my bike’s original bill of sale, along with photos showing it converted to Executive specs. When John sold the bike, the second owner returned it to standard RGS form, which is how it presented upon my purchase, but showing tell-tale signs of its former attire by way of holes in the fairing for mounting the bat wings and holes drilled in the lower side plates for the rack mounts.
Love it or hate it
The Executive’s flamboyant styling is something of a love/hate proposition, by some arguments ruining the RGS’ clean, flowing lines. I’ve always found it alluring, and John’s photos started an itch to return my RGS to Executive specification, an itch I finally got to scratch after years of trying to locate the necessary hardware, which is thin on the ground.
I found everything through fellow Laverdistis, the hard bags (complete with ultra-rare liners) and mounts sourced from a fellow rider in Colorado. The bat wings were a fluke and actually started the hunt, procured 10 years ago for free from a Laverda parts hound who had amassed a stash of originals, “fresh” from the mold and never painted. The hardest to find was the handlebars, long gone from the spare parts scene.
Enter Laverda maestro Wolfgang Haerter at Columbia Car & Cycle in Nakusp, British Columbia, Canada. Wolfgang often fabricates unavailable parts, including, as it turns out, Executive handlebars. Using a stock set for a pattern, he made a jig to weld up new ones and kindly shipped me the jig so I might weld up my own. It’s a somewhat exacting process, especially the clip-on mount, with a custom-made (by Wolfgang) clamp welded on before cutting through the mount and clamp so the bars can be cinched tight on the fork tubes. Welds dressed and the bars powder-coated matte black, the end result was better than hoped.
The high bars require longer brake and clutch hoses, a longer choke cable, and a unique dash pad, but Wolfgang had it all. I assumed mounting the hard bags would be the easy part, but the brackets and stays for the racks proved frustratingly fiddly and time-consuming to get right, but eventually, everything lined up. With the bags sorted, I attached the freshly painted bat wings and finally got to experience the Executive difference. Color me fickle, but at first, I wasn’t sure I liked it. The upright riding stance is unquestionably more comfortable than the RGS’ lean-forward position, but it doesn’t have the athletic feel of the RGS. But after a full day exploring local back roads, I came to appreciate just how much easier the Executive is to ride and just what I’d gained in the conversion. And with a standard RGS project in the works, pretty soon I’ll be able to change suits as I wish. Ride safe.
