Last Page - Orange County Choppers

You just know there's a sea change happening when you hear that Orange County Choppers is now stocking Schwinn motor scooters. Really. They're also opening a Ducati dealership. They've probably got some ShamWow's behind the counter, too, if you ask real nice.

Metaphorically speaking, the glory days of the lavish, silly custom chopper seem to have recently crested the top of the bell curve in a ballistic arc. And we've endured a queasy freefall to a gruesome cased landing that has left nothing in its wake but twisted metal and a hail of shattered teeth.

Into this delirious, bell-rung, aprs-impact fog, Honda rolls out the Fury. The timing is perfect in its imperfection. With the chronic wallet pain, stiffness and burning that characterizes spending in our current national financial situation, who would want to buy a sleek factory chopper with the comfort to cover literally tens of miles and the reliability to go 100,000? Let's hope it's more than several.

This was not the way it was planned, of course. It takes time to bring something like the Fury to market. And credit to Honda for summoning the gumption to do what no other major manufacturer would try. With the fine bone structure of a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model (are the suits not mostly painted on these days?) and the whip-me, beat-me mechanical submissiveness of a Rebel 250, the Fury may be only a ball-gag away from rolling perfection. If only we could afford it...