Hopping across town on our Suzuki GSX-S1000GX to Garden Route Motorcycles in George during morning rush hour turned out to be a lot more fun than you might think. The bike, fully loaded with a weeks worth of kit for our trip back to JHB, easily glided through traffic and stopping outside Garden Route Motorcycles was quite the surprise.
Paul Manolas was the driving force behind Honda Wing Bloemfontein for as long as any of us can remember and that shop was something to behold. Go scratch out an old Ridefast Magazine from pre quarantine times, and even during “The Great Grounding” of the world. We visited there a few times and featured articles on Honda Wing Bloemfontien. Paul cut his teeth on the bench and is still the lead technician in his current workshop at GRM, specialising in the fun projects, restorations etc.
Walk through the front doors of GRM and you will be blown away by the sheer scale of the place and the amount of stock. Collectable bikes are displayed in roof high, custom built shelves. They even hang from the roof. High end used bikes of all descriptions are surrounded by more rider gear and accessories than you can even begin to imagine – we can’t even describe it, go look at the pictures to get a better understanding. The deeper you wander into the shop the more your jaw hangs open with the sheer magnitude of the place and the stock on hand.
There is a stunning workshop, separated from the showroom by a glass wall, and it is as neat as a pin – everything in place and a place for everything. Swing back around towards the front of the shop and there is a proper coffee shop right in the middle of all the action, where customers from all walks of life often have business meetings with their clients. Just off to the side of that is possibly the biggest stock holding of LEATT on display we have ever seen.
And don’t think you are going to get lost in the shop. The staff are on the ball with a friendly greeting and a smile and are very willing to assist you in any way they can. Chatting to some of the team we can assure you that they are well up to date with the latest tech used in each of the vast array of products they sell. Customers come from far and wide to do business in this shop, a lot of them from Gauteng, who plan their holidays around visiting GRM. Being able to touch, feel, fit on and then have it packaged and shipped back to JHB while they watch has won the admiration of so many customers.
Okay, so we are waxing maybe a bit too lyrical, but GRM is something to behold.
Vision and ambition are only achieved through exceptionally hard work and a canny business mind.
Do yourselves a favour, if you are anywhere within a few hundred km’s of Garden Route Motorcycles, make a plan to get there. You need to see this place to believe it.
