G'Day Jane, wellin a lot of cases it was more out of necessity than anything else, we all thought 4 pipes were amazing at the time, trouble was that nothing rusted as quickly as a set of Honda pipes, I recently read an article where Honda were replacing them under warranty within 12 months of purchase!
Of course there were many among us who were caught up in the "need for speed" and 4 into 1 pipes offered more ground clearance, less weight and more power (supposedly) than the OEM pipes, so a lot of OEM pipes ended up in the trash, or were hung up in garages all over the world, to be sold now for more than what we pay for our bikes!
I "dropped" my new CB750F1 because I leaned it over too far around a bend and the horrible OEM muffler grabbed the road and spat me off, so I quickly replaced the muffler with a "Dunstall" muffler which worked very well and looked (and sounded) a lot better than the fugly F1 pipe.
Nothing has really changed much in the intervening 30-odd years, although OEM pipes are much better quality now, made from exotic materials like Titanium and stainless steel, that doesn't stop their owners from throwing them away and replacing them with the plethora of performance pipes available nowadays. In 30 years time another generation of "old farts" will be fighting over Ebay auctions for OEM pipes for their vintage R1's, Fireblades, GSXR's etc. Cheers, Terry.
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