Top-down talking about our bikes is when we make general statements about large groups of our bikes. To do that, we need terminology. For example:
Question 1: What name should we use for the whole ball of wax, the enormous group of ALL the bikes that Honda built around their 1084cc V-4 engine?
Answer 1: We could call it the Pan/ST1100 Line of motorcycles.
And then, what are the main differences among all of those bikes in that Line (consisting of maybe a hundred thousand bikes)?
Some Pans and STs have factory ABS; some have factory Police gear; but the majority have neither ABS, nor Police gear. I would propose the term “type” for discussing such differences. For example, I would say there are at least three types of models in the Pan/ST1100 Line of motorcycles:
• ABS Type,
• Police Type, and
• Standard Type, or Plain Type (as in the terms Standard ST, and Plain Pan).
Even with those terms like “type” available, there are still three remaining wrinkles to resolve:
Q2: Should we say the ABS Type actually consists of a pair of types: ABS I Type, and ABS II Type?
Q3: Do Americans have no problem with the idea that every model year from 1991 through 2002, the USA imported two models of what we are calling "Standard ST" (known as the California, and the 49-state model pair)?
Q4: Should we call the 1999 Anniversary ABS II models a special type, or just separate models, separate from the corresponding non-anniversary, 1999 ABS II models? (Are they simply of the ABS II Type, or even more simply, of the ABS Type?)
Those wrinkles aside, I think the time is ripe for use of “type”.