Owned an 850 LeMans for a number of years and loved it.
Gearboxes need positive shifts, and once you are used to it, they are fine. Don;t rush the shifts until you get the feel for the gearbox.
Electrics are probably a LOT better now than they used to be. Mine had a few 'quirks' ... like the kill switch power was seperate to the starter button....which took power direct from teh battery. This meant you can crank it with the kill switch off. The Japanese don;t do that....
It also had no plastic shields between power feeds and the handlebars, so when the killswitch shed a wire, it shorted the battery to earth.
Oh, and the starter motors were legendary for sticking. Got so I could strip, clean and reassemble the thing in less than 15 minutes.
But I loved that bike.
Until some utter moron drove into the back of me and wrote it off. I was stopped in traffic....he was gawping at some young lady in lycra cycling shorts.
Would I buy a modern V7? Possibly. They are derived from the old V50 base, and the build quality and QC looks a lot better than of old. Not powerful, and they look faster than they go, so get bought by 'that' sort of rider, who probably gets bored with it quickly and sells it on. But for an everyday modern classic for pottering about on, I think they do well.
