I remember the day, 32 years ago, like it was yesterday. As the new recruit at Cycle Guide magazine, I was handed the most odious tasks and expected to execute them without a whimper or even a furtive eye roll. I understood that going in; it's just what you did as the new guy.

Soon after joining the staff, then-editor Larry Works realized I had virtually no experience on larger bikes and none at all on Harleys. So, naturally, he throws me the keys to an FLT we had and says, "Go to it, big boy." Smirking his way out of the shop, he let the assignment clang to the ground like the steel-toed boot that it was.

That Shovelhead FLT was, according to my limited experience on bikes and still-formulating road test vocabulary, the worst motorcycle I’d ever ridden. Slow, sloppy, poor handling, no brakes. Everything about that pig was absolutely foreign to a lad grown up on Japanese sportbikes and dual-sports.

For some period after that, I tried to avoid riding touring bikes, thinking that they were all that bad. I remember one night during the model-changeover time when our testbike fleet was quite small, making the decision between riding a Yamaha Venture or hopping on a dusty old-man machine left to molder at the back of the shop. The GS850G won.

It wasn't until Honda introduced the 1984 Gold Wing 1200 that I was conscripted into the service of a multi-bike, multi-state shootout. Warily, I scoped out the least bovine of a group that included the Venture, Kawasaki's six-cylinder Voyager, and—ugh—a Harley FL (this time an Evo-powered version). Through some combination of wheedling and bribery, probably, I got to take the Honda home first.

It was a revelation. Smooth, as you’d expect a Gold Wing to be, but also incredibly well integrated, reasonably powerful, and actually fun to ride. That was my first experience with a truly large motorcycle that I genuinely enjoyed, and I found myself anticipating every time we cycled bikes on the test that I would land on the GL12 (just as I feared the Kawasaki’s slot). Because the basic bike was so wieldy—the flat four’s low center of gravity helped, of course, but so did Honda’s vast experience with the platform—I found myself pushing it harder and harder. And yet the Wing kept coming back for more.

Although still relatively new to the scene, the Gold Wing was already iconic in 1984, having morphed from an unusual GT-style machine into a serious long-distance ride thanks to Craig Vetter’s genius called Windjammer. It’s fair to call the Gold Wing a game changer. Its unique combination of agility despite its heft, Honda’s build quality and support, and just pure suitability for the task of long-distance riding made it so. A legend almost over night.

Now the GL celebrates 40 years in production with a special 2015 model. I’ve spent plenty of time on various Gold Wing models since that first one in ’84, but I’ve never felt quite as close to them. Maybe it’s simply the bike’s growth from relatively simple tourer to accessory-encrusted land yacht.

Today, the Wing feels...well, it feels old. Still incredibly smooth, of course, and agile for a nearly 1,000-pound machine, but others have moved dramatically forward—especially Harley-Davidson with its truly great Project Rushmore bikes and BMW with the incredibly capable and thrillingly fast K1600GTL. Honda’s last major rework for the 2001 model year was the full spa treatment, but the 2012 update was little more than some Just for Men on the graying temples. The current bike, no matter how mature or how popular, simply doesn’t hold up to BMW’s or Harley’s best.

I don’t envy Honda the task of updating an icon. It has been one of Honda’s cornerstone bikes and, like Harley’s ongoing dilemma, begs the question: How do you radically update a core product without risking the current ownership? How much can you innovate before your faithful customers abandon ship? I’m glad I don’t have to answer these questions. But I am hoping the next-gen Wing bowls me over as thoroughly as the ’84 GL did.