WORDS: BOOTHY IMAGES: DAVE ‘HAPPY TRIGGER ‘ PARSONS
Ugly, old, worn out… and a couple of lovely bikes.
When was the golden age of the litre sportsbike? The answer to that question will vary, depending on who you ask. Some will say that we’ve never had it as good as we have got it right now, with umpteen levels of every electronic impediment that you can think of, and more brake horsepower than you can shake a dirty great stick at. Others will hark back nostalgically to the ‘90s, to carburettors and to clouds of blue smoke. However, if you ask me, and I would wager, many others like me, the mid-noughties, which provided us with some of the coolest and most exciting bikes going, has got to be in contention for first prize in the golden-era-of-the-superbike stakes. The R1, for example, might have been a pretty special bike since its first incarnation in 1998, but with a brand new engine and a ground-up overhaul, the 2004 model was really set to impress. Then again, Yamaha had had to do something, when the class-leading Gixer was pushing out over 160bhp. To stick it to Suzuki, Yamaha developed a big-bore/ short-stroke inline-four (albeit with the same five-valve head as the previous model) which, with 172bhp, would be the first bike to claim a power-to-weight ratio of 1:1. Ground- breaking stuff.