Road Tests

The Benelli concern has a long and illustrious history, but like many Italian companies it has courted financial disaster several times, and frequently only survived by the skin of its teeth. Founded in 1911 in Pesaro, the company came about when the recently widowed Teresa Benelli was looking to provide gainful employment for her six…

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Bimota SB2 Bimota, the small Italian manufacturer that’s been through more than its share of financial problems in recent years, developed a huge reputation in the 1970s and 80s as the source of not just fine-handling exotic sporting motorcycles but of two-wheel artistic expression. That reputation was originally built on providing frames for road racing…

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Bimota SB2 Bimota, the small Italian manufacturer that’s been through more than its share of financial problems in recent years, developed a huge reputation in the 1970s and 80s as the source of not just fine-handling exotic sporting motorcycles but of two-wheel artistic expression. That reputation was originally built on providing frames for road racing…

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Suzuki GS1000E Launched in 1978, the GS1000 looked as though it had been developed from the previous year’s GS750, which cynics suggested had been directly developed from the Kawasaki 900. Some of this may be true. Suzuki admitted that the legendary Z1 had been an inspiration in the creation of their first ever four strokes…

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Kawasaki Z1300 The colossal six cylinder, watercooled Z1300 came along just a year after Honda’s own ‘six’, the CBX. That had been awesome enough but the Zed boasted 15 more horses at 120 bhp! Fierce debate in the bike press was already under way about just how far the Japanese could go in terms of…

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Yamaha XJ900 Launched in April 1983 at Yamaha’s test track in Japan alongside the YPVS RD350LC two-stroke twin, the XJ900 offered a more wieldy alternative to the bulk of the XS1100 four of five years earlier. But the combination of a slim, compact but highly potent multi-cylinder engine – clearly a sporting package – with…

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Iconic Kawasaki GPZ600R Everything was going for Kawasaki’s GPz600R when it was launched at the end of 1984. The factory was basking in the glory that it had created with the GPz900R, a machine that set new rules for superbikes. Like the 900, the 600 was liquid-cooled, the first of its type. It had Grand-Prix…

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Suzuki RG500 (left) and GSX-R 750 Imagine, if you will, two design teams at Suzuki working in complete isolation. Each has been tasked with designing and building the best road-going motorcycle they possibly can. Both teams working late into the night fuelled by strong black coffee. Both working with cutting edge technology. And what a…

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Honda VF500F11 Jaundiced contributors to the pocket-sized bike mags moan about 25-year-old Honda fours as if they’re singing from the same hymn sheet: flaky ignition, self-destructing camshafts and cam-chain adjusters and self-seizing brake calipers. No matter that these bikes have been often sadly neglected by halfwit owners who’ve failed to observe the need for 1500-mile…

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Suzuki GT380 classic motorcycle Kawasaki and Yamaha’s contribution to global pollution levels is well known but it’s worth remembering that Suzuki was actually the last of the Japanese giants to abandon the two stroke. Honda showed uncanny foresight by not bothering with ring-dingers in the first place of course, but Yamaha had been producing the…

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