You'd be forgiven for thinking progress in the world of motorcycles was a natural and seamless state and indeed, a leaf through recent history bears this theory out as we skip seamlessly from Kawasaki's Z1 via Yamaha's RD350, to Kawasaki's GPZ600 and onward through Suzuki GSX-R750s, Honda FireBlades, Ducati 916s and the like, to arrive smugly and satisfyingly in the present day where an array of stunning machinery is waiting to greet us in any showroom we care to visit.
But the problem with history is it only records the big news. Stories which should have been major bangs but turned out to be minor whimpers tend to be lost along the way and in this, the world of motorcycling is no different to any other.
For example, remember that funny Qasar feet-forward thing that arrived in the 70s when we thought bikes were suddenly all about to sprout roofs? Never quite happened did it. Or how about when turbos were all the rage back in the 80s and bikes like the CX650 Turbo (which, incidentally weighed about as much as a bungalow) were going to revolutionise motorcycling as we knew it? Both of these and more have been largely forgotten in the mists of time.
And this isn't entirely fair because it takes nerve to lead in a new direction rather than follow everyone else, even if that direction does take you down a cul-de-sac rather than triumphantly leading you to the Promised Land as you thought it would. So, deciding it was time to celebrate some of motorcycling's forgotten heroes, I lined up these four bikes you see here.
All were spearheading exciting new directions for motorcycling, we were told. They bristled with revolutionary technology, their creators eulogised about them as they were unveiled and we all truly thought we were looking at the future as we stared goggle-eyed upon them for the first time. Then the future inconsiderately headed in another direction leaving these bikes several light years behind almost overnight.
You could call these bikes turkeys, and you'd be right, but that would be missing the point because they may well have got it wrong but without them doing so no one else would ever have been able to get it right.