We set out to have the best riding experience it's possible to have in one day for under £300.
Just recently, we've had several conversations with manufacturers whereby the user-friendliness of a 1,000cc sportsbike was deemed paramount to successful sales. User friendly, a 1,000cc sportsbike - are you joking? Surely the whole point of these things is that they should be intimidating, arm-ripping and aggressive, not compromised to pander to the kind of rider who likes the idea of riding something fast and scary, but doesn't actually posses the skill-set nor patience to learn how to do it. Excuse us for being old-fashioned, but if you're not man enough to ride one of these bikes properly after buying one, go get a scooter instead.
Then there is the ever-tightening net regarding emissions and noise laws. Now Visordown has no problem with saving the planet, it's a splendid and marvellous thing to save and action needs to be taken, but the facts are there for everyone to see: many of the latest sports tools are heavier, uglier and in some cases even slower than their preceding brethren. With catalysers choking the exhausts and people with decibel-readers demanding less noise than ever before, manufacturers are pulling their hair out trying to make their bikes evolve and look appealing at the same time. And some are clearly struggling.
But it wasn't always like this. Just a few years ago you could buy hairy-chested sports bikes that weren't bunged up nor compromised for Like To Appear To Ride Fast But Can't man. They had lightweight titanium exhausts, uncomfortable ride positions, trigger-switch throttle responses and razor-sharp handling that would terrify any rider who dithered about and didn't make the bike do exactly what he wanted. In other words: proper sportsbikes. And the pick of the crop were these three below, the 2005 GSX-R1000K5, Kawasaki's 2004 ZX-10R and Honda's sublime VTR1000 SP-2 from 2002.
And the best news is that you can buy examples of these three bikes for easily under £6,000 today.
Red-blooded motos such as these need open roads and light traffic, somewhere where you can pin the throttle through the gears, gorge yourself on the tidal wave of acceleration and not spend the following four weeks being raped in prison. So we started on the westernmost point of Wales, St Davids in Pembrokeshire, and headed inland cutting a bullet path past the Brecon Beacons, through Builth Wells, scaring the bejeezus out of several sheep and often ourselves as we headed eastwards with the setting sun on our backs.
To make sure our blood pressures nudged 12 on the Richter scale that day we stopped to indulge in other extreme sports along the way to show what could be achieved in just 14 hours with a little planning and some good weather. We wanted to organise the ultimate day out and try other sports that reflected the single-mindedness of our rides, so we surfed in the clear sea off Whitesands in Wales, skydived from 13,000 feet over Swindon, and finally snowboarded 200 metres of real snow at the Xscape snowpark in Milton Keynes. If you're looking to spend a day out on your sportsbike getting loaded on adrenalin with your best riding buddies, follow this lead.
Click here for the Honda SP-2 review.
