It was also one of the most accessible, as while the big four-stroke superbikes of the day like Yamaha's FZR1000 and Suzuki's own GSX-R1100 were well out of the financial clutches of all but the richest of youthful tearaways, the RGV was tantalisingly within reach. A bit of savin...

On the face of it this wasn't a good idea. Riding 250 miles up the M1 and M6 - a pair of motorways so tedious even hardened round-the-world riders have been known to veer into the Armco to alleviate boredom - in the middle of a Baltic February, with pillions. For the bike-hardene...

Summer's here and once more a motorcycling man's mind turns to thoughts of fun and frolics.Obviously not all of these thoughts will be about motorcycles, and may encompass other sunny distractions like foaming pints of ale in leafy beer gardens and the way women suddenly become m...

Chinese.Ask me what I would buy if my own money were to come into it and life gets a whole lot simpler. It would have to be a GSX-R750.£4000 gets you a clean private-sale 2001/02 model if you look hard enough and frankly, what more could you want

"Are you the blokes coming from the bike magazine?" asked the guy next to us as we parked up in the paddock. Damn. He'd seen straight through our clueless expressions, our brand new road legal bikes masquerading as hill-climb racers and our bungling incompetence as we struggled t...

Granted, said spiel was delivered in a manner that suggested these minor alterations were in fact earth-shattering developments capable of slashing seconds, perhaps even minutes from rider's lap times, and possibly securing world peace into the bargain, but behind the dry ice and...

"Cien sesenta y tres caballos?" asks the traffic cop, pointing at the K1200R. Rifling through the mental bin my GCSE Spanish has been in for the last 15 years I try and work out what he's saying. I'm roasting like a boil-in-the-bag meal but just as my brain edges toward meltdown,...

September 2003Luckily for me (although perhaps less luckily for the Suzuki) I found myself in charge of our SV for a fortnight last month, and what a time we had of it because between us we packed in 800 miserable UK motorway miles, several soggy laps of central London, a visit t...

In a desperate bid for every last drop of speed I'm tucked into the guy in front's slipstream so deep that if he so much as blinks he's going to have me as a passenger. I can feel my knuckles whitening and realise I'm holding my breath. I force myself to relax. The fact I'm texti...

It was fair to say this was not the most glamorous of launches. There was no hot and cold running champagne, no business class flight to a far-flung land, and nor was there anyone offering me gifts and trinketry at every available opportunity. Nope, instead what I got was a half-...