I was at the launch of the Sprint RS in southern Spain in 1999. Some muppet in the office thought it would be a good idea to ride back from there to the Midlands, in late December.But thanks to decent winter kit and the Sprint RS's solid attributes, I got back in one piece and no...

Honda's Hornet has always been a handsome machine, but despite being up against some tough competition it's attracted a cult following.It began in 1998, when Honda (and Yamaha with the Fazer) decided they'd had enough of Suzuki topping the sales charts with their Bandit 600, and ...

Yep, it's true. Back in 1996, when Triumph first mooted a middleweight sportsbike - codenamed T806 - they looked at making a triple.But, after listening to a number of 'focus groups' in the USA and the UK, it was felt that a tried-and-trusted four-cylinder layout should be used. ...

The Mulhacen is the result of a styling exercise gone public. Displayed at the 2004 Munich show the bike received a fantastic public reaction and won an award from the Motorcycle Design Association (MDA). This positive feedback was enough for Derbi to push it into production, tur...

Cruiser engines are getting so huge these days that Yamaha's new Midnight Star is billed as a middleweight even though its V-twin motor displaces 1304cc, the traditional American 80 cubic inches.The liquid-cooled XVS1300A squeezes into Yamaha's range between the Midnight Star 190...

Why do women wear stilettos? Despite the discomfort they wear them because walking on tiptoe makes their legs look longer, their bums more shapely and their boobs stick out. It's fashion over function.Why do you want a Ducati Sport 1000S? The very same reason. Because despite the...

Nostalgia is a powerful thing. There is no way half the crap that's sold on eBay would have been shifted if it wasn't for someone, somewhere, remembering their youth. And the bike world is no different.There is currently a revival in the retro bike market, or at least for modern ...

Not an exotic, far-flung track launch of a long awaited sports tool, this. Sorry. Instead we've got a minor update to the nice, sensible sort of bike your mother would want you to ride. This here is the slightly different Yamaha FZ6 Fazer S2. The oft maligned FZ6 Fazer has taken ...

Triumph's Bonneville America is a bike I admit I didn't understand until I rode it. I couldn't work out why it existed. Bonnevilles are all about the retro scene - you know, rekindling the flames of youth and all that, but doing it with a machine that starts everyday on the butto...

You might be surprised to hear this but the whole supermoto scene actually started in America, despite what the French like to claim. Sometime in the early 80s the Yanks devised a race series for TV that combined on and off-road riding and called it Superbiker. The idea was that ...