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. ...

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 ...

Launched two seasons ago, KTM's 990 Super Duke knocked the spots off the naked opposition. And for 2007 it's even better.KTM hasn't altered the basic structure of the bike much. It still keeps the same 999cc, 75¡ V-twin engine, trellis chassis, WP suspension and quirky looks, but...

Yamaha has been fairly quiet over the updates to its XJR1300. No fanfare, no big announcement, just a quiet re-introduction of one of Yamaha's old faithful.Now, the observant among you may well spot the major differences between the new and old XJR. Yep, the rear light is now twi...

The fresh-off-the-production line MV Agusta I'm sitting on is special even by the standards of limited-edition, £30,000 superbikes. The last three digits of the frame number were 012, signifying this was the 12th of the 300 F4 1000 Tamburinis MV is building.And it so happens that...