July 2006I love this bike because it is far too much, and that's exactly how 1000cc superbikes should be. It's too powerful (164bhp at the back wheel), it's too fast (186.1mph flat out), and it really is too green. Disgustingly and violently so. I mean, look at it. If it were a T...

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...

to break the law me!'. She could do with some better mirrors though - unless you're going minimal in a t-shirt, the elbows of your leathers are going to be all you'll see behind you on the move.Bar the Translogic superbike-spec quickshifter adorning

"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...

"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-...

October 2003"What's your favourite bike then?" is a question I get asked rather a lot. And it is an absolute bastard.I mean ETI Ducati's current 998 BSB bike is the most ludicrously sorted racebike I've ever been near, yet I still have an odd affection for Harley ElectraGlides. A...

banish the big hole at 4500rpm and add a few more ponies), and a set of fresh BT012SS tyres, because the touring-spec OE BT020s aren't really up to track antics. Will the ZRX hold its head up high? I'll let you know when I'm back.February 2006BEING PRETTY