would be the smallest amount of cash you'd need to part with to turn up a really good sportsbike you could to live with, cherish, and relish?After numerous calls to assorted iffy trade contacts we had a figure - £2,500 guv'nor. Yup, for two and a half

The plan was simple. Gus and myself would leave TWO towers early afternoon with the Duke and Priller, breeze into town dead casual like and hole up at the most expensive swank eatery we could find for a lengthy, late lunch on expenses before cruising the city's inner sanctum to s...

bollocks. You may say these things, you may even mean them at the time, but your first ride on the new FireBlade, R1 or GSX-R1000 is enough to shut your cake-hole for another six months.Big-bore sportsbikes are the Big Lick, they sit at the head

of sportsbikes forever.Here for the first time was a roadbike that not only looked like a racebike but went like one too. The weight was 25 kilos less than its nearest competitor and power was a claimed 100bhp. Even though this was substantially less in reality

of power or torque (the engine is in fact the same as the current model), and to sit on it you'd think you were on this year's bike.But then this isn't a bad thing because the 2002 Mille-R was, and still is for that matter, one of the best sportsbikes

Sportsbiking (www.farside-sportsbiking.co.uk). Barreling through French twisties at speeds rarely dipping below a ton in cahoots with some fast boys on R1s and the like, the SV was never left behind. It even wheelied like a good 'un.And at the track? It did a

the catalyst for street freestyle as it stands today. Taking their cues from European riders they took stunting on sportsbikes to the road, and did it all in little more than baggy jeans, trainers, and hair gel. 10 years ago it was something they did for shits

600cc sportsbikes rock. You know that, I know that, and just about anyone who's not been living in a cave for the last decade knows it too. And if you were fortunate enough to have had a few spare quid this year and chose to head down the 600cc

How excessive? Extremely. Line-up the four fastest sportsbikes currently available on the planet, ship them out to the legendary Isle of Man circuit in summer, and ensnare the use of the four fastest racers around the TT course, and you have

of these three come with the associated aches and pains of a pure sportsbike or suffer the outright speed and grunt limitations of anything below 600ccs.Instead they all get on with going as fast or as slow as you like, for as little or as long as you like