BRUCE IN BRIEF

Just a couple of days after riding the new R7, I found myself in the saddle of original, blasting it around my favourite back roads and ticking an enormous box I thought would never get ticked. The Yamaha’s been on my radar since I was a teen, witnessing via the telebox the masterclass Haga performed at tracks around the globe, defiantly flying the flag for inline fours at a time when if you wanted to win, you needed a twin. It is a bike with real pedigree and presence, and enough hype to fill Wembley Stadium a dozen times over… but what is it actually like to ride? Special, undoubtedly, but not from a performance point of view. I was hoping for fireworks but the R7 proved more pleasant than potent, delivering an average level of pleasure for a very non-average priced bike. The best way to describe it is like a detuned first-generation R1, lacking the zest and grunt of the larger capacity option, fuelling the adage that there truly is no replacement for displacement. The motor proved hard work at anything below 7000rpm, and was a real handful at pulling away from a standstill thanks to the tall ratio first gear.

On the move, the raucous note of the Yamaha warmed my cockles, blending a decent bark from the end can with a tantalising induction sound. There’s a lot to like about the machine’s character, but not so much about the way it handles. Whichever way you look at it, the R7’s a wholesome proposition, so it’s hard to ignore the weight of the thing. To add to that matter, the suspension on the bike seemed better suited to straight-lining than life at lean. It required quite a bit of effort to get it cranked over; the imperfections on the road, amplified by the bike’s stiff chassis, meant I was forever on eggshells, trying hard to interpret what the four-year-old track tyres would do if pushed a little harder. My bank balance isn’t substantially full enough to find out so my joyride was curtailed to the more simplistic pleasures on offer. On some bikes you need that tangible performance to put a smile on your face, but the R7’s aura made me happy when just tootling about. On a racetrack, I dare say the Yamaha would have had so much more to give, but on the roads I just accepted the magic of the moment, riding a bike that was über rare and rewarding for that reason.