MUST-HAVE MUSCLE

If sit up and beg muscle bikes are your thing then you’ll know how practical a big naked Japanese four-potter can be. Back in the 90s many manufacturers started looking at their past, looking at bikes such as the Z1100R, CB900F and GSX1100 models. Each of the four manufacturers had a dabble at going back to the future and on the whole all of their efforts were decent. Skip forward to 2018 and those retro bikes from the 90s are now fast becoming emerging classics. Kawasaki was the first to see the gap and rustled up the Zephyr range. Hindsight reveals that they were a little too premature with their 550, 750 and 1100 air-cooled retros that were mostly created with parts by going through the skips around the back of the Kawasaki factory. No offence intended, but the engines in these bikes could all trace their roots back to the mid-70s themselves. The appetite for retro muscle means that even an 1100 Zephyr is no longer in the cheap seats. Good ones are very hard to come by, possibly due to them being a slack seller and iffy build quality. Either way £3000 appears to be the going rate for a bike that’s in tip-top condition. That’s about where the ZRX1200 prices start out. Sadly it’s the ZRX1200S model that props up the ZRX market, a ‘proper’ ZRX1200R with all of its lovely Eddie Lawson rep looks will be nearer the £4000 mark for a bike that’s been well looked after. Prices then run off up to £15,000 for a new and unregistered offering! The ZRX1200 morphed from the ZRX1100; these are pretty much the same bike, but with bigger holes in the barrels on the 1200. Today, £3000 can bag you a decent XJR1300 (and XJR1200) or even an early CB1300, that’s still a flipping gorgeous bike, the natural progression of the CB1000 Big One, a bike that’s pretty much vanished from the used bike market. Although Suzuki had its Bandit models it realised that it needed something a bit more retro and the GSX1400 is the biggest of the bunch. However it gets very mixed reviews. It looks great in the traditional blue and white stripes, but less tempting in some of the other colour options. There are plenty who must love them because prices rarely dip below the three grand mark. The real beauty of all of these bikes is they all run modern tyre sizes, and despite some being over two decades old you won’t find many that need restoring! Your biggest problem will be finding an example that hasn’t been treated to an overload of anodised tat, or been semi street fightered. Manufacturers still churn out new retro models and Kawasaki has gone one further and rebadged its modern naked range with the iconic Zed branding. This leaves some of us cold, yet to others it’s perfect sense – discuss. Will we look back and kick ourselves for not buying a 90s retro now? Three grand-ish isn’t a lot of money when you look elsewhere within our classic motorcycling world. 1970s and 1980s muscle bikes are out of reach for many, and new retros like the Z900RS will cost around £10,000 when they hit the showrooms. For me, big retros are a bit of a bargain, buy now ,p lay now (and later). Jacks of all trades and master of some!