‘It’s light, super-quick and perfect for short arses like me!’

Few machines have had as big an impact on modern motorcycling, nor been so significant to so many people, as Yamaha’s original YZF-R1. The no-compromise 998cc sportster set new standards for performance and handling when launched in 1998, so much so that, although it didn’t fit into most racing categories it still helped more than a few racers on their way to glory – particularly at the TT. It was on a V&M R1 that the late, great David Jefferies posted his very first TT win, in the 1999 Formula One event. The Yamaha helped him to two more wins that week. While later, John McGuinness, who today is so closely linked with the Honda Fireblade, had a later R1 to thank for his first big bike TT win. But the Yamaha would prove hugely significant to more than just racers. Indeed, no less than record-breaking globetrotter Nick Sanders who lists the R1 as his favourite, despite traversing the planet on machines as diverse as Hinckley Triumphs, an Enfield Bullet and a Yamaha Super Ténéré. “The best is definitely my 2005 R1,” he told MCN. "It’s the bike I rode around the world on in 19 days. It’s light at 171kg, skittish, super-quick for overtakes – and undertakes in India – and perfect for short arses like me!” Reader Lane Pratt is another who loves the Yamaha for its surprising versatility. “I started with a Harley Softail, moved to a KTM 690 Enduro and now have a ’99 R1,” he told MCN. “I ride to and from work every day, get out for fun at the weekends and love the fact an 18-year-old motorcycle still has mind-bending performance.” That original R1’s success was largely a result of the brilliance of project leader Kunihiko Miwa, who is now Senior Executive of Yamaha Motorcycles. His brief was for a nocompromise machine that would re-establish Yamaha at the top of the superbike tree. This was to be achieved by meeting three targets: the highest power (a specific target of 150bhp was set), the lowest weight (177kg) and the most compact dimensions in the class. That Miwa and his team achieved those targets and more (and famously declared the fact at the R1’s official Milan unveiling in September 1997) is well known. By so doing they set the more extreme template for all superbikes that followed. Exactly how that was achieved, via pioneering tech such as a vertically stacked gearbox, lightweight brake calipers and more, revolutionised the class. Superbikes would never be the same again. Just as importantly, nearly 20 years on, despite being superseded by numerous successors each, in various ways, an advance in terms of technology or performance (or both) on the last, that original R1 remains popular today, both for the experience it still offers and, to some, as a modern classic that’s now appreciating in value. Just ask MCN reader Peter Houldin. “I bought my ’98 R1 in 2005 and have loved it ever since,” he told MCN. “OK she’s nearly 20 years old but a few mods on engine and shocks have made her pretty much keep with later bikes. I have ridden later R1s but they feel flat whereas the old one takes me back to the good old days of the LCs and X7s.” Ran Hai is another. “I’ve got a ’98 R1 and it was very fast and light compared to my previous bike, a ZX-7R. It wants to wheelie out of every corner and at first was scary but after I managed to control it huge fun, too. It took time to learn all its tricks and it’s not easy to ride – but nothing’s been more fun.” Malcolm Bull, meanwhile, loved his ’98 R1 so much he bought it twice! “I bought it first in 2002,” he told MCN. “I then leant it to a work colleague for a weekend and he was so taken with it he made me sell it to him. I bought it back from him in 2012 and it’s still awesome to ride.”