CARLOS’S COMMENTS

To this day, I still think this is the sexiest

Fireblade to leave the shores of Japan and grace our eyes and asses. Everything about it still looks clean and sharp by the standards of today, and even the cockpit didn’t feel massively outdated – it was actually a pretty nice place to be, with a simple and effective dash and some usable mirrors. Yep, they actually work! The riding position felt incredibly aggressive, but not completely uncomfortable, and it felt modern in the fact that you aren’t in the bike, you’re on it. When we got going on the old girl though, it’s fair to say it was a bit too sharp. Besides having to bump start it on the first few occasions, there was a serious issue with the fuelling. You think Euro4 ruins the bottom end of new bikes? Well, this thing has a throttle so sensitive it felt more like a bucking bronco than a bike. When it finally got going out of that gruelling first few thousand revs though, it was absolute gold. We say that litre bikes have come on leaps and bounds, and they have, but riding the ’Blade was by no means underwhelming. Yeah, it doesn’t make a gazillion horsepower, but it’s raw, and definitely not underpowered. It felt like it never wanted to stop revving, with an absolutely stunning, screaming tone coming from that underseat pipe just begging for more. Yeah, it may be old enough to be a teenager now, but it still did what it was told pretty efficiently, with a front end that was absolutely delicious to bury into corners, even with a set of forks and a shock that have properly never been serviced. Would I have one? In a heartbeat, but I’d spend some cash on revitalising it. Oh, and another pro point is that there’s no

ABS. Hashtag ‘big skids’.