Middleweight Missiles

Getting to grips with the best mid-capacity nakeds

Do you remember when CB500s and SV650s dominated the naked middleweight scene? If you didn’t own one, chances are your neighbour did, or their neighbour was about to buy one.

Neither bikes were high tech, high power or anything special, but way back when, at a time when getting your knee down and learning how to wheelie were at the top of your riding agenda, these were the machines that delivered… and quite often on a budget.

Times have moved on and bikes have too, of course. You could argue that motorcycling has never been more rife, with great options of mid-capacity nakeds, the likes of which tower down on the credentials of old-school CBs and their kin of the late 1990s and early 2000s.

With the exception of chocolate bars that seem to shrink on an annual basis, most things in life are better, faster and that little bit more desirable than they’ve ever been... as we were reminded by this assembled mass of middleweight maestros.

For 2021, this sector’s been given a hefty boost with the introduction of three new models. Aprilia’s Tuono 660 got us all excited after testing it on its launch, and we were also pretty keen to see how Yamaha’s updated MT-07 would perform when stacked up against its rivals. Triumph’s Trident is a completely fresh face to this scene, and well and truly warranted a slot in this shootout.

As for Kawasaki’s proven Z650, that was the benchmark for the others to beat – being both a proven and popular choice on the roads, plus on the racetrack.

To put them through their paces and know them better than the excuses Carl gives us for not being able to keep up, we gave the quartet a good seeing to on an epic road ride before bouncing them off the limiter around our local kart track. The results speak for themselves…