What’s the hook?
Why do we like bikes? Is it about the looks? The performance figures? The simple riding pleasures? For me, the appeal is individual. Over three decades I’ve ridden a load of motorcycles, including my first bike that didn’t even have an engine. Me and my brothers would push our KE175 up a hill and take it in turns to roll back down on it. In terms of performance, it couldn’t pull the skin off custard, but the pleasure it offered us was off the scale. Since then I’ve owned new bikes, old bikes, V4s, strokers… and too many race bikes to mention. I’ve owned some absolute pigs, and some corkers I wish I’d kept. Throughout time, I guess the core appeal for me has been the performance of a motorcycle – but the engineering of a machine is equally as appreciable and quite often fuels the performance in the first place.
That’s probably why I got more than a little excited when the opportunity arose for us to do a bit of speed dating with Bimota’s new Tesi H2. I say ‘we’ in the royal sense, because Johnny called shotgun on the test ride long before my brain could compute an answer, but I didn’t mind because I still got the chance to look over a piece of craftsmanship that pioneers a look and design that is truly unique, using a multitude of machining processes and a shed-load of materials to create the £59,000 specimen. Yep, £59k. For that kind of money I’d want something special, and by all accounts, that’s Johnny’s take on it – as you’ll find when you flick forward a few pages.
Of course, money doesn’t always equate to happiness, and it was on some of the scabbiest bikes imaginable, held together with bailer twine and random bolts, that I had some of my most cherished rides. In my late teens, me and my mates would blast around on whatever our wages could afford – which never amounted to much. I had a VFR400 but most of my friends were in the SV650 club. What they did on those bikes, without tech or fancy paintwork, without getting caught by the cops, was unforgettable. It hammered home the good times you can have with under 100bhp to your name, or a bank balance with £59 in it, let alone £59k. It also fuelled the notion for this issue’s other big test: middleweight nakeds. We pulled together four of the best options in the sector and had a right laugh on them, on road and on track, revisiting our youth and seeing whether today’s crop of ‘first big bikes’ could hold a candle to the reprobates that came before them. I’ll let you be the judge.
Enjoy the mag.