Not fashionable, frugal…

It’s fair to say I’ve never been the sort of person to be at the cutting-edge of fashion. By this I don’t just mean about clothes, or TV shows, but anything really. I like different, I like quirky. And many of us do...

Bikes can also be unfashionable. In this issue, Steve Cooper talks about how the normally unfancied Moto Morini 350K can be a decent (and cheaper) substitute to the much-loved 3 ½. He’s right… it’s all of that bike and more – but for less!

Other bikes pop up in the head for the same reason. Much as we love the original 900cc Fireblades, pre-2000, the last from that decade (RR-W/X) were the best of the bunch. But, because by then the Yamaha YZF-R1 had come out, they weren’t the cutting-edge anymore. It’s shades of me back then, too… When all my friends had, or were, hankering after R1s, I had a Kawasaki ZX-9RC2: and loved it. I know what’s cheaper today out of the pair of those bikes…

And that’s the beauty of it. To hell what anyone else thinks. My biggest mistake when taking over at CMM was a short-lived series called ‘Lemons’, where we shredded bikes that didn’t light our fires. Well, it’s all relative, I guess. And I was soon taken to task (rightfully) by the owner of a belt-driven Kawasaki GPZ305…

We may well carry a feature on the ‘not-so’ classic bikes of the past soon, but you can be assured we’ll do it with some respect and reverence, with a right to reply for owners of bikes which, for some reason or another, fashion has passed by. Makes me want to buy a Honda Deauville...

In other news, Allen Millyard is off for a few issues being a TV star – but he will return soon.