Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/128208
Egli Yamaha V-Max 1500 Wanna get away? By PHOTOS ALAN CATHCART KYOICHI NAKAMURA By n he thirty-something guy in the business suit driving the black Porsche Carrera with Italian plates was probably en route to Zurich to talk to his friendly Swiss gnomes about selling euros, buying dollars, shorting stocks or whatever else - best not to ask. He needed to get to the bank in a hurry. For that he was surely in, judging by the way he floored the throttle ahead of me, taking off from the lakeside traffic light only to have to screech to a stop a few hundred yards farther up the four-lane highway. Very un-Swiss but so very Latin. Couldn't resist it. I sidled up alongside him on the Yamaha, the low l i dark 48 APRIL 9, 2003' .. U .. I H rumble from its twin partially-gutted exhausts an incongruous contrast with the tinkle of the cowbells slung around the necks of the cattle peering over the fence at us, their jaws rhythmically chewing the cud as they weighed the chances of bike vs. car. They'd probably seen it dozens of times before from that spectator enclosure on the crossroads, but the Porsche guy was too busy focusing on the bank of lights to notice the Yamaha's mean stance and fat 200/50 rear tire, let alone the meaty liquid-cooled V4 lump or menacing polished silver air intakes on either side of the metallic blue airbox shroud. Or maybe he was a bike fan and figured his high-tech example of German performance engineering could outrun any 18-year-old neon e _ s vintage streetrod, because even when I slipped home bottom gear with a clunk - unavoidable with the Yamaha's rather notchy shaft-drive transmission, with the engagement dogs undercut to handle that extra power and torque - his eyes didn't swivel. This was straight out of a streetfighter guerilla warfare manual: a copybook sneak attack. I made it easy on him. The lights switched to green, and, unfamiliar with the bike's slightly stiff clutch action, I let him get the jump on me. Instead of winding the 1500cc 16valve dohc motor up to redline and dumping the clutch, I fed the power in smoothly and felt the blast of the Porsche's exhaust on my leg as he powered off the line. But then, as I wound the throttle hard open on the bike, the needle on the tiny, wristwatch-sized tachometer in the tanktop instrument cluster hit the six grand target as the V-Boost stepped in, and we hit launch control mode, shoving me violently backward into the seat bumstop, arms yanking in their sockets as the front wheel lightened and I fought to hang on and at the same time steer straight. Hooking second gear, then third, the power kept coming on strong. Halfway through the imaginary quarter-mile dragstrip that a lakeside blacktop in sunny Switzerland had just become, suddenly the Porsche was history. He probably never saw me through his tinted glass until it was too late. By the end of the fictitious strip, the car was a blur in the Yamaha's vibrationfree mirrors - until suddenly, I