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/128321
In some ways. picking the winning bike wasvery difficult, but in others it was rather easy. As always, what it boils down to is which bike isthe best overall, with a lot of emphasis on which bike makes the best streetbike. We use the time on the track to push these bikes to their limits in a manner that would never be possibleon the street. On the street, we concentrate on things that your average riderwill have to deal with on a regular basis. seating position, shifting, throttle response, and all of those little things that you notice when cruising around. The Kawasaki lX-lORcomes upjust a little shortwhen you take into consideration someof the finer details. The fit and finish, although good, isn't on par with the best bikes here. The motoris a little buzzy, which in tum makes the cowls vibrate like crazy, and that's annoying on a bike with under 1000 miles on it. Thefact thatitdoesn't have a steering damper isn't thatbig ofa deal on the street, but to say that we didn't get a few good slappers on the streetwould be a lie. Themotoris without a doubt the mostentertaining of the bunch, and the bike is the lightest of the 10000c bikes. So ifrawperformance is all you're after, the lX-lORis your bike. Wegive it third place. The Yamaha YZF-R I has all of the attributes of a winner - well, almost all ofthe attributes. The bike, like the Kawi, is packed with rawadrenaline, the difference is that it's not as easily accessible on the RI as on the IOR/CBR/GSX-R. The gearing isso tall that to get intotile meatofthe performance, you almost need to get into triple-digit speeds. No, really. It'ssomething that is eas- 1 i1y fixed byswapping a sprocket, but we're talking aboutstock bikes here.Another area that hurt the RI is that the fuel-injection response isn't asgood as the previous generation's. I'm sure it'swhat allows the motor to make more power than it ever has, but is it worth the added snatchiness? The Yamaha is a great bike on those fast andopen sweepers, but when it came to getting the bike turned on some ofthe tighter roads, andat the StreetsofWillow, it became a handful, veryun-R I-like. That's just enough to put the RI in an extremely close second place. The winner, to be honest, is kind of a surprise to us all. We really don't think that anyone would have predicted that the CBR IOOORR would be this good. No offense to Honda. The bottom line is that the bike justplain works. Yeah, it weighs a full 30 pounds more than the Kawasaki, which issomething that we thought would hurt the bike in the end. As we said, the RR just works. The one thing that we thought would be the bike's demise, the Unit Pro-Link rear sus- Hrst, a disclaimer: Mytop choices in thisyear's big-borebike-fest are based strictlyon what I learned . while riding them at the racetrack because, unfortunately scheduling conflicts kept me away from the street-riding portion of the test. Even so. Iwould venture to guessthat my top three choices would be identical or very close to it had I actually taken them for a spin on the street. In any case, I know that my choicesdifferfrom those of mycolleagues. Here's why: Tome. the points that made our recentlytested middleweightcrop of sporties so appealing are a detriment to theirbigg siblings simply because we are now dealingwith a case of er excess - as inexcess horsepower - and these bikes cross the line where beingthrilled turns intobeing frightened as the tach needle soars and the speedometer reaches the 140 mph mark in the blink of an eye. So,when it happens that I find myself hurling around a racetrack at such velocity, I want an Open bike that givesme as linle to thinkabout as possible and allowsme to worry lessabout what it is doing than what Iam supposed to be doing, likeconcentratingon the track ahead. That said. I rate the Yamaha VZF-RI third. on the bottom rung of my personal podium. I love everythingabout the bigYammie. It provides a lot of high-horsepower thrillsin a sweet -handling package. but it justfelt a Iinleon the bigside for my tastes - nothingmore than that. But all of these bikes are so good that such hairs must be split. and after weighingand measuring, that was where Ifound the RI wanting. Just ahead of it was the Ducati 999 - and I'm not even talkingabout the ill-fated 9995 that was sup-posed to be part of thisshootout, but rather the plain 01' 999 Slrada. I loved the 749 in our middleweight batt le but I feltthat it needed more power. The 999 closes that gap on the titans in this shootout not by , sheer horsepower; but rather by increased ridability thanks to its larger-displacement Testastretta Ltwin. whichallows the bike to reallytorque off the curves. Couple this with the sanne scalpel of a chassisand awesome Brembobrakes that the 749 had, andyou've got a great combination for bigbike success. But the bestof the bestin my book is the Honda CBRIOOORR, because when all was said and done, I e foundmyself praising the big RR for the same reason that I criticized its small r sister. the 600RR, in our last sboctout, It has a seamless power delivery excellent tum-in characteristics andincredible stability. It , shiftsthe smoothest of any bike in the class. andits brakes are powerful and linear It feels likethe . 600RR, but with a rocket strapped to its butt. In a classwhere excess is the norm. the RRwasthe bike that I felt anyone could be comfortable on and the bike that I had to worry about the least. whichnnade it the most. SCOTT ROUSSEAU pension (because of its contribution to the bike's hefty weight), ended up being one of the things that made us fall in love with it.The Honda may not make the most power, but it gets it to the ground more efficiently than the other bikes. This coupled with the bike's amazingly crisp mid-range throttle response allows it to leap off of corners and allows the throttle to be opened far earlier than on the other bikes. The bike also offers an amazing combination of stability and quick enough tum-in, making for fast lap times on the tight street-like Streets ofWillow and veryrespectable on the big track. Almost every rider on our street ride placed the Honda in their top two picks at the end of that day. When you take into consideration the fit and finish, fresh styling and comfortable riding position on or offthe track, the CB IOOORR isa hard bike to beat. It justdoes everything well, and we mean everything. eN