OCCUPYING THE MIDDLE GROUND
In a world where we’ve got characters like President Trump on the right and Diane Abbot on the left, there has perhaps never been a better time to occupy the middle ground. The same could be said of motorcycles. With proper exciting little 2-strokes now a thing of distant memory, and 1000cc superbikes forcing you to cope with nigh on 200bhp (not to mention having to pay handsomely for the privilege), maybe the middle ground isn’t so bad, after all.
There are plenty of ‘middleweight’ options these days, which have got the sort of power that you’d only find in a superbike, say 20 years ago – at the time nobody was complaining that the first R1s et al were too slow. In fact, it was quite the contrary. Realistically, we think you can get a proper move on, fairly easily, on anything in the 100bhp+ category – that’s not to say you can’t with a less powerful bike, they just take a bit of extra neck wringing.
It’s been a pretty exciting time for middleweight motorbikes over the last few years. We’ve just been treated to a new Kawasaki ZX-6R; last year the Ducati Panigale 959 Corse hit the showrooms; and that came just a year after the all-new, fifth generation Yamaha YZF-R6. And that’s just the sportsbikes.
We’ve had new middleweight adventure bikes (like the Triumph Tiger 800, for example),
