THE FUTURE OF SPORTS-TOURERS?
It was a dark and stormy night and I’d been summoned by editor Paterson to the boardroom in the ARR Tower at Circular Quay. A special assignment awaited… I entered the 74th-floor boardroom and I saw Nigel in his tuxedo, fresh from dinner at the Japanese consulate, his back to me, staring into the gloom at the News Corporation headquarters far below. He turned, and with an ashen face said… “There’s been a terrible accident at the Yamaha factory. Parts from the scooter production line were accidentally sent to the Tracer 900 line … it’s not pretty. The robots made thousands of severely disfigured Tracers before anybody noticed. They’ve given me the task of evaluating them for sale, and I’m giving it to you…”
Then the alarm went off, my eyes opened, Nigel and his tuxedo were gone. The Niken GT awaiting evaluation in my garage was still very much there. Things were looking up.
ARR reviewed the base-model Niken in the April/May issue and while Greg Leech was impressed, he also pondered the question of where it would sit in motorcycledom. Now it was
