A CAFÉ RACER WITH SENTIMENTAL ATTACHMENT for the price of a greasy fry-up (or two…)

MANY YEARS AGO A BEAUTIFUL LADY called Rachel used to teach with me at the training school in Norwich. It was the mid Nineties, everyone seemed to come to our school, training was a lot of fun and the group of instructors were all young, enthusiastic, and loved bikes. Pete had a Z900, Rich had an American Police KZ1000 with titanium under the footboards, Rick had a beautiful Kawasaki ZXR750H1, and Rachel had a 1989 Honda CBR600F. With its all-enclosing bodywork in white with red, it looked great, sounded fab and I was very jealous, while trundling along on my BMW K75RT (I was also dispatching at the time).

But just like the Suzuki GSX, CBR1000, ZZR600 and Ducati Paso, enclosed bodywork, like the Triumph bathtubs and Ariels decades before, quickly became dated, especially after the odd drop or as panels started getting brittle. Rachel decided to move and sold her bike to my friend Rich, for his first big bike. This it excelled at, and predictability, reliability and comfort took us everywhere and once he moved on to a newer bike, I bought it to start my own training school.

By now it had no fairing lowers and was starting