Naked Thunder!

Let’s face it – things are better naked, right? I mean, apart from me of course – I’m as fine an advert for full leathers or two-piece textiles (and full-face helmet with dark visor) as you get…

I’m talking about bikes… To be fair, I love a fairing: they are useful and, being the age I am, many of the bikes I owned and rode in my youth had one. It’s because I started out around the time of the GSX-R750F. That means some older friends and relatives poo-pooed my love of something with a modicum of aerodynamic efficiency: it’s a ‘crotchrocket’ or a ‘plastic fantastic’ they said and it ‘wasn’t what proper biking was all about’, they moaned.

I realised they had a point when I managed to nab one of the first Suzuki GSF600 Bandits in the UK. This was 1995 and I’d ridden GSX-R750s and other sportsbikes, but I had more fun in 48 hours on that Bandit (and at more legal speeds) than I ever had previously on owt with a fairing. Maybe there was something in all this…

Fast forward the best part of a decade and I’m a paid-up