Once upon a time, back in the good old days, you could safely count on there being a bike that came along and made all others old news. Bikes that moved goalposts and set new standards, such as the Honda Fireblade in 1992, the Ducati 916 in 1994, the Yamaha R1 in 1998 and 2009, the Suzuki GSX-R1000 in 2005, and the BMW S1000RR in 2010. They made us stop whatever it was we were doing at the time and recalibrate what we thought was the pinnace of performance and innovation.
Such occasions occurred roughly once every two to three years, but since 2010 there hasn’t been a showstopper sportsbike. That’s not to say there hasn’t been significant advances in technology or evolution – today’s bikes are genuine improvements on their predecessors, especially in the green credentials department – but it is safe to say that all we have experienced in the last decade or more is evolution without a single case of revolution. Where have the poster bikes all gone?
With possibly the exception of the Ducati Panigale V4 in 2018, today’s current crop of litre sportsbikes can be traced back in some cases almost two decades. Even in the case of the Panigale V4, it could be argued that while it was a brand-new bike, it only came about because the V-twin layout had reached what
