In truth there can be no call between the two; it’s a mater of individual preference. I had an amazing amount of fun on the 599 – proper hooligan fun at times. The 599 demanded to be ridden hard all the time, turn that loud handle, rev that engine, grab those brakes, lean forward on…

I’m in the middle of a decreasing radius corner and I’m wondering if I’m about to get stung. No, there’s not a wayward bee in my helmet, but from the buzzing in my crotch there’s no doubt I’m on a 600; the Hornet 600, or Honda 599, depending on which part of the globe you’re…

Sibling bikes; comparing them is a lot like comparing white wine to red. They both may come from the same vineyard, they may even come in the same shape of bottle, but really that’s about as far as it goes. Right, fine, no point in doing it then – or is there? In the real…

With all the hubbub over the CBR1000RR these days, its 599cc sibling, the CBR600RR, has taken the pillion seat in the eyes of the world and Honda’s marketing machine. So, before we all get carried away with serious displacement lust of the hyper-sport variety, lets turn the dial on the way-back machine by, gasp, a…

Let’s get it all out of the way right off the top: the mirrors are atrocious, the fuel range horrible, it has a tendency to stall in hard stops, and the ergos are uncomfortable at anything slower than 120kph. Now throw all that out the window. Why? Gobs of low rev torque for one. This…

In 2002 Honda updated its venerable all-rounder, the VFR, and brought it into its sixth generation. The previous VFR was getting Maybe it was boredom from consistently winning British motorcycle magazine sport-tourer shootouts, but Honda seems to have fixed a bike that may not have been truly broken.  The sixth generation of VFR came to market…

The CBR1100XX Blackbird was, at its introduction, one of the most renowned bikes of its day. But that was far from my mind as I sat contemplating its seating position and what could be done to make it more comfy. I was tallying up modifications, not to improve its top speed, but just to make…

The first thing that will strike you about the ST1300 is not it’s styling, a preying mantis look that has been beaten into submission with the conservative stick by the marketing department, but its engine note. The engine at idle sounds like an escapee from the foley stage for a Jetson’s cartoon; a whirring sci-fi…