HALFWAY HEROES

They’re not sportsbikes, they’re not nakeds, they’re halfway between the two and they’re the heroes of the Naughties. We took these two icons for a blast…

- BOOTHY / URRY

In the late 1990s, production bike racing in the form of the World SuperbikeChampionship was on a high and one manufacturer was dominating the headlines – Ducati. Over in GP, ‘mighty’ Mick Doohan was conquering all on the NSR500, but the combination of Mick and the Honda were so far ahead of everything else the racing was more of a procession for second place and GP’s viewing figures were in decline as a result. Race fans were turning to the high-octane fairing-bashing of WSB with their larger-than-life characters such as Foggy, Frankie Chili, Scott Russell, Nori Haga and the like, and this was having an effect on the bikes being sold in the showrooms.

If you were a fan of WSB, you lusted after a Ducati 916; it was the top dog on track with its V-twin soundly trouncing the inline and V4s. But they were a lot of money and they broke down. Spotting the market’s need for affordable, yet still high performing V-twins, Ducati’s rivals responded and the 1990s saw a flurry of V-twins emerging as a result. Not all of them were successful, but a few certainly left their mark…

By the time we got to the early Naughties, we’d seen the first breed of affordable, crowd-pleasing Japanese V-twins, in the shape of the Suzuki TL1000S and Honda Firestorm. Taking different paths, Honda aimed the ’Storm at the commuter mass market for maximum sales success, while the TL-S was targeted more towards sporty riders – not to mention a few hedges. A year later the TL1000R ‘superbike that never was’ arrived alongside an Italian sportsbike rival from just down the road from Ducati in the shape of the Aprilia RSV.

Some V-twins quickly fell by the wayside, but others succeeded, like the Firestorm, which was about for a good eight years, and the Tuono which is a model Aprilia are still actively developing 20 years after its inception.