Droop Snoot Beaut

It ‘only’ took Mike Newman four years to get his Bandit/’busa/ZX-9/10 hybrid into exactly the shape he wanted. Now it’s precisely the machine he had in his head all that time ago.

- Mark Graham

When you’ve been around bikes all your born days, it follows that you might pick up a few clues as to how they go together. Either that, or you develop a fierce and deep-seated hatred of anything to do with two wheels. 

Fortunately, Mike Newman has made the most of his immersion in all things motorbike. His long and lucky apprenticeship with his bike-restorer dad Pete has reached its current high point with this, his Bandit based Murder One. Murder One being the monicker given to the late Ian Kilmister’s Marshall Super Bass Head amp (Lemmy of Motörhead, lest any poor soul struggles to recollect the high priest of rock ’n’ roll). Mike likes his metal. And what more fitting tribute to the great man could there be than this beast of a machine. 

Dubbed an XRB1200R (XR as in its vaguely 69-ish credentials, B for Bandit and R because it is very R). There’s also a fair bit of Hayabusa in it too. You may have noticed the more than distinctive nose fairing: perhaps the standout feature of a machine positively dripping with invention, craft and painstaking fine-tuning. Aside from the rear shock linkage (more of which later), the front end underwent more changes in concept and execution than a Parisian couture catwalk collection. “When I finished it first time round in April, I took it to the Big Breakfast meet at Lynn’s Raven Cafe at Prees Heath, near Whitchurch,” says Mike. “I had ZXR250 lights on it, the really tiny ones. Someone took a picture of it and when I saw the pic I thought NO – that’s just not right.” Since the whole creation had been nearly four years in the making, another return to the drawing board was not going to hurt the non-existent schedule.