I’ve read motorcycle reviews for many years now and I’ve long pondered how best to go about it. Do I include details like a 0.1 degree change in head angle from last years model? Is this something the average rider needs to know? Then it hit me…that’s the main criteria. Needs to know. Riding a motorcycle is vastly different from driving and riders abilities vary to massively. A regular rider simply doesn’t need this info. It’s highly unlikely they’d be able to confirm the change back to back. Maybe a seasoned test rider for a race team would pinpoint the changes but why on earth am I writing a review for them. They’re out racing, not staring at a computer screen.
What the reader needs to know first up is what sort of rider the reviewer is, without this a review is useful but not as useful as you’d think. If Valentino Rossi complained about slightly weak power in the top 1000rpm of the latest superbike it would probably still be petrifying power to mere mortals. I like the top ten rating system. Take ten different riders of varying ability; riding sports bikes on a public road and where would you sit? I certainly wouldn’t be the fastest in this group, I'd probably be one up from the middle. Call if fourth place. The rider in first place would ride around me like I was a chicken standing dead still on the center of the road. Equally the rider in last place would think I was pretty mad.
So what’s a 2008 ZX-10R like to ride for a rider who’s slightly quicker than average but certainly no Valentino. Frightening is a word that comes to mind. I thought that, as many websites and magazines have well and truly covered the 10R from a professional rider’s perspective, I’d look at it from a first timer’s angle. Let’s say you’ve been riding a while and maybe you’ve started to push your 600cc bike a bit, maybe you’ve sampled your first track day, maybe you’re at least thinking of trying your bike on track. Now for some reason, call it lust, you think….hmmm maybe I need 200hp, maybe I should test ride a 1000cc machine. I could handle it.
Well…no you couldn’t. The new 10R is so fast, so brutal and so unforgiving of fools it needs new words to describe it. Imagine a wildebeest…okay got that. Now strap a 200hp engine to its belly; rip off its legs and replace them with wheels. As you can well imagine the wildebeest (yes that's how it's spelt, it's Afrikaans) is probably getting pretty angry. Now here’s the fun bit, grab some wasabi and shove five pounds of it into its mouth then jump on it’s back and hang on. As you hurtle across the savannah screaming for dear life; screaming for your mummy...that is what it’s like. That’s approx what full throttle on the new ZX-10R feels like. A near…very near death experience.
