Yamaha R1
Yamaha's R1 set more than a few performance benchmarks when it was introduced a few years ago. And some headaches. It was undeniably fast, but in its first incarnation was a challenging bike to learn to ride - even for experienced folkFunny really, as everyone said they wanted something that would literally fly out of a corner and get up on the back wheel. So that's what they got, and then struggled to handle it. A couple of monthsafter the initial launch, low miler examples were a dime a dozen in dealer showrooms - offloaded by folk who were seriously spooked by the model's awesome performance.
But it was a little difficult to tame for most mortals and the second model addressed that to some extent. However it's taken until 2002, and the third-generation bike, to see the user issues fully addressed. It's lost no performance so far as we can tell, but is now a much more accessible package.
It runs a serious sport riding position, and truly awe-inspiring powerplant. Gear shifting is slick, while steering is fast and stability very good. What we really like, though, is the suspension. This is possibly the best-suspended road bike on the road at the time of writing (July 2002), giving a lot of feedback to the rider and therefore developing an unusually high degree of confidence.
A year ago we would have rated Honda's Fireblade as the most confidence-inspiring hard-core sports bike on the market. In 2002 we reckon Yamaha has turned the tables by a significant margin.
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