Used 600s challenge - CBR600F v GSX-R600 v Thundercat

The latest 600cc sports bikes are brilliant, but heading towards £9k. MCN investigates how close three 10 year-old 600s can get to modern day performance levels…  

• Find a sports 600 for sale

The Mission
Each of MCN’s road testers must buy and prepare an old supersport bike for a budget of £1500. The three bikes will then be tested against a 2010 Kawasaki ZX-6R… and the fastest one wins.

The latest crop of supersport 600s is phenomenally good, especially on track. But this performance comes at a price – the latest Yamaha R6 is now knocking on for £9K. Surely, you can have fabulous fun on track with a 600 for a fraction of that?

To test this theory, and find out how much slower you’d be going on an old bike, MCN sent its three road testers out to buy a supersport 600 each for £1500. If this wasn’t risky enough, given their past form for buying utter hounds, they were then told to fettle the bikes to make them go fast around Donington Park.

We were hoping for a Top Gear-style challenge, but with useful hints and tips. What we got was a maelstrom of cheating, swearing, and back-biting… with some useful hints and tips….

Read part 1 in tomorrow’s issue of MCN, on sale Wednesday 24 November 2010.