Best value bikes for under £5000

SOME things can seem more expensive than they really are. Take Ferrero Rocher – nice chocolates that are divvied up at ambassadorial dinner parties, but come Christmas they stack them to the ceiling in Woolworths and any pikey can afford get their hands on them In their lovely shiny wrappers they can pass as quite classy. Similarly posh people can appear worth more than they really are. But if they are all so rich, why do they flog photos of their enormous houses or Caribbean holidays to Hello! magazine? The point is, they might be careful with the cash, but they don’t have to look like they are lowering their standards.

It’s the same with motorcycling: you might not have a lot to spend, but you can still look the business no matter which end of the class drive you park your bike.

This is particularly worth bearing in mind at a time of year when the wallet starts twitching at the thought of all those new bikes being launched or updated. It’s also a good moment to start thinking about buying second hand with all those older bikes being traded in.

A trawl through MCN’s Bike Mart reveals a huge choice of decent two or three-year-old motorcycles with low mileage, some at nearly half the price of a new one. The colour schemes might not be the very latest, the calipers might not be quite as cutting edge, smell of a new bike might not be filling your nostrils, but saving £3,000 plus can make those small shortcomings a little more bearable. And you don’t have to pussy around running the thing in – someone’s already done that job for you, thank you very much.

Of course there are things to watch out for when buying used, but, as a wise and learned bloke with a beard once said, ” Seek and ye shall find. ”

And so, we did some seeking, and this is what we turned up: five used bikes costing just £5,000 each – ZZ-R1100, Arpilia Falco, Honda Blackbird, an R6 and a Suzuki TLR 1000R – all with less than 10,000 on the clock. With these bikes, we are spoiling you.