@1999 Yamaha R1

The R1 is not a difficult bike to review. Think of something a supersports bike should be good at and write down that the R1 excels at it. For MCN, introduce as many hackneyed clichés as you can come up with, plus a sprinkling of contradictory errors, and you’re away. Here goes nothing…

The R1 is a very fast bike.

I had a ’93 ‘Blade for a few years before buying my R1 new in September ’99, so its power and handling were not a total shock to me, but having ridden numerous other bikes, and most recently my mate’s new CBR600 Sport jobby, I can see how it might freak some people out a bit.

Put simply, most bikes are absolutely gutless by comparison. Forget what you’ve heard about how fast 600s are and how they’ve rendered 750s and 900s / 1000s redundant. Lord knows how some guys can get smaller bikes round race tracks as fast and faster than R1s and GSXR1000s. On the road, 110% concentration and gritty determination are often difficult to drum up for a trip to the shops.

The fact is there are very few bikes that can get anywhere near the R1 – the GSXR, the new ‘Blade, the fastest Italians – we’ve all read the tests, and these bikes don’t need to hit 11,000rpm before they want to go. The R1 provides useful drive from 4,000rpm for " relaxed " overtaking, it can absorb our worst road surfaces without rattling to bits (try to keep it to a minimum, though), and it will brake as well as most people need on the road. It’s pretty ballistic over about 8,000rpm, has a high top speed, and gets round corners fast enough to grind down bits of the bike without dropping it.

The R1 makes it very easy for a mediocre rider like me to ride quickly in relative safety.

After riding less sporty loners while the bike’s been in for a service, jumping back onto the R1 always makes me think the mechanics have removed my suspension. The bike feels stiff and flat, and you wonder why they felt it necessary to move the bars so far below you. Start it up and you hear the EXUP valve doing something clever when you open the throttle fast below about 5k. By 7k you’ve rapidly re-sensitised your throttle control or fallen off.

Get it onto some bendier roads and you remember how much it likes to lean, and unless you’ve fiddled with the suspension you’ll probably take extra care with your lines as the bike can tend to turn in a little slow and run a tad wide. Funnily enough, sometimes it feels better than others. Probably a sexual thing. And my brakes have always been crap ‘til hot, most likely for the same reason.

The front wheel lifts easily on the power in first, and fairly sharpish off a bump in second, and it’ll shake its little head accelerating quickly on anything less than perfect ground. A few people seem to have got into trouble with this, and steering dampers are up there with Akrapovic as mods of choice. Mine remains defiantly standard except for a double-bubble (not sure it helps that much), and gets along just fine on BT010s and shiny chain and sprockets. It give about 35 mpg most of the time, which is about 120 miles before reserve, and is actually not too bad on tyres.

Quality-wise, it’s not (yet) a Honda, but to be fair I haven’t lavished as much love on it as I probably should have, and it’s " got some legs " (high mileage to you, mate). Engine noises scare some owners, and EXUPs, tacho bulbs and Throttle Position Sensors like to implode, but all in all it’s been good to me. Wind and weather protection is – well, I’m afraid it’s not that kind of bike, sir.

Opinions differ over which year looks best, but most seem to agree that the R1 is the best looking Japanese road bike ever. If you want yours to stand out you’ll have to go some, as while there are lots of after-market bits to make it look and perform better (in most cases), there are a heck of a lot of bikes around and most have been adjusted in one way or another.

And there you have it. I’ve covered 22,000 miles on my R1, and enjoyed just about all of them. It’s as fast as I can use and I’m pretty sure the chicks dig it. My girlfriend never seems to want me to go anywhere without her on the back, anyway. Bitch.