onearmedbandit
5th February 2005, 22:05
Was thinking about the performance of new sportbikes the other night, how they are very close with only tenths of seconds seperating some in standard form on road tyres. The technology, money and r&d time invested in our bikes is unimaginable to the normal rider. And all this for what, new thou's are going for $21-24k?
So for a very reasonable price, we are buying vehicles at the very peak of their current performance capabilities. To do the same with a car would require an incredible amount of money compared to bikes. I'm not referring to toys like WRX's and the like, but talking Lamborghini, Ferrari, Porsche Carrera GT etc etc(like that funny named swedish car on top gear last yr) . As these vehicles define the upper limit of car performance, so do our $20,000 bikes.
And I would think the advancement made by performance bikes has been greater than that of performance cars. Tyres, suspension, power output and weight on todays open class bikes is almost equal to that of top level race bikes only 10-15yrs ago. Except they don't cost anywhere near as much, more like $20,000 (again). Maybe the same can be said of *some* performance cars, but I'd rather you wrote the cheque for one of those than moi.
So, thank you tyre developers, thank you Suzuki, Kawasaki, Yamaha, Honda, Ducati, Apprilla, thank you ohlins, kayaba, wp. Thank you all for supplying us with the latest and greatest products you develop for us. We don't know how lucky we are.
So for a very reasonable price, we are buying vehicles at the very peak of their current performance capabilities. To do the same with a car would require an incredible amount of money compared to bikes. I'm not referring to toys like WRX's and the like, but talking Lamborghini, Ferrari, Porsche Carrera GT etc etc(like that funny named swedish car on top gear last yr) . As these vehicles define the upper limit of car performance, so do our $20,000 bikes.
And I would think the advancement made by performance bikes has been greater than that of performance cars. Tyres, suspension, power output and weight on todays open class bikes is almost equal to that of top level race bikes only 10-15yrs ago. Except they don't cost anywhere near as much, more like $20,000 (again). Maybe the same can be said of *some* performance cars, but I'd rather you wrote the cheque for one of those than moi.
So, thank you tyre developers, thank you Suzuki, Kawasaki, Yamaha, Honda, Ducati, Apprilla, thank you ohlins, kayaba, wp. Thank you all for supplying us with the latest and greatest products you develop for us. We don't know how lucky we are.