Alan Dowds

THE GREAT Barry Sheene rode a few bikes over his career – but it’s fair to say that he’s linked most closely with the Suzuki RG500. And Suzuki’s rebuilding the very first RG500 at this year’s NEC bike show in Birmingham. The G-54 model was the prototype 500 two-stroke square four, which led to the…

Continue reading »

Hinckley’s retro bandwagon rolls on with another old-skool dirtbike. Is it ‘meh’ or is it ‘wow’? When we were lads, a ‘scrambler’ was what your mad old uncle called a motocross bike. “Check mah new scrambler out son!” he’d shout as he careered across a field on a Maico 490, slightly pissed on Christmas brandy. The…

Continue reading »

  WOW. Just look at it. This is a limited-edition, celebratory version of the legendary MV Agusta F4, named for the firm’s saviour, Claudio Castiglioni. Claudio died in 2011, after a lifetime in the Italian bike business, running Cagiva, Ducati, Husqvarna – and most famously, MV Agusta. This final edition of the F4 – there’ll…

Continue reading »

KAWASAKI’S been doing great work recently, with its monstrous supercharged H2 bikes, new 125 Ninja and Z learner-machines, plus the sweet beefed-up ZX-10R and ZX-636R models released for 2019. But there’s more on the way! The firm’s global website has four bikes sitting under dust sheets, all set to be revealed at the EICMA Milan…

Continue reading »

There’s a growing trend of ‘fake’ bike kit and bits these days, and it could well be that many people don’t know exactly what they’re buying… Of course, smart bikers do their research first and the majority will tend to figure out whether something is straight-up or not. But, sometimes things slip through, or a…

Continue reading »