Well, when a company who has built a reputation like Joe Rocket brings a motorcycle helmet to market, you'd expect it's going to be good and we'll tell you straight up that the RKT 101 is a winner. We'll cut them a little slack because it's their first attempt, but the RKT 101 isn't just a good first try, it's an excellent piece of work that should shame other helmet manufacturers who have been in the business, oh, shall we say 20 or 30 times longer?

The overriding characteristic of the huge V-twin is the honkingly massive amount of torque available. A peak of 115[ftlb] come in at a barely-above tickover 2500rpm. This makes the bike exceptionally fast off the line with no rider effort. Big V-twins are never silky smooth but it’s better than most. It’s a high tech engine, not simply a bored out antique.

With nigh-on 80ftlb of torque delivered to the rear wheel at 3700rpm, the Bandit’s new six-speed gearbox needs little provocation. It’ll cheerfully pull from 3500rpm in top gear and run on to 140+mph. That gearbox is typical Suzuki: precise, perfectly spaced ratios. And, hoorah, no sign of any fuel-injection stutters or flatspots in its performance delivery.

Honda claim over 100 horsepower at 5,000rpm from the fuel injected donk but the really big numbers are in the torque department, try 163Nm or 16.6kg-m on for size, at only 3,000rpm! It is a low revving long stroke design with a large 4-inch bore, but it still revs harder than Yamaha's smaller 1,600cc Cruiser. The acceleration off the line is excellent and the long stroke engine finds traction easily, plenty of throttle from a standing start will provoke some wheelspin but this just adds to the attraction and is really quite addictive.

The chassis is taut and reasonably hard sprung, with most road irregularities making themselves felt, sometimes a little too harshly. On smooth blacktop the stiff suspension is a big plus but when any bumps enter the equation a rider will feel every one of them. A lot of weight is placed on the wrists/hands and this discomfort is compounded by the hard suspension. Pillion accommodation is typical sportsbike fare, which is of course uncomfortable but no worse than most other sportsbikes.

With a relatively modest 68 horsepower on tap, acceleration is predictably stately. On the plus side, the Twin Cam 88 starts making acres of torque just a few hundred rpm above idle. Power flows seamlessly from there, so shift when you feel like it. Aside from the endemic H-D clunk between gears, the five-speed gearbox on our bike shifted flawlessly.

Big changes came again in 2004 with a new cylinder head, radial mounted calipers and new styling along with the normal reduction in weight and increase in power. The GSX-R750 was now 13kg lighter than the original 1985 model and had 48 more ponies to propel that lighter weight.

2005 marks the 20th anniversary of that original mould breaking GSX-R750. It was always on the cards that Suzuki would do something with the GSX-R750 to mark the occasion and details of exactly that were released late last year when Suzuki officially announced that a special anniversary edition of the GSX-R750 was on the way for 2005.

...the new Sportsters have been almost totally revised, and are again motorcycles that can be taken seriously on their own merits. There are a number of significant changes -- engine improvements, stiffer frames, new brakes, improved finish, etc. -- but the most important new feature of the 2004 Sportster line is its system of rubber mounts that insulates the rider from the engine's vibration.