BIKE

When acting as tour guide to a first time TT spectator it’s important to make the right first impression. You need to take them somewhere on the course that’s really, really fast and where the bikes pass so close that you can feel the displaced air sucking at you as they howl past. Back in 2017 I took my BMW riding brother and his wife along to Gorse Lea, just before Ballacraine, for their introductory viewing experience. Here you have to clamber, while balancing cups of tea and home made cakes from Harold Leece’s farmhouse kitchen, onto a wall beside the track to watch the action. Then you sit and wait, listening to the radio, for the (inevitably) delayed start of the race. About three minutes after the start (which is over…

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1 Mike Armitage Which other tester can relate a motorcycle to a teenage experience in a Loughborough nightclub? Armitage is the best writer about bikes in the universe. Don’t tell him though. Go fast giant test on page 38 2 Mat Oxley It’s been a while since Mat raced, and won, at the Isle of Man, but that experience means that he gets more out of John McGuinness than any other journalist. McGuiness interview on page 52 3 Hugo Wilson How has it come to this? 25 years since he started on Bike magazine, still excited about a new Triumph Tiger, even more excited about watching road racing this summer. Tiger 1200 test on page 60 4 John Westlake Read his story about riding a Yamaha R7 at a track day and agree that he’s not just insightful, he’s very…

Twenty-one years after the first Vyrus appeared, Italian builder Giorgio Cerrato has taken its futuristic looks to the next level and managed to reduce the weight to 130kg fully fuelled. Powered by a 110bhp version of Ducati’s air-cooled Monster 1100 motor, that means the bike’s power-to-weight ratio isn’t far off a 200bhp superbike. ‘It’s so light that it feels slightly weird at first, ’ says 30-year-old Giorgio, who raced when he was younger and was a trackday instructor for years. ‘During cornering it steers almost before you realise you want it to turn - you have to reset the way you corner and if you shift your weight just a little, the bike starts to do stuff. It is super responsive, but because of the front end it’s incredibly stable and…

For decades Harley struggled to take commercial advantage of their dominance in American flat-track, eventually coming out with the XR1000 road bike in 1983. No such bother for Indian - the FTR1200 was already a plausible road-going version of the all-conquering FTR750 racer and now there’s this: the £15,995 Championship Edition. Built to celebrate Indian’s fifth consecutive victory in America’s flat-track championship, the new FTR has the race bike’s paint scheme, a badge on the tank listing the five championships, plus loads of carbon, high end Sachs forks and shock, and the obligatory titanium Akrapovic exhaust. Also, despite the standard FTR1200 changing to 17in wheels and sticky rubber this year to try and help convince buyers it’s a sporty naked rather than a street tracker-styled cruiser, the special edition goes back to…

‘Enfield have made what looks like a proper scrambler’ Enfield s Himalayan is a high-value utilitarian device but styling was never its strongest suit. Enter the new Scram – a stripped-back Himalayan built for younger riders (and more experienced ones who want a decent second bike for local jaunts). By changing the front wheel from a 21in to a 19in, reducing front wheel travel by 10mm - lowering the front end some more - and removing the screen and crash bars, Enfield have managed to make what looks like a proper scrambler. The 24bhp, 411cc single-cylinder engine and steel tube frame are the same as the Himalayan’s so the performance won’t set your trousers on fire, but that’s not an issue if you’re nipping down some B-roads to the pub. Because the Scram…