After being knocked off the GPz900 I was looking around for a replacement – with the assistance of Maggie, of course! Motorcycle City (again!) had a special offer on VTRs, but only Orange ones … So that’s what we bought.

Suzuki were the first ones to introduce a faux Ducati and it was a beast. Several people were killed early on and they eventually fitted a steering damper as standard. Honda doubtless profited from their experience but I found it was very easy to lift the front end and the steering certainly went light under acceleration so a bit of head-shaking was inevitable. Overall it required much more rider-input than the Kawasaki to the point where it diminished the pleasure of riding it. A measure of this is that I never found out what it would do flat-out …

Fuel consumption was laughable. Where the Suzuki (injection) was good for 42 mpg, the Honda, with its 2″ bore carburetters did about 27 and with only a 16 litre tank needed a refill every 80 miles or so.

I wasn’t sorry to see it go.