Are These The Best Bikes Of All Time?
The Age
Saturday September 3, 2005
What are the greatest ever motorbikes? It's a question that's sure to fire many arguments, but a British TV show claims to have the answer.
A new show called The Greatest Ever, due to hit UK screens with a series featuring the top products in different areas of technology, nominated the best motorbikes ever designed after consulting design and engineering experts. The Ducati 916 heads the show's list. Released in 1993, it had a design so fundamentally ahead of it's time that it took the Milan Motorcycle Show by storm, with good looks that lived up to its astonishing performance. Honda scored the next two places _ coming second for the CB750, which was hailed as the most significant motorbike ever made when it hit the market back in 1970. It proved that powerful bikes (750 was monstrous in those days) could also be reliable. A surprising third place went to Honda's C90, the first "step through" bike ever made, with about 21 million Honda variations produced since it hit the market in 1966. Perhaps not so surprising when you consider its radical design breakthrough.Fourth place went to the world's fastest street-legal production motorcycle, the MTT turbine superbike, powered by a Rolls Royce Allison 250 series gas turbine engine that would be more at home in a helicopter. The MTT has demonstrated 296hp at the rear wheel and accelerated from 0-204 mph in 6.2 seconds, with an incredible 425 ft/lbs of torque at 2000 rpms. The price, at $250,000, is also pretty incredible.
© 2005 The Age