The Best of the 10 Best Bikes
THE BEST OF THE 10 BEST BIKES
THE CANDIDATES
IF OUR TEN BEST BIKES Awards were a person, that individual would now be just about old enough to get serious about winning a minibike national championship. Because in addition to marking CYCLE WORLD’S 25th anniversary, 1987 puts the Ten Best Awards at the start of their 12th year. Which means that 121 bikes have had the honor bestowed upon them (there was a tie in 1977, the second year of the awards). And while all of those machines were good—in fact, the best of their respective years—some were better than others. Some were more significant than others. And some were even significant enough to change the sport.
In honor of this anniversary year, we’ve taken that list of honored motorcycles and whittled it down to the 10 best of the Ten Best, ending up with the 10 bikes that have had the most powerful impact on motorcycling since 1976. We decided to make this year’s group of winners ineligible, however, simply because we do not yet have the advantage of hindsight to help us ascertain their significance. But from the remainder, we present The Best Of The Best.
1976
Suzuki RM250 Honda CR125 Yamaha XS750 KTM/Penton 400 Montesa Cota 348 Kawasaki KZ900 Yamaha RD400 BMW R75/6
Maico 400 Adolf Weil Replica Honda CB550F
1977
Yamaha IT 175 Honda GL1000 Yamaha DT 125 Suzuki GS750 Kawasaki KZ650 Kawasaki KZ 1000 Yamaha YZ400 Suzuki RM 125 Yamaha RD400
Yamaha YZ250/Suzuki RM250 (tie)
1978
Honda Hawk 400TI Suzuki RM 125 Maico 450 Suzuki PE 175 Honda CX500 Yamaha XS1100 Honda XL250S BMW R80/7 Suzuki GS1000 Honda CR250R
1979
Kawasaki KX125 Honda CB750F Maico Magnum 250E Honda Hawk Maico 400/450 Suzuki GS1000E Honda XL500S Yamaha XS1100 Kawasaki KX250 Honda CX500
1980
Honda GL1100 Interstate Yamaha YZ465 Honda Hawk Kawasaki KDX250 Kawasaki KZ550 Honda XL500S Honda CB750F Yamaha YZ125 Suzuki GS1100E Can-Am 250 MX-6
1981
Honda GL1100 Interstate Suzuki RM 125 Suzuki GSI 100E
Yamaha IT465 Suzuki GS450S Kawasaki GPz550 Suzuki RM250 Kawasaki KZ750 Suzuki SP500 Suzuki RM465
HHiI
Yamaha XS400 Suzuki RM250 Honda GL1100 Interstate Suzuki RM 125 Kawasaki GPz550 Honda V45 Sabre KTM 495MX Kawasaki KDX250 Yamaha XT550 Suzuki GS1000 Katana
1983
Yamaha Venture Royale Honda XL600R Yamaha 550 Vision Honda CR480R Honda VF750F Interceptor Suzuki GSI 100E Kawasaki GPz305 Honda CR250R Honda CR125R Honda XR350R
Honda GL 1200 Aspencade Honda CR500R KTM 250MXC Harley-Davidson Disc Glide Kawasaki KX125 Kawasaki Ninja 900 Honda Nighthawk S Kawasaki GPz550 Honda CR250R Honda XL350R
Honda Aspencade Suzuki Intruder Husqvarna 400WRX Honda VF500 Interceptor Kawasaki KX125 Yamaha FZ750 Honda XL350R Kawasaki KX500 Yamaha V-Max Kawasaki KX250
Honda Aspencade Suzuki GSX-R1100 Yamaha Radian Honda VFR750F Yamaha Virago 1100 Honda CR125R Honda Reflex Husqvarna 400 Honda CR250R Honda CR500R
1976 SUZUKI RM250
It was a time of change in motocross. The Japanese were battling to take control of the motocross tracks, which previously had been exclusively European soil. The Europeans fought back valiantly, but the RM250 won the decisive battle in 250-class racing.
The RM was faster than anything the 250 class had ever seen, with better suspension, and it would go on to dominate U.S. racing for years. Indeed, not only was the RM250 voted the best 250 motocrosser of 1976, it would claim that honor three more times in the ensuing years.
1978 SUZUKI GS1000
When Suzuki entered the multi-cylinder four-stroke market, it did so in a big way. The GS750 and GS550 Fours whetted America’s appetite in 1977, then, in 1978, Suzuki dropped The Big One—the GS1000, which blew everything else into the weeds the instant it hit the streets. The highperformance market had not changed much since the advent of the Kawasaki Z-l in 1973, with little new coming along to challenge Kawasaki’s status as the king of horsepower. But the GS1000 initiated an all-out. Open-class warfare between the Japanese manufacturers, opening the door for the most mind-boggling street performance ever offered to the general public.
1980 HONDA GL1100 INTERSTATE
It happened first in 1977. Then again in 1980, ’81, ’82, ’84, ’85 and ’86. That’s how many times CYCLE WORLD has honored the Honda Gold Wing with a Ten Best award between 1976 and 1986. But it is perhaps the award given in 1980 that best signifies what the GL has meant to touring. That was the year in which Honda took what was already one of the best touring bikes of all time, and decked it out with a full fairing, saddlebags and a tour trunk—in effect, doing exactly what most customers did to GLs after buying them, but doing it a bit better. Soon, all the major manufacturers would offer “turn-key” touring bikes; but were it not for the 1980 GL 1 100, touring today might be very different.
1976 YAMAHA RD400
Considering that two-strokes have never been the streetbikes of choice here in the U.S., the success of Yamaha’s RD-series two-strokes was remarkable. First introduced as the RD350 and upgraded in 1976 to the RD400, these two-stroke Twins achieved true cultbike status despite
America’s demonstrated preference for bikes with camshafts and poppet valves. And the ’76 RD400 clearly demonstrated once and for all that smallish-displacement two-strokes could be very comfortable, highly practical, extremely enjoyable allaround street motorcycles.
1981 KAWASAKI GPz550
Kawasaki couldn’t have realized the full significance of what it was doing back in 1981. All the company did, in essence, was take a KZ550 Four, bolt on a café-racer-style quarterfairing, and paint the whole works bright red. As a direct result, motorcycling in America was forever changed. Until that time, café racers had been but a footnote in American motorcycle lore, the passion of only a few hard-core individuals. After the immense success of the GPz550, though, café-style bikes soon became the rule rather than the exception; we simply began calling them sportbikes instead of café racers. And the GPz550 can take most of the credit for the sportbike styling and performance boom that is still in full stride today.
The Ten Best of eleven years past
1981 SUZUKI RM125
Take a close look at a modern MX bike. You'll see a liquid-cooled, two stroke engine with its radiator mounted fairly low in the frame. You'll see a single-shock, rising-rate rear suspension system. And you'll see Star Wars-ish dirt-bike styling.
Take a look at a 1981 Si~uki RM 125 and you'll see all of the same things. That's because that particular
RM was the first of a new breed of motocrosser, the precursor to today's ultra-sophisticated racebikes. That `8 1 RM 125 was neither the first sin gle-shocker nor the first liquid cooled MXer; but no other bike had all its components put together the way that Suzuki did-and the way MX bikes have been put together ever since.
1983 HONDA 750 INTERCEPTOR
Before Honda built the 750 Intercep tor, the Japanese always designed sport-oriented models in the same way. They'd begin with a "standard" streetbike and start moving things around, hot-rodding and modifying where necessary. But after the 750 Interceptor, that kind of after-the fact engineering would never again be acceptable. The VF75OF was de signed as a pure sportbike from the ground up; Honda didn't need to a! ter a thing to make the bike a per formance trend-setter.
Ever since that first VF, the market has been bombarded with racer-repli cas for the street, some that even make the original Interceptor look tame. But sportbiking will always owe much of its legacy to the 1983 VF75OE
1984 KAWASAKI NINJA 900
If you follow the evolution of the sportbike closely, you'll notice that something happened around 1984. That was when the category got clearly subdivided between radical sportbikes and conservative sportbikes. And that subdivision was largely a by-product of the Kawasaki Ninja 900, the motorcycle that took no-compromise, racebike-level per formance and handling to the streets. Others followed suit, and soon the standard bikes and compromised sportbikes of the Seventies were re
placed by the specialized sportbikes and street-legal racebikes of the Eighties. The Ninja 900 is one of the most clear steps in the emergence of sportbikes in this country.
1985 SUZUKI INTRUDER
There's nothing new about a motor cycle that's largely a styling exercise. But Suzuki's 700 Intruder transcends being merely an experiment in form. It is a bike that was completely styled, sculped and shaped before a single nut was threaded to a bolt. A fullsize, clay-and-wood mockup of the Intruder concept was built in Amer ica, then delivered to Suzuki's engi neering department in Japan with the following explicit instructions: Don't build a bike like this one; build this bike. The result was the 700 Intruder, one of the most carefully manicured machines of our time, and certainly a high-water mark in the annals of Jap anese motorcycle design.
1986 SUZUKI GSX-R1100
Every revolution has its extremists. In the American sportbike revolution Suzuki was by far the most extreme, with its racetrack-scorching GSX Rl 100. When introduced, the big GSX-R was the fastest, most-radical streetbike Japan had ever produced. Matter of fact, the GSX-R 1100 is still winning sprint and endurance roadraces. And no matter what the future has in store, no matter how fast or how extreme motorcycles get over the next few years, you can be sure of one thing: If motorcycles go much farther than the GSX-R 1100, they'll be going too far.
