Quick Ride

QUICK RIDE

ROUNDUP

BEFORE YOU DISMISS THE futuristic-looking creation on this page as just another avant-garde design made by some starry-eyed dreamer, know this: The Nico Bakker QCS is on sale now, and, after riding it, I can tell you that it performs like no other streetbike that has come before it.

BAKKER QCS The sportbike of the future, today?

As good as modern Japanese repliracers like the RC30, FZR and GSX-R now handle, they can't hold a candle to the QCS.

Bakker, a Dutchman, began making frames in 1967 to house the engines for his own roadrace bikes. Today, his workshop (Nico Bakker Framegebouw, 1704 DV Heerhugowaard, Flolland) turns out 120 frames a year, for everything from 80cc GP bikes to 1 lOOcc street rockets. Among Bakker's claimed accomplishments: the first all-aluminum frame, the first rising-rate rear suspension and the first singlesided swingarm. And now, with the QCS, he has the first center-hubsteering bike available to the public.

Center-hub steering—in effect, a “front” swingarm—has been hailed as the front-end design of the future and has recently been seen on the Bimota Tesi showbike, the HondaElf GP racer and American James Parker’s Radd. Bakker explained why he likes the design: “Its main advantage is improved handling. with much greater steering precision and overall comfort than even the best telescopic fork.” Also, there’s none of the “wooden” feeling that some centerhub bikes have under braking, where, because of the design’s inherent anti-dive properties, they remain perfectly, disconcertingly, flat. The QCS has a small degree of front-end dive designed in so that: 1 ) the bike seems more “normal” to the rider, and 2) more braking force is loaded on the front tire. Some center-hub bikes have also had brake overheating problems, because the design > requires a single, centrally located disc and caliper, rather than con-ventional double-discs. Bakker has solved the problem with a six-piston caliper (another industry first) and a front-fender air duct that channels cool air to the disc.

And Bakker thinks he has the best center-hub bike. “With many other alternative front-end designs, you have to be a hard, experienced rider to detect any improvement in handling over conventional forks. But I’d call the QCS ‘user-friendly,’ because anyone can get on it and ride hard at once. It makes a good rider fast, and an inexperienced rider safe.”

If that sounds like Bakker’s been attending ad-writing night school, let me say that I agree with him. I’ve ridden most of the recent alternatedesign bikes, and I can say that none have impressed me as much as the QCS. It's the first bike I’ve ridden on which you can actually feel both wheels riding up and down over every ripple in the road surface. It is not the legendary “floating on air” sensation, but something much more precise; a seat-of-the-pants feeling that tells you the suspension is working to maximum effect.

In fact, Bakker has done such a fantastic job with the QCS that it’s not just visiting journalists who are impressed. Recently, Yamaha spent a day at the Nürburgring back-to-backing the QCS and a 1988 FZR1000, and came away so impressed that it is talking to Bakker about buying the rights to the design.

Whether or not we see a Yamaha/ Bakker collaboration is up in the air, but Bakker, among an increasing number of others, is convinced of center-hub steering’s viability. “I can’t say that all motorcycles will be like this in the future,” he says, “but the best ones will be.”

—Alan Cathcart