Sing, baby, sing. The particular melody of desire was the GPZ coming on cam in third gear, throttle hammered to the stop, and crazy, crazy, seemingly limitless, acceleration. We have take off! 120 horses hide under the somewhat dated and heavy chassis, and do they make mincemeat out of UK roads! The GPZ's thoroughly illegal, irresponsible and pretty nasty. 100mph, the thing's just ticking over in top, not really into the heavy power. 150mph cruising's entirely possible, with an ultimate top speed of 165mph. For a 1988 machine that only cost two grand this is pretty neat stuff.
'Course, it ain't all roses. Never is, is it? Below six grand, particularly between 4000 and 6000rpm, there's a lot of stuttering and muttering from the motor, especially if unleaded's used, but in its way this makes the outrageous surge of power all the more prominent. Yes, officer, I really did need to scream through town at ten thousand revs in first gear, it was the only way to make the bike run smoothly. What? That's five hundred quid in fines and a written off licence. Oh dear, it was just as well I didn't stop, then, wasn't it?
As mentioned, the old Sumo wrestler weighs in at 530lbs, and a lot of that weight is high up, making it, at best, an awkward old dowager at the lower end of the speed range, and pretty nasty when going fast if run on anything other than perfect bearings, suspension and rubber.
Even when everything is set up to perfection, it's easy to lose the back end under the sheer excess of available power and the front can either tuck in when least expected or go so light under acceleration that the front bars shake back and forth just like those old H1's of legend. It's definitely the kind of bike that throws wimps off at the first difficult bend, but using muscle and low cunning can be dominated to the extent that little else can get past. Even if it's only because the buckling bastard's so huge it'll grind anything into dust that gets in the way.
Having got used to the bike in the dry, hot summer of '95, when the rain finally came it was a bit of a shock to the system. To say the least. This is a f..king nasty piece of shit to ride in the wet. That's how I felt on my first bit of damp road. It wasn't just that any silliness on the throttle had the bike going sideways as the back wheel lost it under the power onslaught. That was bad but controllable to an extent, and quite an impressive sight for onlookers who must've been convinced that I was going to fall off. No, what got to me was the quick slide front wheel, that would go off on its own trajectory without any warning whatsoever. Not just that, which was bloody dangerous in its own right, but the front discs were so powerful and insensitive at the same time, that hitting on them in the wet was a sure fire trip to the nearest hospital or morgue.
So wet weather progress was a horrible affair in fifth or sixth with the engine sounding like it was going to cut out at low revs. And what about the bastard who designed the ignition system that was incredibly sensitive to damp weather, not only cutting out a cylinder or two just when I needed the engine to be at its most calm and controlled, but also making it a total sod to start from both cold and hot.
One time I stalled it in traffic because I was trying to ride in fifth at 10mph in the pouring rain. And would it start again? Of course it wouldn't. I'm short of leg and the Kawa's fairly tall of seat, so I looked pretty ridiculous trying to waddle the massive cunt into the curb, not just its incredible bulk but three dragging discs and a clanging chain on its last legs. It's dead easy to drop the GPZ but just knowing that I would never be able to pick it up again meant that I'd literally go as far as breaking a leg to stop it going over, which nearly happened several times.
Pissed me off no end of times, did this wet weather business, so much so that I could be seen commuting, to my eternal shame and damnation, on a CG125 through the worst months of winter. And know what? The little Honda was a damn sight faster through traffic, across town, because of its lightness, narrowness and bicycle-like manoeuvrability. The only trouble was that the local urchins threw bits of masonry at me and made out like I was some kind of OAP wanker. I grin and bore the abuse because if I got started on them, the carnage would be so great that I'd be locked away for a long time - something else that pissed me off no end.
In the Spring of '96, the GPZ re-emerged from its home in my hallway (another story, hefting all that mass up into the house...), and seemed to be from another planet with regards to its stellar performance. It really is so fast that cages keep getting in the way and have absolutely no concept of how fast I'm eating up the space between us. Someone similarly impatient had already fitted the loudest imaginable siren, which I'd hit from time to time - the poor old cagers went into a blind panic, like an alien spaceship was blasting them.
The idea that the whole world was against us soon took a grip when I had a couple of cop cars on my tail. Luckily, the traffic was hugely dense and I just blasted the Kawasaki through the mess, hand on siren (and heart), with a few prayers to St Christopher. One blind, deaf and stupid driver was so confused by the wailing sirens (of bike and pigs) that he tried to turn off the road just as I was blasting through the inside of him. My heart almost stopped, as I instinctively twitched my buttocks to make the RX shake like a snake through the gap. The back tyre rumbled into the gutter, sending the thing into a frenzy of wobbles but we missed the cage. And the police missed me. Hee, hee.
Of course, in the normal course of events this isn't, dear reader, something you should try at home. But my circumstances were such that I had nothing to lose. For the next week or so, I pretended to be an innocent commuter on the CG, until I decided that the heat had died out of the chase.
Again and again, I was surprised at how well the massive old thing reacted when circumstances turned dire. When put to the test, maximum throttle and muscle didn't cause the thing to float off the road in suicide mode, instead a switch seemed to throw in my brain that let me ride the bike at ten-tenths. But not in the wet. No way.
As the summer drew to a close I decided I didn't want to keep the bike over another winter. Also 30mpg, 3000 mile tyre life and short-lived chains and pads were killing me financially. So I sold her for what I paid a year earlier. Richer and wiser for the experience? Er, well, I bought a tuned ZX-9R!
Eric W.