Riding High: a plea from a shorter rider

Recently I visited the National Motorcycle Museum near Birmingham. Nothing very spellbinding about that, I hear you say - well, no, but the thing that struck me about all those old bikes - even really big, four cylinder, 1000cc whizz bangs - was how small they were. I mean really low, so a person could sit on them and have their feet touch the ground.

Now, I'm not the world's biggest person (five foot six in woolly socks) but I know darned well that there are plenty of other people in the world who are small and want to ride motorcycles, and find anything above a 250 is just too big.

Why is this? Why do motorcycle manufacturers believe that most people are six foot giants? Well, either someone's putting growth hormones in the water or else they've got it wrong. Most people in Britain aren't particularly tall. A lot of ladies are riding bikes and most of them certainly aren't seven foot horse-stranglers. The motorcycle papers are stuffed with lurid tales of people hacking great chunks out of their seats and lowering their suspension (gasp!). Surely this should tell the manufacturer something, but no, yet another great big tall race replica rolls off the production line. I don't suppose it's occurred to any of them that most riders don't want to play at racers and have no desire whatsoever to lean their bikes over far enough to rip off the footrests...

Small riders: of the world unite! Let's have bikes so that we can touch the ground when we're sitting on them, and actually be able to get them onto the centre stand without needing the assistance of hydraulic pulling gear. And most of all, jet's have bikes that ordinary, averaged sized people can manage in traffic, which, let's face it, is where most of us have to ride.

No wonder people are turning away from new models and buying small second-hand bikes from the seventies, before the race replica craze began. Perhaps small bikes will become fashionable again.

Maybe there will eventually be a classic revival and the motorcycle manufacturers will imitate the stumpy little bikes of yesteryear. But in the meantime us wee people have a hell of a lot of serious growing to do before we'll fit onto these big bikes. Pass us the hormones, Boris...

Christine Scorey