ROAD TESTS
66 Yamaha FZR600
Folks, it’s the quickest middleweight we've ever tested.
SPECIAL SECTION
30 Bargain Blasters
Save your money for the speeding tickets.
32 Suzuki GS500
For the cost of a 250 you can own this 500.
38 Kawasaki EX500
Half a Ninja for half the price.
44 Yamaha Radian
The last of the UJMs is also the least expensive four.
FEATURES
53 Ducati 906 Paso
Bologna revamps its big twin for the coming decade.
by Bruno de Prato
60 When Push Comes To Shove
Slip-sliding away with Freddie Spencer.
by Kevin Cameron
75 Yamaha’s Daytona Battle Plan
How and why to build a one-shot race team.
by Charles Everitt
78 Product Evaluation: Tail Bags
Yes, you can take it with you.
85 Book Review: Grand Prix Yearbooks
Two essentials for the bench racer's coffee table.
by Ken Vreeke
DEPARTMENTS
9 Editorial/Steve Anderson
11 TDC/ Puzzles And Principles/Kevin Cameron
1 2 Letters/ Jennings' Disciples Despond
21 Bits/ Norti- Bitz/ Tyrone van Hooydonk
26 New Products/ Muzzy Pipes, Harley Glass/John Burns
114 Pipeline/ Tobacco Green/Jim Greening
The FZR600 illustrates the par-
adox of high-performance
motorcycling in modern
America. While Yamaha
clearly designed the FZR to be the quick-
est middleweight, the company is un-
characteristically mum about the FZR’s
performance level. But that's under-
standable. In a marketplace besieged by
“killer bike" hysteria, high-performance
motorcycling implies more danger than
unsafe sex, and the purveyors of the
fastest hardware scrupulously avoid
horsepower claims. No matter. The
FZR600 speaks for itself.
Chained to the Kerker dynamometer,
our 49-state FZR600 pumped out 74.2
rear-wheel horsepower at 10,000 rpm—
the most powerful 600cc motorcycle
Cycle has ever tested. Think about that.
For middleweight motorcycles, 70-plus
horsepower has always been the far
side of the moon, but the FZR600 soars
over the big seven-oh, landing squarely
on some 750-class toes.
The FZR600 is long overdue. For the
past two years, the new generation of
sporting middleweights have beaten the
old two-valve FZ600 like a gong. But the
phenomenal output of the FZR600—a
whopping 24 horsepower stronger than
the FZ it replaces—immediately re-
verses the performance pecking order.
While the FZR600 shows strong fam-
ily ties to the revamped FZR1000 intro-
duced earlier this year, the two bikes fol-
lowed entirely different development
paths. Unlike the cost-be-damned
FZR1000, the FZR600 had to be compet-
itively priced, forcing Yamaha engineers
to build with existing hardware. The
FZR600’s engine is fundamentally a
high-powered variation of the FZR400
Genesis mill. The chassis borrows
heavily from the FZR400 as well, but
shows the grubby fingerprints of the...