JORDAN GSX-R1000 'THE CRUSHER'

Even as the major motorcycle manufacturers are locked in a battle of the brochures for whose top dog has the biggest cahunas, and while both press and public alike debate whether or not Kawasaki’s new kid, the ZX-14, will take the candy away from the evergreen Hayabusa, Suzuki’s long-time contender in the top speed stakes, beavering away in his workshop in Boerne, Texas, is one man whose homebuilt bike could outdraw the two Oriental heavyweight gunslingers in a race for the quarter mile and leave them both shot and bleeding on the floor.

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Winning MotoGP championships and World Superbike titles is something that Ducati used to be good at. Although they've slacked somewhat over the last few years. Providing a competitive alternative to the ubiquitous Japanese four-cylinder sports motorcycle, however, is something that Ducati is still very good at.

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KAWABUSA!

Some bikes that are built out of more than one motorcycle are given composite names from both marques that sound dead right and roll off the tongue like a lap dancer’s G-string. ‘Kawabusa’ is a made-up name for a made-up motorcycle that is right up there with ‘My round’, ‘I don’t have a headache tonight’ and ‘Both lines are for you’, for sounds that are pleasurable to the ear. Not unlike the war cry of a bunch of cartoon reptiles that had kids the world over demanding pet turtles (ninety-nine percent of which were flushed down the shitter as soon they got big enough to bite), it’s a word that almost demands an exclamation mark every time you write it, and an expressive shout to relay it orally. You could even add an expletive mid-word for greater effect without losing the ambience of the idiom, as in ‘Kawa-fuckin-busa’ … you'd probably need a bigger tank though.

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BUELL STREET TRACKER ‘HARDLY-DAVIDSON’

Until the 1970s motorcycle racing in the USA was all about dirt track. On mile and half-mile ovals across America Triumphs, BSAs and Nortons competed against the homegrown Harleys. Despite it’s agricultural persona, dirt track racing, (also known as flat track), is a very precise form of motorcycle competition with the machinery having evolved over many years into the ideal weapon needed to cover a mile, or half-mile oval racetrack with a loose surface of clay, sand or dirt in the shortest possible time. The ability to control a bucking weaving motorcycle at speeds approaching 130 miles-per-hour, slipping sideways into a corner while ‘steering’ the rear wheel with the throttle, is an art learned on the dirt tracks that made American racers like Kenny Roberts, Eddie Lawson and Wayne Rainey into World Roadracing champions.

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