![]() ![]() It could be the donk. If it’s not the most crisp, characterful and charismatic in-line four ever built, well, to paraphrase Sheriff Ed Tom Bell, it’ll do until that gets here. A cynical old geezer, it enables me to imagine myself at 340km/h down the Mugello straight, with that engine’s creamy growl bellowing defiance at time’s tyranny. So just what makes the MT-10SP the BMIHER™? “Big call,” he said later when I told him it was the best motorcycle I had ever ridden.Īfter all, I have ridden or owned many excellent motorcycles, including the S1000R, the SpeedTriple, the StreetTriple, an RS1200R, an R1200R and… well, you get the picture. Riding up to Colo in the bleak dawn of a midwinter morn, he handed me the key to the Best Motorcycle I Have Ever Ridden™ (BMIHER™). These then are the attractions of the MT series, and they are Yamaha’s success story. We care about feel. And we’re getting older, fuck ya, so naked bike ergos are kinder and gentler for our frangible bones. What do we care about? We care about torque that irresistible, grunty goodness that punts you out of a corner like a trebuchet throws a diseased horse into a castle while your sportsbike mates languish in a miasma of valve overlap waiting for the tacho to reach umpty-thousand. Yamaha has moved from six-odd per cent of the Australian naked-bike market to 43-plus per cent and it has done it off the back of a simple truth: No one cares too much about peak horsepower any more. ![]() His pants came off shortly after this and I had to throw a bucket of water over him. So why did this one erect my tail feathers like a horny peacock? This is not my usual response to Borrie’s Facebook posts of bikes he is riding. As a grizzled veteran of some 40-odd summers of motorcycling misconduct, I consider myself immune to the allure of new bikes. There’s always something new and shiny with five more pointless horsepowers and 500g less irrelevant weight. When Borrie informed the world he had a Yamaha MT-10SP to test, I texted him immediately. CLICK ON THIS FOR PICS BY NICK EDARDS/HALF LIGHT PHOTOGRAPHIC SECOND OPINION By Nick Warne I would ride down there on my filthy MT-10SP to see that. Obviously, Yamaha is more interested in making your nipples hard than it is about the Larsen Ice Shelf appearing in Sydney Harbour. Lube the chain, keep it in gummy tyres, and watch it layer itself in grime as it ages magnificently.Īnd lastly, it is a thirsty, thirsty thing. ![]() And you can engage with utter confidence. But most importantly, each time you get on it, hit the button and hear the strange servo-like noises it makes as it fires up, you will know deep down in your black and hateful soul that if you need to engage in a pissing contest, you can do just that. It is a complete motorcycle because it does all of these things with aplomb. You can strap gear to it, tour on it, carry a pillion without too many complaints, and commute with ease. It’s just easier to ride the MT-10SP faster. So riding such a thing hard and fast becomes and exercise in confidence, rather than an exercise in how many prayers you know.įew bikes are able to deliver such a feeling to the rider.Ĭoupled with a quickshifter, an assist-and-slipper clutch, a range of ride modes and the ability to fine tune them, and in the real world, you’ll be quicker on this than you would be on an R1. It takes out its insectile robo-hand and gives them the middle robo-finger. So while speeds are usually slower on the road, top-end suspension shines because roads are constantly changeable in terms of surface – some are smooth like racetracks, some are more like goat-tracks, and most are somewhere in-between. Yes, it will work superbly on the track, but tracks are smooth and good suspension is needed to cope with fearsome acceleration and braking, which occurs during racing. Where you will most notice what you’ve paid for is, of course, on the road. I’ll just wait here for something worth chasing down. I have taken my pants off for the MT-10SP. And it pulls everything closer sooner as such a thing is expected to do.īut I don’t care about the MT-10 anymore. It makes a sound like icebergs calving or mountains rubbing their pinnacles together. So it doesn’t even sound like any other in-line four as it pastes your face with hell-speed. I found myself longing for the robo-zombie apocalypse…and then I gave it back and things returned to what passes for normal for me these days.Īt its base, this MT-10 is an ergonomically sensible motorcycle propelled by the uniquely fiendish insanity of Yamaha’s re-tuned and crossplane-cranked R1 engine. I gelled with it on a base level, and I even came to appreciate its brutal, bug-eyed, robo-zombie appearance. It inspired and delighted me with its sheer motorcycleness. The last time I rode an MT-10 was last year. By BoYAMAHA MT10SP REVIEW – MISSILE OF THE ROBO-ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE ![]()
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