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How an £8k used Honda Blade beats a £15k KTM RC8R, Ducati 1198S, BMW HP2 Sport and Aprilia RSV4

£6800 Suzuki Bandit 1250GT v £11,700 Kawasaki 1400GTR

Twice the price. Twice the bike?

The class of 2009 oN The worlD’s ToughesT TesT rouTe

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>BMW K1300S >Ducati MonStEr 1100S >HarlEy V-roD >KaWaSaKi ZX-6r & Er-6F >KtM SM t >SuZuKi GlaDiuS & GSX-r1000 >triuMPH StrEEt triPlE >yaMaHa r1

SEP 09 £3.99 uS$9.95

SEPTEMBER 2009 n APRILIA RSV4 FACTORY v DUCATI 1198S v KTM RC8R v BMW HP2 SPORT n BE A WET WEATHER GENIUS n APRILIA DORSODURO & KTM DUKE 690 n THE SILENT TT

Yamaha XJ 6 DiversioN 8

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THe £630,000 queue No camera trickery went into this picture. It really is a queue of 15 ultra-exclusive Ducati Desmosedici RRs lining up to tip into Donington Park’s Melbourne Loop. And there are another 30 about to come over that hill. Bike tells the story of June's Desmo-only trackday Words Khal Harris Photography Chippy Wood

The day of days This bike has been around, in one form or another, for three years now. From the first unveiling to ‘oh-mygod-was-that-a-Desmo?’ moments on the M6. But seeing one in the flesh is an arresting sensation.

Sentences trail off and you… ‘wow’. Seeing a single one is enough to risk an unplanned lamppost interface. But 45 in one place? Now that’s sensory overload.

Of the 1500 built, a whopping 167 found homes in the UK. Indeed, some were re-routed from the Americans to satisfy British demand. The bikes at

Donington were mostly Brit-owned but some have travelled from France, Germany and the Netherlands.

At a wallet-scorching £450 per rider, the day wasn't cheap, but Ducati pushed the boat out. Alan Jenkins, designer of the Desmosedici RR was there, as is Vittoriano Guareshi – Ducati’s MotoGP test rider – along with a host of other notables. Bike was there to drink in the sights, sounds and smells – and find out about the people lucky enough to have a blood-red Desmo in their garage. Gentlemen, start your engines...

For some of these riders this was their first time on a track.

And it's just started raining...

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desmo day

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APRILIA RSV4 FACTORY Mark Forsyth (44, 5ft 9in, 83kg) is an ex-magazine road tester and editor, sometime racer and current freelance do-it-all. Won the 600 class at the Bol d’Or endurance race back in 1995.

Knows his onions (from his shallots) Honda must be spewing. All those lavish V4 teaser ad campaigns (see p12), all the hype, an expensive, futuristic V4 concept show bike and what happens? Some Italian upstarts from Noale jump in first and launch the most tricked-up V4 superbike imaginable.

Talk about having your V-shaped thunder stolen.

The RSV4 is a 21st century RC30. Grit your teeth, thrash its tatters off and the mighty Aprilia sounds like a pure HRC factory one-off. The noise from the inlet trumpets and the bark from the (ugly) exhaust is like something you’d hear on one of those old scratchy ‘Sounds of the TT’ records. There’s nothing else like it.

If it’s any consolation to Honda, the RSV4 sounds rubbish when it’s just idling in neutral. But its sound at idle is exaggerated by the fact the cheating sods have put a flap in the exhaust that’s only activated in neutral to fool the circuit noise-meter man. Genius.

How we chuckled at Oulton Park at the laughable 100dB at 5500rpm reading, knowing full well of the aural anger within.

Contacts within World Superbike have told me that when Max Biaggi and Shinya Nakano rocked up for Round 1 at Phillip Island back in February, Suzuki team boss Francis Batta nearly soiled his massive undercrackers – he was apoplectic that Aprilia had the nerve to enter what seemed to be a barely disguised MotoGP

n > T should be relabelled V, for vicious, as mastering the RSV in T-mode takes every ounce of brain capacity, not to mention an intimate knowledge of the track bike in the WSB series, before they’d made any road bikes.

It’s not far off in road spec. Just clock the adjustable engine mounts, the suspension in the have-to-have gold hue, the Brembos and tight packaging. It’s made me get up at 5.00am just to go for a last blast (and wash it). It’s made me enjoy a 100-mile ride from Oulton Park to Peterborough in rain so heavy ducks were complaining. I’ve engineered devious key-keeping methods. It makes me want to sell a kidney just to buy one.

The RSV4 has three mapped moods, or modes if you prefer.

Just select ‘mode’ using the left-hand switch with the engine running and use the starter button to scroll though: R (rain), which gives a capped and softened power delivery for wet and greasy roads; S (sport – keep up at the back) which releases full output; and T (yes, well done, track) which gives a sharper throttle. T should really be relabelled V, for vicious, as mastering the RSV on track in T-mode takes every ounce of brain capacity, all your forearm strength, good core muscle tone and supreme continence, not to mention up-to-temp tyres and an intimate knowledge of the track’s topography and grip levels.

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To highlight the single-minded design, imagine how stupid a pillion would look on there

the big test

The RSV4 fills you with confidence, as demonstrated here by Mr Fitz-Gibbons

Front-end weight bias and tall gearing makes this quite rare.

But there was a camera...

These switchable maps give you three bikes for the price of one. The difference in throttle response is amazing and it’s so stupidly fast in T-mode that you’d have to be a moron to even think you’d need this on the road. Off-on throttle behaviour isn’t perfect as it’s unpredictable and fairly savage, but it’s early days and mods of this nature are easy to engineer given the right nerd, software and expertise – my fellow testers reckon the next generation RSV4 is already earmarked to have traction control.

There’s a whole load more response in T-mode. It’s far more eager to rev, to spin up, wheelie and generally beat you to a pulp.

There may be ‘only’ 155bhp at the back wheel but it feels more like 200, such is the jewel-like engine’s attitude.

So there I am, in R-mode, riding the RSV4 on my favourite Fed-free B-road while ‘displaying a bright turn of speed’. And I have another Honda moment. Well, two actually. The frontheavy RSV4 is hammered to the road’s surface with six-inch nails just like the RC30 and the RC45 used to be. Even with great gobs of throttle and three figure speeds, I’d backed the steering damper off to minimum and the bars didn’t wag or shake once.

It was all a bit like that V4 Victory video, but without the talent of Joey or the indecipherable Irish voice-over. It’s stable in the extreme without sacrificing steering speed or agility.

And that sweet, flexible, elastic V4 power delivery lets you thread corners together with majestic grace and momentum.

Just like, err, a Honda V4. First is very tall and gear ratios are stacked close together, but with useable power from 6000 to 13,000rpm you find yourself just squeezing the power on and rolling it off without a single gearchange as you melt the corners together. In the agility stakes the diminutive 250 proportions help, as does the jockey-like riding position and wide bars.

I’ve read reviews by some road testers saying that ‘it’s too much’, and that the RSV4 is ‘too focused’ for the road rider. This is, of course, horseshit of the first order. Choose the mood, choose the map, choose the application. Choose life.

The Aprilia RSV4 is the best bike I’ve ridden since my first ride on an RC30 in 1988. It’s bad, filthy, rude and nasty. It’s special and I need one. Now where’s my kidney donor card…

DUCATI 1198S Simon Hargreaves (41, 6ft 1in, 92kg) is Bike’s senior editor. From a starting point many years ago of loving all things fast and nasty, he’s mellowed and now prefers things fast and nasty, but with heated grips and GPS I expected to find the 1198S much like the 1098 that preceded it: harsh and uncompromising – extreme riding position, stiff suspension, truculent throttle response, sharp brakes... and utterly sublime when the conditions were perfect (Cadwell Park, hot day, sticky tyres). Which was about twice a year. The rest of the time it was a bit frustrating at best, annoying at worst.

Leg over the 1198S and although there’s no readily apparent reason why the bigger-capacity bike should have more accommodating ergonomics than the old one (same seat height, bar position, steering geometry and so on), it feels more spacious and less cramped – or, as Martin puts it, it’s uncomfortable in a different way to the Aprilia. Maybe that’s it – the Ducati has more 105