Motoring Editor,
Sunday Times,
1 Pennington Street,
London E1 9 XW

cc. Jeremy Clarkson

Dear Sir,

This week the Sunday Times reviewed the Nissan Skyline, and (via Jeremy Clarkson) the new Jaguar XJR saloon. In a tradition of motor journalism that refers to wheezy school-run hatchbacks as "sporting", or "lively", these two cars exhausted all the superlatives between them. I can understand that for people who like cars (most of the UK population) these cars are something special, but these reviews also remind me of WW1 cavalry officers comparing the deadly edges of their sabres at a time when a working-class runt at the wrong end of a Lewis machine gun could take out a squadron of sword-waving twits on horses.

The UK market for motorbikes grew over 30% last year, probably because any person who has seen a Honda Fireblade hit 60 m.p.h. less than 2.5 seconds after the traffic lights go green realises something thing I have not seen spelled out in a motor review (and I read the Sunday Times religiously): modern sports bikes are supernatural vehicles. For about £9000 pounds one can buy something that will run rings around a Skyline or an XJR.

I wonder whether the motoring press don't point this out because it seems so unsporting. It is like the Grimsby fishmonger with a Lewis gun, or a Lea Enfield rifle - it wasn't just the sheer injustice of being shot off your horse, it was the fact that the man holding the rifle came from the wrong end of the street. Bikes have that reputation. Bike reviews in the general press (and Top Gear for that matter) tend to be anodyne and carefully muted affairs. When Jeremy throws his thesaurus at the XJR and still runs out of superlatives, what can one say about something that accelerates more than twice as quickly, has more power than the average family saloon, and passes the 155 m.p.h. Jag by going 10 m.p.h. faster. A vehicle where the power begins to pour in like a tropical thunderstorm at 6000 rpm (when it is already doing 100 mph in top gear) and goes on for another 5000 rpm?

Motorcycles have improved beyond recognition in the last 10 years. A mid-80's motorcycle could churn out 100 bhp but it had trouble going around corners and trouble stopping. The wind pressure at 90 mph was like ... a 90 mph wind - Hurricane Mildred if you like. Now, for the price of a school runabout one can buy something that can be driven onto the Isle of Man ferry and straight off onto the TT racetrack. One of the UK top sellers, the 900 cc Honda Fireblade, develops 126 bhp, will toddle along at 30mph in top gear without a hint of roughness, has an excellent reputation for mechanical reliability, has good fuel consumption, it can stop on a halfpenny, and is so stable on the motorway at 100 mph that one can build houses of playing cards on the petrol tank.

It is useful power too. Cars on A and B class roads travel in conveys at 42 mph (according to the trip computer in my Passat). The rest of the road is empty. English roads, like atoms, are mostly empty space. A bike can pass these leisurely processions so quickly one soon stops noticing them. There isn't a lot of difference between a line of cars doing 42 mph and a line of parked cars - the parked cars are actually more dangerous.

A woman asked me what it was like on my Fireblade. Better than sex, I said. She suggested I wasn't doing it properly (the sex that is). Hmmm ...

The first time I caned the Fireblade I was sure the throttle cable was wired directly to the speedo needle. As my bum shot backwards I was convinced I would need a large patch of velcro sewn to the seat of my jeans. I decided I needed jeans of a different colour - something browner. And that was before I'd begun to learn how to throw the bike down, twisting the handlebars sideways to make it drop into bends with the agility of a wing forward dodging a rugby tackle.

Say something about motorbikes in your column; not the careful anodyne stuff, but start where the XJR superlatives left off. I know the bulk of your readers aren't into bikes, but sooner or later they are going to figure it out anyway. As they finish their 42 mph journeys they will ask themselves why all these people with crash helmets have huge grins on their faces.

Yours sincerely,

Colin Low