Church of MO: 1998 Best of the Best Part I

And in those days, when men were men (quite literally in one case), they gathered all together with the great motorcycles of the day, in the desert. And there did they smoketh of the tires, and yea verily did they grind of the gears, the greatest men of the day – King Roland of Sands, King Graves of Chuck, along with Brett Landes the dirt tracker, and MO’s founder, King Plummer, and his disciples. For three long days they rode around the Springs of Willow and launched themselves down the dragstrip, in a time that seems far, far more than just 20 years ago.

While it was really no big surprise that Yamaha’s tour-de-force YZF-R1 was the winner in all objective categories — it was the fastest at the drag strip, turned the quickest racetrack lap time, and kicked ass on the dyno — and gathered first-place votes from four of our five testers, there were some surprises a little further down the food chain.Honda’s CBR900RR (Fireblade in some markets) returned for 1998 with what seemed like redesigns too minor to hang with this buffed out crowd. Ah, but all is not as it seems, and this year the ‘RR matches up to the marketing hype that sold so many of the (ex-) wobbly machines in years past. Notably, a stiffer chassis, 5mm more trail (trail, not steering head angle, is what provides front-end “stability”), 10mm more fork span to enhance handling and torsional rigidity, improved suspension valving and selected weight savings added up to a quantum leap forward from the previous model. In fact, it was argued that with more power the RR might have won this test: That is, despite its 114 horsepower motor being a little under par in this group, the RR proved to be a such a flickable, stable mount with predictable power delivery, it afforded all riders instant confidence to go fast in the twisties. Bottom line: the ‘RR is the easiest bike to jump on and go fast.

One of the surprises of this test is that most of these mongo dong-swingin’ hyper-bikes are also great street bikes with tractable power and livable ergonomics. Not so with the GSX-R750. As resident Willow Springs Motorcycle Club king-pin big-fish Chuck Graves — who won seven out of seven classes this past season at Willow — pointed out, “the GSX-R750 sure likes to be ridden hard, but it’s a miserable street bike.” Point the GSX-R750 at a track or a set of curves that you’ve scouted for dirt and cop officers and hang on for one awesome ride: The Gixxer captured the only other first place vote in the test, from AMA Dirt Tracker Brett Landes: “The harder I rode, the better it handled. I was very impressed with its racetrack prowess.”