The cost of modern superbike design…

With every new motorcycle, there is pressure to cut weight and costs. The modern superbike needs to be able to boast a weight saving over the previous model for the sales brochures, and manufacturers are always going to be looking to cut the costs to build a bike, whether or not that saving gets passed on to anyone buying them.

In the old days, motorcycles had steel frames. That meant if they were unlucky enough to suffer an impact, they could be pulled straight with no bother. The arrival of allow frames into the mainstream, with bikes like the Suzuki RG250 Gamma as one of the first, things got trickier, but it wasn’t impossible to sort things out after a whack. And the advent of bolt-on rear sub frames was a short-term fix that saved the bike from being written off, but also made it look racier into the bargain.

Breaking bikes means working with them in all conditions. This poor lump of mangled metal was a one-owner Suzuki GSX-R750 K8. (Luckily the owner in question was OK). And with an impact speed of around 50mph, the result was the headstock fell off! The cause seems to be welding cast sections of frame to smoother side sections, with welds that look akin to robotic pigeon poo – which isn’t uncommon on modern sports bikes. On the plus side, the forks were still dead straight. That’s a trick first started by the Kawasaki ZXR400, thanks to Kawasaki running holes in the frame behind the headstock…

No-one wants to think about potentially damaging a new bike, but when you’re next shopping, take a look beyond the shiny paint and trendy gadgets. Even the big race series like MotoGP have had to look at ways to reduce costs to keep grid number up, and the cost of constantly chasing somewhat meaningless figures (Every year sports bikes get lighter, and road riders get a little heavier) is partly why new bikes are out of the reach of so many people.