When I started riding in 1974 the only bikes that I can remember that had fairings fitted as standard were the touring model BMW’s and the Ducati 750/900SS models. Every other bike was what we now call a naked bike. And, trust me, as soon as I started doing any sort of long distance riding, the first thing that I did to the 350/4, was buy and fit a “Stone-style” bikini fairing.
Though it didn’t really do a great deal it was still preferable to being hammered in the sternum for mile after mile. Every road bike that I bought thereafter was fitted with some sort of after-market protection up to the time that I bought the first CBX550F2 that had one fitted from the factory. And not surprising, really because, partly due to the cafe racer trend and partly due to the influence of production racing in Australia, more and more bikes came from the factory with a fairing. It is funny looking back and pondering the change. I seem to recall that the Ducati was actually refused entry into one of the early Six Hour races because it HAD a fairing (and, much later it was refused entry because it had a solo seat, but that’s a different story).
By the time the early 80’s had rolled around and the mimic-a-racer style was in full swing, the manufacturers of after-market fairings had pretty much gone out of business (thankfully Handcraft Fibreglass survived and is still doing well, thank you very much). The CB1100R the Suzuki Katana, the Kawasaki GPZ900 and Yamaha’s RZ500 all came from the factory with a fairing and the days of the naked bike were gone. By the time that Suzuki introduced the GSX-R range in the mid-80’s it was all racer replica.
This trend continued well into the 90’s with the R1, the Fireblade and later generations of Gixxers continuing to offer buyers the race replica experience. I was reminiscing with former superbike rider, Ben Attard, the other day about the arrival of the first R1 in 1998. It was at Oran Park and he and Ben Archibald actually did some demo laps on it during the lunch break. It was so tiny, I thought at first that it was a 250! As sure as the pendulum swings one way, though, it starts to swing back. The next trend was that fairings started getting smaller again. By the time we got to the Naughties, there wasn’t much left of sports bike fairings except the bubble and enough fibreglass to support it. They were still there, but they started showing off more of the mechanicals while still supposedly offering aerodynamic advantages. My, how things change. Bikes got smaller, racier and minimalist. Fortunately this development coincided with the advent of electronic timing in racing, and a good thing, too. The fairings were now so small that there wasn’t anywhere to put race numbers, especially in and amongst all the advertising stickers. Lap scoring manually had become impossible and commentating the races had also become greatly more difficult.
However, the last 5 or so years has seen a dramatic drop in sportsbike sales. There are many reasons but the main one probably is, who NEEDS a 200bhp race-replica road bike in these days of draconian speed limits anyway? And what type of bike has started flooding the marketplace to fill in the gaps left by the downturn of sportsbike sales? You guessed it, naked bikes!! Have a wander up your favourite racer road this weekend and just see how many “MT” Yamahas of various sizes you see, and the corresponding naked bikes from the other factories as well.
The announcement this week of Kawasaki’s appeal-to-retro Z900RS is just another powerful example of how naked bikes are taking over. Me, I like the new “Zed”. It will never be a Z1 but no-one on a normal budget can afford a real Zed any more anywaay. It will come with all the modern sophisticated features and should provide a platform for every tuner and stylist on the planet to do with it what they did in 1973.
And, guess what? If they haven’t already done so, someone VERY soon will put a little bikini fairing on it…ah, the whims of fashion! 🙂