Someone on Facebook today remarked that owning a VFR had spoiled him for any other type of bike. I thought that I couldn’t have said it better. Time was when trolling through the BikeSales ads and eBay was one of my favourite occupations. Motorcycle Trader was my favourite magazine and, despite the damaging effects to my eyes that I am sure resulted from trying to decipher its tiny print and grainy, black and white photographs, I would read road test reports and reviews of all sorts of bikes and listen avidly as friends eulogised about how great their particular bike was.
So, perhaps buying my first VFR in 2002 was the beginning of a downward spiral into complacency that has not ceased since then? One thing I do know is that I’m no longer interested in looking at ads for bikes for sale, either on paper or online.
For a brief spell in 2006-2007 I changed bikes quite regularly. A series of small, harmless accidents resulted in bikes being written off by avaricious insurance companies and me searching for a replacement.
Here I must say that it took me some time to wake up that taking out comprehensive insurance on an old, 2nd hand bike, was throwing good money after bad. Insure the bike for what you paid for it, say, around 5K and you may as well shred the bills. Any accident, no matter how minor, is going to result in there being more than that value in replacement panels plus labour to fix and it was just a joke. I must be a slow learner or something. Nowadays I insure for Third Party Fire and Theft and leave it at that. It’s way cheaper and, if I do damage the bike, I’ll fix it myself thank you very much.
Anyway, I did spend a while there looking for a replacement bike a few times but, by then the damage had been done. Friends on my motorcycle forums would say, “Why do you want to buy another VFR, why not try something different?” And the answer was always the same, the VFR suits my needs and the type of riding that I do, so why go trying any others? Yes, the Triumph Sprint is a great bike and is closest in concept and execution to the VFR but second hand examples are still quite expensive and, besides, I have friends who bought one and then sold it and went back to the VFR.
Since 2002 the only bike I have owned that wasn’t a VFR was my VTR1000 and that was bought because I couldn’t find a VFR at the right price and I was committed to a MotoGp tour and didn’t want to miss out. I liked it, but it didn’t have the capacity to rev like the VFR does and the 16l fuel tank was a joke.
So it’s been Honda’s V4 for the last 15 years. Does anything else tickle my fancy? Lots of bikes but none that combine all the features that I like in the one bike. They say that, if you don’t get off your bike and look back at it and smile, then you have the wrong bike. I do, and that makes me pretty sure that, for me, the VFR ticks all the boxes.
