Satan's Stinger!

Negotiating an agreeable Brexit for both the 52% and the 48% would have been easier and taken less time, but (drum roll) Scoop’s Suzuki T125 ‘Project Stinger’ hits the road – at last!

- Steve Cooper

Road testing your own motorcycle raises any number of questions. Might the words written be biased, could they be overtly sympathetic, will they gloss over any shortcomings?

Well, maybe, but you (the reader) has every right to know that facts and I have a responsibility to deliver the truth even if it is my bike. So in the twin spotlights of openness and honesty I’ll lay my cards on the table and say: I love and hate this glitzy little bike in equal measure.

I adore its frankly bizarre lines, its strange looking engine and those crazy upswept exhausts with their cute end-cans but I hate it for the countless hours, days, weeks and years that it took to turn a total wreck into a viable classic motorcycle: as one of CMM’s readers put it, the bike fought me every step of the way. Even when fully sorted it was remarkably reluctant to actually run properly; it’d happily tick over but stubbornly refused to pull with anyone on-board. We had words and finally it agreed to run properly for the first time in 30 years. Last year saw Satan’s Suzuki Stinger finally hit the road; but enough preamble…