THINK YOU'RE SPECIAL?

In a world rammed with super trick, super fast and super saucy motorcycles, what does it take to be defined as truly 'special'? We ponder that question, then offer up some of best bikes we've ever ridden...

- BIG MAC

Straight away I want to acknowledge that most of what of what you're about to read leaves me on extremely thin ice, and open to a lot of head shaking and tutting from people who probably know better than me on the subject of special bikes... or at least have a greater passion on the subject than me. The problem is that the whole topic is highly subjective, and therefore open to all sorts of interpretations. For starters, just how to define one bike more special than another is a problem. Is it the price tag? If so, that would rule out the humble Honda C90, a bike on which the entire Honda Motor company was built on, and without which we wouldn't have things like RC30s, Fireblades, NR750s or RCVS. Maybe the C90 and other humble bikes without which there would be no uber-bikes, are "just" a significant bike rather than a special bike and this is why the subject is so open to disagreement. A special bike to one person is just some stickers and plaque on the headstock to another person.

There are, however, some rules of thumb which can be considered safe ground when it comes to the subject, and one of them is that it doesn't actually have to be any good to ride. For example, I've been lucky enough to ride a couple of Ducati Desmosedicis on the road, a bike that was presented as a replica of their GP06 but in reality is more of a tribute to the MotoGP bike to raise money to fund the MotoGP program, sharing only it's bore and stroke and the cylinder head base bolts from the GP06. Ducati's own 1098 from the same year was a much better bike to ride, but the "Desmo" is the iconic, special, desirable one that today commands daft money. Also, you can add pretty much any Bimota from the 90s and 00s as examples of bike which are at best average to ride yet have that "thing" some call "X-Factor".