4K Frolics

With a pocketful of pound notes and a €4K-ish budget to blow, we went searching for the best used option to spend our cash on.

Buying a brand new bike is lovely, isn't it? You know it hasn't been down the road, there isn't going to be any tacky 'go faster' parts bolted to every extremity and if it goes pop, you have got every right to march straight into the shop you bought it from, puff your chest out and give them a piece of your mind. But you don't half have to pay for the privilege, especially these days. Never mind rail fares, the cost of new bikes are going up faster than wages too, and because of this, there is a particularly buoyant used bike market in the UK today.

So to celebrate the fertility of the land in the pasture of used bikes, I decided to set my fellow Fast Bikes lads a challenge: to find the very best used motorcycle £4,000 can buy. We'd be judging it on a whole host of criteria - naturally, performance has to play a big part, but running costs are important too, as well as whether or not the bike can hold its value. We'd be taking into consideration comfort, handling, and last but not least desirability - it all counts.

The three bikes that arrived at Fast Bikes Towers couldn't have been much different if they tried. I brought along a Suzuki GSX-R1000 K5 to the party, which I thought would trounce anything that the others might be able to find for the same sort of money.

When Dangerous arrived on a relic of a thing from before even his time, I knew I wouldn't have to worry about his choice in the performance department, but the 1995 Honda VFR400 NC35 might have been able to claw a few points back on the Gixer when it comes to holding its value - well, it is a classic, after all.