Watch out Pulsar, Unicorn, Apache
and Hunk, the FZ16 has revised the goalposts, upped the bar and
sprinted away. Oh dear that wasn't in the script was it? Adil Jal
Darukhanawala dissects the brand new Yamaha FZ16 and gives his views
on why this is the most important bike of 2008.
Indian motorcycling just got a solid shot
in the arm when Japanese bike major and the world no. 2 Yamaha launched
its most important new bike in a decade and a half in the country.
Don't be taken aback by the above statement especially by querying
the most important bike bit for Yamaha had launched its technically
brilliant and sharply focused performance bike, the YZF R15 just
a couple of months ago. However and this is a big however, the R15
may be a highly proficient two-wheeled tool for carving up race
tracks and also for making its rider feel good astride it, in literal
every day commuting terms, its sharply focused extreme nature coupled
to its pricing has made it the present-day Ferrari of Indian motorcycling.
Now to add to the Ferrari in its line-up comes the Alfa Romeo and the
first of these is also the most important Yamaha of them all since the
original RX100 from 1986. Yamaha took the wraps off its stunningly styled
FZ16 at a very exclusive reveal of the bike to select automotive and business
journalists in Goa on Saturday, September 12. And what we have in the
form of this muscular streetfighter in its naked avatar is a bike which
is not just streets ahead of the competition in its class (read that as
Bajaj Pulsar, Honda Unicorn, TVS Apache RTR, Hero Honda Hunk, etc) but
more importantly is a bike which yet again raises the bar for two-wheelers
across all makes and thus advances Indian motorcycling a notch closer
to the international mainstream.
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