Yamaha Xjr 1300

Yamaha bumped the XJR from 1200 to 1251cc and the difference is immediately felt in the mid-range — there's a meaty, authoritative shove from 3,000 rpm that makes filtering and overtaking genuinely satisfying rather than theatrical. The carbs need choke on cold mornings and the flat-slide CV units take a few minutes to settle into a clean idle, but once warm this engine is butter-smooth for an air-cooled four, with that distinctive hardening rasp above 6,000 rpm. Handling is old-school heavy — 228kg is honest weight and you feel every kilo in slow car parks — but push it on a B-road and the chassis rewards commitment, with a stability that modern nakeds traded away for agility. The seat and wind protection are essentially nonexistent beyond 130 km/h, but that was never the point of this bike.

I ran a '99 XJR 1300 for two years and about 18,000 kilometres, and the revised carbs over the Gen 1 genuinely smoothed out that annoying flat spot around 3,500 rpm — it's not perfect, but it's liveable now. The torque is the whole story here: pull away in third gear at 30 km/h and it just hauls without complaint, and that air-cooled four sounds gloriously mechanical in a way no water-cooled motor ever will. Brakes are a step up from the earlier car, with better bite at the lever, though 228 kg means you'd better be committed when you decide to stop. It cooks your right leg at slow urban speeds in summer, the mirrors vibrate into uselessness above 130 km/h, and the suspension is set up for someone who weighs considerably more than me — but none of that stops it being deeply satisfying to ride a road you actually know.

I put 18,000 km on a 2004 XJR and that engine never stopped surprising me — the torque hits hard from 3,500 rpm and just keeps pulling, making overtakes feel almost lazy. The Gen 3 suspension revisions are real: it actually holds a line now instead of the vague wallow the earlier bikes were notorious for, though fast B-road corners still remind you there's 243 kg underneath you. The revised exhaust gives a genuine bark without sounding theatrical, and the new clocks are cleaner and readable at speed. Heat off that air-cooled four in summer traffic is genuine punishment — your right leg takes the worst of it, and after 40 minutes of city riding you'll be counting the lights.

The fuel injection cleaned up the carb-era stumble below 3,000 rpm and cold starts no longer require a choke ritual, but the real story is still that 1251cc lump pulling hard from 2,500 rpm like it's personally offended by your throttle input. Chassis geometry tweak gives it slightly more confidence mid-corner than the earlier gens — it's still not a sportsbike, but it stops fighting you in faster sweepers. At 238 kg you feel the mass in slow car-park stuff, and the seat goes numb around 90 minutes, so this is a pub-run giant rather than a continent-crosser. I've done 40,000 km on one and the only real frustrations are the mirrors vibrating to uselessness above 120 km/h and the electronics package being 'improved' in the sense that it now has a fuel gauge — hardly cutting-edge, but the engine reliability is genuinely bulletproof.