nigel

If my old bike is a leisurely soft sports tourer at best these days, maybe I'd be happy with a 390 Duke, who knows? It would help me to put all of this in context if I knew which of you have ridden a pre electronic aids Superbike.

Thanks for the comments so far. I'm more than aware my body has changed, I'm trying to figure out whether not being in a crouch on a naked outweighs being a sail on a motorway. In an ideal world I would like something that looks half decent, I could live with it being less gorgeous than a Panigale but I'm not sure I could do transformer MT10 day in, day out. I'm aware that there are 220hp monsters out there, and I understand that 220hp, next to my old 150hp (or call it 140hp I get the point) is 50% more. But as unable as I was to fully tame my beast, I did manually do my own traditional ABS, Cornering ABS, Traction Control, Wheelie Control, 6-axis IMU, multiple riding modes and god knows what else a rider no longer manages. With all that stuff switched on, are the new stupid fast bikes really scarier than my old stupid fast R1? Maybe they are, I honestly don't know, and yes test-riding is definitely part of the plan. Still listening...

Down to mostly money issues, I haven't had a bike in about 20 years, and hopefully, next year that will change. My last bike was a year 2000 Yamaha YZF R1, and although I couldn't even begin to take it to it's limit, I loved it. I loved the way it handled, accelerated, and that I could even sport-tour on it, probably in that order. I always kind of reckoned that the top speed was irrelevant. Anyway, here we are 2 decades later, bikes are more powerful, but with electronic hand-holding, and faired bikes are in the minority. If money were no object and I throw common sense out the window, I'd probably get a Panigale V4R. A Panigale V2 is probably bike enough for me, but still crazy expensive. An S 1000 RR might work, but still silly money, so that kind of leaves me with the new version of my R1, or a ZX10 R; the Fireblade is a Honda and the GSXR 1000 hasn't brought anything new to the party for a long time. I've considered nakeds; 890 Duke or Street Triple; they'd be down on my old R1, but probably still quick enough since I'm now in my 50s. But can nakeds do motorways? What should I get?