If you look, you’ll realise that it’s finally happened: people have realised that 20-year-old sportsbikes are modern classics…
And especially when they look this good… Back in 1996 work began on the YZF-R1, at the same time as work was ending on the porky YZF1000R Thunderace and we think the result – the 1998 Yamaha YZF-R1 4XV is a benchmark sportsbike in more ways than one.
Kunihiko Miwa was the man behind the YZF-R1 and it would not only blow the previous best bike into the weeds – Honda’s CBR900RR FireBlade – it would also become known as perhaps the best-looking bike to come out of Japan ever…
When rumours originally trickled in, this was going to be a 750cc replacement for the YZF750 but – despite getting the likes of Yamaha’s World Superbike stars Scott Russell and Colin Edwards on board for an exclusive test – this was going to be a full-on 998cc-powered beast, pumping out around 150bhp and with a compact chassis.
Oh and that chassis. OK, so in 1998 when the R1 was launched the Yamaha 500cc GP bike hadn’t done much, but they did allow chassis design to trickle down to Yamaha’s road bikes. Long before anyone else did it, Yamaha used a long swingarm, positioned well forward for better traction, something since copied by all and sundry.
The bike was launched at the tight and twisty Cartagena circuit in Spain, where a litre bike really shouldn’t do the business, but it did: blowing away all the assembled journalists and racers who were there to meet and greet – including Niall Mackenzie, the three-time BSB title winner on the old YZF750…
That year, it was clear that the Honda FireBlade was well beaten – despite coming out in RR-W/X form for ’98 and ’99 – and the new ‘Ninja’ was beaten too: the Kawasaki ZX-9RC1 was more graceful, more shark-like and lighter than before – but it was all too little, too late…
Was it just a case of sheer performance? No. OK, so the R1/4XV’s motor had class-leading power, the Deltabox II frame was gorgeous, in race fashion it had a gear-linkage going through the frame and the chassis kept that 150bhp in check, the long swingarm gave traction and the blue-spot Sumitomo brake calipers became the byword in braking, but none of this mattered.
What mattered was that the 1998 YZR-R1 was the best-looking Japanese sportsbike ever… perhaps it still is? The bodywork had a real ‘lupine’ look to it at the front. It had attractive ‘eyes’ while the close-fitting bodywork hugged the contours of that race-derived chassis, finishing in an upwardly-raked tail with two round, rear lights. Back then the tail unit and pillion provision was a joke, today it’s considered ‘generous’. How times change, eh?
The cockpit was equally futuristic with some lovely touches, such as the LCD speedo and dash… the package was just that much ahead of its time – and if you don’t believe us, simply slide a 1998 Honda CBR900RR-W Blade and a 1998 4XV R1 next to each other to see what looks the best 20 (yes, 20) years on…
Then there were the colour schemes. By the late 1990s we’d (thankfully) left the shell-suit era behind, and the R1 ‘kept it simple stupid.’
In came a red-white colour scheme that has been a byword of utter simplicity since alongside a smart, muted dark blue. Weirdly, we prefer the blue, and yet the red-white is the one many people are now looking for, weird as you pay less for the blue model out in the real world…
YAMAHA YZF-R1 1998-1999 4XV
Price new: £9399 (Nov 1997) but £8539 Nov 1998 thanks to the parallel market
Price now: £3500-£6000
Engine: 998cc, liquid-cooled inline-four, four-stroke.
Power: 150bhp @ 10,000rpm
Weight: 177kilos (wet around 205 kilos)
Wheelbase: 1395mm
FOR: Still crazy (and gorgeous) after 20 years…
AGAINST: Finding a good one is hard, as well as one that’s unmolested.
