Yamaha R6

When the 2006 R6 appeared in late 2005, it caused nearly as big a stir in the 600cc class as the R1 had done back in 1998 moving the whole game on in a way that few others had ever managed. Much was made of the 17,500rpm redline ? an incredibly high figure for a 600 that in fact proved too good to be true. It turned out that, in reality, the revcounter was a tad optimistic; the bike really hit its limiter somewhere shy of 16,000rpm. But thats all an aside to a machine that upped the classs game on pretty much every front. Not a comfy commuter, but still a formidable tool today and one that dates from the tail end of a mechanical era, just before electrickery started dominating sports bike chat