2005 Yamaha FZ1 - Long-term Evaluation

Fazers Set to Stun

"Large increases in cost with questionable increases in performance can be tolerated only for racehorses and fancy women," wrote 19th-century physicist William Thomson, Lord Kelvin. He would have appreciated the 2005 Yamaha FZ1 then, which offers most of the performance of the company's flagship R1 sportbike for much less money.

"Ye canna change the laws of physics." *
Kelvin well understood the relationship between the R1 and the FZ1: He was one of those responsible for developing the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which says, amongst other things, that heat always flows from something hot to something cooler. In this case, the red-hot R1 donated some of its blistering heat to a pretty cool street standard.

If all this sounds a bit contrived, the simple story is that Yamaha dropped its 20-valve R1 engine into a simple but strong steel tube frame bicycle and swapped out the 40mm carbs for 37mm units. The result is a lightweight street standard with around 140hp at the crank, slick handling and, fortunately, excellent brakes. In Europe, it's sold as the FZS1000 Fazer, where it sells well alongside the likes of Kawasaki's Z1000, Honda's 919, Ducati's high-end Monsters, and the Suzuki Bandit 1200 in a crowded marketplace.

So is there a place for a not-quite sportbike in the land of king-size cruisers? Were merit as important as fashion, the FZ1 would no doubt be a top seller: I could buy three for the price of a high-end cruiser and still have money for hard luggage....

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