There was time when two-strokes ruled. Eddie Lawson (four-time winner of the World 500cc Motorcycle GP C’ships) once said of his YZF750 (four-stroke superbike) that riding it after riding a YZR500 (two-stroke GP racer) was like taking a giant, flying leap. Backwards.
And yet, things have swung in favour of four-strokes. Even the last great stroker stronghold, MotoGP, has finally crumbled this year. Emission laws :-(
The Shogun was a fab bike at one time. A proper two-stroke ’’screamer’’. A lightweight sprocket rocket, which was the first bike to rival the great RX100 in the hooliganism stakes. Wheelies. Burnouts. Street races. Yes, the Shogun’s been there, done that. Loud, raucous, fast. No pretensions to refinement or fuel economy or the saving the environment. I used to love the bike! Sure, I never really bought one (I was a confirmed RX100 and RD350 loyalist), but quite a few in our gang had this, and I used to ride the bike I lot. It used to be a wheelie monster. BIG fun!!!! Not very reliable though, and not as robust as the RX100. The engine/transmission would not take a beating. Ride it too hard too long, and you’d be looking at extended visits to your (un)friendly neighbourhood wrench, and ultimately, a long-ish bill. The engine was a nice revvy unit, and if you used the gearbox to keep it on the boil, you could actually beat the RX100 at times! Suspension and braking were bad, so KB125s would go past you in the really fast bends. Also, electricals weren’t so good. Or maybe I’m saying all this because we used to thrash our bikes so very, very, very hard...
Now, there isn’t much point in buying one. It almost seems like an anachronism from the past. If you want performance, buy a new Pulsar 180. If you want fuel economy, buy a Honda CD100 or something. If you want to re-live the glory days of two-stroke motorcycling, pop an Eddie Lawson (or Wayne Rainey or Kevin Schwantz) video in your VCR, grab some munchies and a bottle of Coke, plonk y’self down on the couch, and enjoy....