Britain went nuts for superbikes in the 1990s. Fuelled by the on track successes of a certain Carl Fogarty, huge numbers of us watched the racing – either through Sky’s innovative live coverage, or trackside – where six figure crowds regularly descended on Brands Hatch’s World Superbike round.
The summer of 1996 saw the Euro 96 football tournament hosted in England. Unemployment hit a record low and Britpop fever continued to rage. Overall, it felt like a good time in Britain, especially if you followed the racing, although those working at the coalface of the British motorcycle industry may not have agreed.
Two-wheeled lads mags like Performance Bikes and SuperBike may have presented a carefree image of kneedown, wheelies and burnouts, but the reality was that 1995 had been one of the poorest years for new bike sales in history, with retrospective reports suggesting just over 50,000 registrations that year. The fightback started in 1996, with around a 50% increase, and would go on to see over 150,000 units sold annually by the end of the decade.
But in 1996 our motorcycling landscape was still very much sportsbike orientated. World superbike homologation rules meant that all the Japanese manufacturers made 750cc sports bikes, like the Kawasaki ZX-7R and Yamaha YZF750R, but the big news that year was a brand new Suzuki GSX-R750.
Known as the SRAD, which stood for Suzuki Ram Air Direct, it was a ground-up new design – although the chassis was heavily influenced by the 500cc Grand Prix winner of Kevin Schwantz. With a 20kg weight saving over the somewhat aging old ‘Gixxer’ and a very competitive 128bhp at the rider’s right wrist, it was just what Suzuki fans wanted. Alas it never quite gave the company the racing success they craved and the factory race effort was underwhelming to say the least. World superbike honours went to Aussie Troy Corser that year, giving Ducati a third successive title in the championship’s golden age.
His predecessor, Fogarty, had made a high profile switch to the big budget Castrol Honda squad. He won four races, at fast tracks like Assen, Hockenheim and Monza, but struggled to get a tune out of the RC45 on the more technical circuits and found (as all others before him had) that a 750cc four was not able to consistently match the added grunt of the 1000cc Ducati twins. He would return to Ducati for 1997. In Grand Prix racing, Mick Doohan was halfway through his five-year domination of the 500cc class, while, in 125s, a young Italian lad named Valentino Rossi made his debut and even won at the Czech Grand Prix. He would go on to have a pretty decent career…
British championship racing entered a new era in 1996, with a new British Superbike Championship mirroring the rules found in the world series and finding immediate popularity. Former Grand Prix racer Niall Mackenzie won the inaugural title on a YZF750 in a now iconic Cadbury’s Boost livery (and followed up with further successes in 1997 and 1998) and the series proved a success. It celebrates its 30th anniversary in 2026.
The beautiful Ducati 916 remained one of the most desirable bikes money could buy, and almost unstoppable when tuned for superbike racing, but in terms of pound-for-pound performance the Japanese proved hard to beat.
While the 750s were developed as a base upon which go racing, and sold well, they weren’t necessarily the most popular bikes on the road. Honda’s CBR600F gave more than enough real world performance and was more practical than the racy middleweights that would follow in years to come, while the VFR750F remained a popular choice despite more than a decade in the marketplace.
But Honda still made the ultimate motorbikes in 1996, and their two flagships were big news that year. The third generation CBR900RR FireBlade came out, with modifications including a revised chassis and a bigger bore engine, which took power up to 130bhp. For the kneedown and wheelie merchants, the ‘Blade was still the ultimate bike for the bloke on the street.
Of course not everyone wanted to be cramped up on a FireBlade. For those who wanted speed and comfort, Honda (again) had something else new up its sleeve in 1996. The CBR1100XX, better known as the Super Blackbird, displaced Kawasaki’s ZZR1100 as the world’s fastest production bike. It won the bar room bragging rights with its 164bhp and a 170mph+ top speed but, far from being an uncontrollable beast, it was a surprisingly manageable as an everyday bike… assuming you didn’t mind feeding its habits for devouring chains and tyres!
Away from the sports bikes, there wasn’t a huge amount to get excited about. Suzuki’s bruising Bandit 1200 was introduced, joining the 600cc version that had debuted the year before. It offered a lot of performance for the money from its GSX-R-derived motor, even if it was raw and quite cheaply built. It sold well and would spawn imitators like the Honda Hornet and Yamaha Fazer in years to come. If you wanted something even more basic, Kawasaki’s ER-5 was new to the market and proved popular with riding schools, while the Yamaha Virago 535 custom sold well – in no small part thanks its low seat height.
Something else which was bubbling under was the rise of the twist and go scooter. Peugeot’s 100cc Speedfight (and 50cc moped version) sold like hotcakes to fashion conscious teens who loved its perky performance and cool hub centre steering set up, while the popularity of home deliveries for takeaways saw scooter sales rise with the arrival of the pizza delivery bike in most major UK cities!
What we weren’t riding in 1996!
While sports bikes still ruled in the UK, motorcycling was very much on its way to becoming the segmented pastime we know today.
We were still a few years from the rise in popularity of the adventure bike and although BMW’s R1100GS was an integral part of the German company’s line-up, most British riders didn’t have a clue what to think of this oddball our European cousins thought so highly of. Although adventure (or dual sport as they were usually known) bikes were still to catch on, big tourers still sold decently well - BMW’s R1100RT and Honda’s Pan European being the most popular. Three decades on and that sector is virtually extinct.
At the other end of the scale, two-strokes were mostly on their way out for anything over 125cc, the outliers being Suzuki’s RGV250 – in its final year of production – and the Aprilia RS250 with which it shared its engine. With new European emissions standards on the horizon, manufacturers were in a hurry to clean up their engines – something old smokers weren’t exactly renowned for.
And while Japanese manufacturers ruled the roost, Yamaha tried to imitate Ducati with its TRX850. Although it was a parallel twin (unlike the V-twin Ducatis) it ran a 900SS style steel trellis frame and its engine was engineered to deliver its power in a similar manner to the booming Dukes. It didn’t quite capture the public’s attention, even though it was a surprisingly good bike. With mid-range parallel twins quite the thing these days, you can’t help but wonder if the TRX was born 30 years too early!
