Gallery: Superbike showdown

Stock 1000cc superbikes are plenty fast enough for the road and start at £13k, but which is king? Well, there was only one way we were going to find out…

Superbikes are the very pinnacle of a manufacturer’s talents, a showcase for their genius ability to force power and control to co-exist in some of the smallest and tightest packages ever to have rolled on two wheels.

But very few of us have the luxury of being able to spare £20,000 to drop on the latest range-topping equivalent of a tarmac-hugging jet fighter. Nor do many of us have the time – or spares budget – to indulge a trackday addiction that sees us spending the winter months in Almeria, and summers back in Blighty dodging the rain clouds.

What most of us secretly want from a sportsbike now is a sublimely effortless road-going scalpel that combines 200bhp and a bewildering array of electronic rider aids with lustful good looks and more than a modicum of comfort and practicality. In the real world our superbikes need to be more versatile and more cost effective than ever.

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Enter the 2017 congregation of stock options – base models that actually share almost all of their performance ability with their more expensive stablemates, only skimping on exotic cycle parts and trinkets. Does any of that economy make them worse bikes – or are they just cheaper? Rolling on a stock option has never been so attractive – so which one is best? 

Check out this week’s issue of MCN to find out more, but for now, here’s a gallery from the test. Which bike would you choose? 

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