Aprilia RS250 - the LAST fire-breathing two-stroke roadster

Funnily enough, while the motor kicks hard over 8000rpm, it is not the motor that is most likely to catch the RS250 rider out - it's the brakes.

With a dry weight of 140 kilograms and two 298 mm diameter floating disks on the front wheel, with two Brembo twin-piston callipres on each (with four differentiated diameter pistons), the front brake has more power than you'd have thought possible. Though it has loads of feel, it warrants immense respect because once you've become comfortable with the RS around the roads, you'll find yourself getting into corners with the back wheel OFF THE GROUND!!!

If you fancy yourself backing a road bike into corners this is the bike you can do it on. Alongside a Buell, this is the easiest bike we've ever ridden upon which to perform very impressive stoppies (getting the back wheel waaay off the ground under brakes. Given its tenuous relationship to the tarmac under deceleration, the 220 mm diameter twin-piston rear brake is gentle and progressive. Nor is the 60 horsepower motor and its 220 kmh top speed the most impressive aspect - that's almost certainly the chassis and suspension set-up, which offers a precision unmatched by anything registerable on two wheels.

So precise is the steering that it feels like you can claim any spot on the road just by willing the machine over it, regardless of the speed or camber of the bend.So it is a roadbike, and it can be ridden on the roads every day without the motor filling up with gunk, but the road is just not its natural habitat.

The RS250 is a racer first and a roadster second. Though it has pillion pegs, don't even think about trying to carry a pillion unless there's absolutely no alternative - it's painfully uncomfortable for both, the bike is unbalanced and walking might be a better solution.

The RS250 is ideally something to buy to put in the garage and stay there except for track days. It is a motorcycle to be oggled for its craftsmanship - next time you get near one of these babies, take a bit of time to check out the swinging-arm, the effort that has gone into wrapping those expansion chambers around the motorcycle so NOTHING scrapes (this is a motorcycle upon which you'll get your knee on the ground before something else touches), and just behold the attention to detail, all the way down to the race computer with adjustable redline and lap timing which nestles inside the fairing.

It is the finest example of a breed of motorcycle which is about to become extinct. It is also the final example - the point at which evolution stopped after 50 years of refinement and development of the roadgoing two-stroke.

I think I'll go and have a good cry!!!!