Purple rims... yes, why not?
Decent value, huge fun, and still the best machines yet invented to improve your riding
The 1990s were a high point for street legal trail bikes, with every base covered from lightweight two-strokes right through to big, Dakar-inspired thumpers. Best of all, most of these offerings seamlessly bridged the gap between on-road prowess and off-road ability – most modern ‘street legal’ mud-pluggers are either too road focused, therefore hopeless on the dirt, or full-on enduro bikes, barely better on tarmac than a pukka motocrosser.
The best of ’90s trailies are to be found in the mid-capacity bracket, from 250 to 400cc – the sweet spot where grunty performance and light, manageable handling overlaps. In terms of spec sheet figures that’s high 20s to mid-30s bhp and 115-130kg in weight.
Trail bikes are great as a second ride, or in their own right. Nipping out for a weekend of mud-plugging with your mates is as much of a buzz – if not more – as blasting about on sportsbikes. Top way to hone your bike control skills, too.
There are loads of mid-capacity models to choose from but, for us, three bikes stand out from the crowd: Honda’s XR400R, Suzuki’s DR350S, and Yamaha’s TT-R250 – the latter pair available in both road trailie and clubman enduro spec.
Somewhere between £2000-£3000 bags a tidy, mechanically sound XR, DR or TT-R, which is a snip for a package that’s a riot to ride, easy and cheap to maintain, and that will hold (if not increase) in value in the coming years.
HONDA
Honda’s XR range has been around since the late-’70s, offering sharper off-road packages than the firm’s dual-sport XL line-up. XRs proved a huge hit, particularly in Australia and The States where vast swathes of wilderness made off-road leisure riding (pronounced leeeee-zure…) a massive thing.
Starting off with a scattergun of models and capacities between 200 and 500cc, Honda later streamlined the mid-sized XR range down to 250 and 400cc. The 400 first appeared in 1996, but its roots can be traced back to the XR350R of 1985 – abike Honda successfully improved for that year with dry sump lubrication, a longer stroke (upping capacity by 14cc to 353cc) and a simpler, more effective carb. The revised 350 was dropped after just one year, Honda instead focusing its efforts on the 250.
Fast forward 10 years and the mid-sized XR was back, this time as a 400. A further increase in both bore and stroke took capacity out to 397cc and claimed power up by more than 7bhp, but the radial-four-valve-combustion (RFVC) motor’s basic architecture is little changed from that of the old 350.
The XR400’s chassis offers a radical update
