wherefore art though, bandit 400?
I'm surprised how difficult it is to find Bandit 400 (aka GSF400) links in English. There are quite a few German ones, if you can speak German, which I can't. Ah, the joys of living in a country where one is expected to forgo this whole small-CC thing and hop right on a Gixxer.

There does, however, appear to be fairly well-populated forum for the Bandit 400 over on Bandit Alley.

The three of us circled the poor hapless bike like vultures for a few minutes, and couldn't find anything obnoxiously wrong with it. I geared up for the test run on the bike, while Mark and Kim schmoozed with the bike's owner, Patrick (Mark's off getting his permit from the DMV right now; that's why he didn't do the test run).

I'll get into my thoughts on riding the Bandit in the next section. For now, I'll just say that, despite my best intentions, I got hopelessly lost while test riding the poor thing. In my defense, I warned everyone involved that I probably would, and not to worry that I'd just up and run off with the bike. I figured, hey, I'd left Mark and Kim as collateral. Fortunately, the Vance and Hines exhaust that was on the bike made it loud enough that I believe they could hear me from six blocks away.

Eventually, I returned, and gave Mark my lowdown on the bike. At around this point, Patrick's adorable Danish... mother?...grandmother?...appeared from within the house, and started talking to Kim and I while Patrick and Mark worked out the bike details. She was very excited that Kim and I rode, and happily told us a story about riding a dirt bike down the driveway of someone or other's farm Way Back In The Day. Her cat, Champagne, appeared, and amused herself by weaving around Kim's and my legs and getting long white fluff all over us while we talked bikes. Life was good.

Eventually, Patrick and Mark finished signing their lives away. The aforementioned adorable Danish lady was thrilled to death to hear that I was going to ride it home ("I want to see the girl ride away! I like to see the girl riding!"), but unfortunately, we putzed around long enough getting Mark and Kim back to the car and etc. that I think she gave up and went back inside.

So, Mark is a new daddy. I don't have pictures yet, but I'm sure I will soon. Here's a picture of a comparable model:

(picture from Jarmo Haapamäki's Suzuki webpage, which is a really cool site)

Mark's bike, sadly, does not yet have the pimping red rotors. Knowing Mark, this is merely a matter of time.

enough blather. how fast does it go?
So, two things really stuck out for me on my test rides of the Bandit last night.

• Inline fours confuse me. I am a V-twin lover at heart.
• 400cc inline fours are really fun.

Those with tiny minds may see the above two points as contradictory, but let me assure you, they're not. I had the greatest time tearing around at 8000rpm, the bike sounding like a cat being swung overhead by its tail. It was fun. I'd expected it to feel pretty close to the Nighthawk; you know, being an older 400cc and all. But no.

This particular bike felt a little twitchy below around 5000rpm in first gear. I didn't notice this at all in any other gear, so I may have just been having problems with the positioning of the friction zone (as with Peter's SuperHawk, it was adjusted much further out than mine is on my bike). Other than that, maneuverability/handling was great at slow speeds. Due to the aforementioned navigational issues during the test run, I was pulling a lot of U-turns, and didn't have any problems with any of them. It was slightly disconcerting at first to hear the engine revving so high while doing the U-turns, but that's due to my experience with V-twins.

I found that the power really seemed to kick in around 8000rpm, at least in the lower gears. More than once, I'd listen to the engine and go to upshift, only to notice that I was only at 10,000rpm (redline on the Bandit is an atmospheric -- to me -- 14,000rpm). Woohoo!

The only downside that I really saw to the bike during my test ride and subsequent examination is the utter and complete lack of any underseat storage whatsoever. You take off the seat, look down...and there's the wheel. Literally.

I took the freeway on the way home, expecting the same arms-being-pulled-from-their-sockets feeling that I get above 65mph on the Nighthawk, but I didn't experience it at all on the Bandit. I'd still want a windscreen for freeway riding, as I had to strain to keep my neck up, but it wasn't terrible at all. A taller rider may have an utterly different experience; caveat emptor and all that.

At any rate, the Bandit was extremely comfortable at highish speeds. I got it up to about 90mph with very little effort at all. Traffic and police paranoia caused me to top out at 90, as opposed to any limitation of the motorcycle. I can really see why people enjoy racing this bike -- it feels stable and together, if more than a little vibratory, at high speeds. I felt really confident taking corners and tossing it around, even though it was only my first time on a Bandit at all (much less this particular one).

In fact, I liked it so much that I could see lusting after one for my own if I decide to follow through on my ideas of racing. It felt good. It felt sturdy. It felt fun. I wouldn't want it as my only motorcycle, for the sole reason that I do a lot of freeway riding and touring, and, well, I'm still in love with my SVS. But if I were in the market for a cheap used small-cc bike to race and insure cheaply....it's #1 on my list.