Honda VF500F

Jane
Probably the corniest name I've ever chosen for a bike - Jane, but she was fairly good looking in her day and a decent performer too,
Click to see the Red and White VF500Way back in 1983, having left college and got a proper job, I just had to get me one of the rice burning race replica type thingys. Well the nearest I got was Honda's VF500 F2.

These bikes developed one hell of a poor reputation for reliability in the end, but mine never went wrong. Probably not riding it hard enough to get the best from it (and destroy the cam chain). Still we commuted for some 23,000 miles together, well most of  the time anyway. She even went to the Isle of Man where we had a whale of a time grounding fairings and foot pegs and generally being a complete idiot. Can't believe I never fell off it, neither did many others at the time.
Having set a certain standard with my riding on this machine it was clear it was time to slow down and become more sensible, and there were better bikes around 3 years later. Yep another V4.

As a footnote to Jane's fate, she was traded in for a younger model and a mate promptly bought it from the garage much to my annoyance. Then to rub salt into the wound he chucked her up the road, then seized the engine and then finally wrote her off! I'm amazed he's still alive really.