As a Yamaha lover I believe that a Gen 1 Fazer was probably the worlds greatest all rounder, they were as advertised, brilliant for touring,commuting and not bad for scratching too, loads of power and you could tinker with them to make them even better. One thing that never needed any tinkering though was the riding position and comfort they gave you, all day long ability. Fairly cheap mods to the suspension would get great results.
In my opinion the Tracer 9 which was advertised as the new Fazer never lived up to the hype and was probably such a big seller because of the relatively low price and 0% finance deals that Yamaha gave, I took advantage of such a deal myself.
The test ride was good with the three cylinder cross plane engine being really responsive and the chassis being quite flickable and the bike felt stable in the bends. Living with the bike though it became clear very quickly that this bike needed lots of work to make it anywhere near as good as a Fazer.
First thing I noticed was the vague feeling you get from the front end at speed, like it wanted to wash out all the time, then there was that seat, 30 to 40 miles was all it took to get really uncomfortable with numb bum syndrome, Yamaha offered a comfort gel seat at over 300 quid but I read reports that it was no better than standard, the rear suspension was far too hard and was jolting over bumps and the exhaust was a one piece job so an after market exhaust would set you back 1200 quid. The throttle response was far too aggressive with that on off feeling you get with so many modern bikes so rolling on the power out of corners was virtually impossible whichever power mode you had on.The build quality wasn't the usual Yamaha standard probably due to the knock down price of 8 grand. The fuel guage was a joke too. I realise that Yamaha have addressed the faults and made the Tracer into a much better motorcycle but that improvement will cost you over 10 grand now and there are lots of more capable bikes for that kind of money.
So really too many faults and niggles to get on with so I took a 2 grand hit and traded it for a Kawasaki sx thou which was a lot better all round bike but wasn't any where near as comfortable as a Fazer.
So here I am going back to where I feel most at home on a motorcycle, a Gen 1 FZS1000 in gleaming black with less than 17000 miles on the clock, it might all go horribly wrong, who knows but I'm willing to take the risk if I end up being a happy biker again.