Take six of the best bikes in the country out to the best test track in the land. Set three OVERDRIVE staffers loose on the mean machines. To stir up the already heady brew drop four gorgeous gals into the pot. Incendiary ingredients for the hottest of all bike shoot-outs. N-joy the ride as Sirish Chandran lets the beast inside him free on the test track astride the bikes... while the others have hands full trying to keep him within bounds of legality and coherence! here are some things I just can't get enough of. Like mum's food, a head massage, beer, women and bikes, the last two in unlimited flow. Give me a great bike and I will do without the head massage, any day, every day. The joys of biking, knee-down on a set of fast empty sweepers, front wheel barely touching tarmac as you power out of turns, the sweet music of pegs kissing tarmac, flat out before the next set of sweepers, rear wheel skipping as the front stoppers desperately shed speed, are matchless. And then there is the other side of biking, screaming away from traffic lights, popping wheelies in front of your mates, impressing the birds with your flash red bike, polishing the bike before the first date...

As bikers, we are spoilt for choice in the present scenario. From the Boxer, Splendor (and numerous variants), Caliber (even more variants) and Victor to cater to the I-want-80kmpl crowd, to the Eliminator for those in search of a lifestyle, there are scores of mobikes to choose from. Of course a Bulleteer will only swear by a Bullet but even this lump of iron is better made these days. More to the point we now have a thriving middle ground populated by bikes that truly appeal to our sensibilities, in terms of power and handling without being killers on Fuel Efficiency or price and looking oh so sweet. Life is tough, made even tougher by the need to make wise decisions or live in regret forever. To make life that wee bit easier we lined up half a dozen of the best bikes in the market today keeping in mind the right balance between go, show, efficiency and bank balances. We then set about thrashing them over hundreds of kilometres, racing them on the quarter mile drag strip, popping wheelies, attempting stoppies, scraping footpegs and spit-polishing them for the camera. We even lured a half dozen leather clad biker chicks to straddle the bikes to help us decide on the ultimate motorbike money can get you today.

Why, you ask, are we getting the ladies into this business? Well, no matter how macho we men think ourselves to be, life really revolves around whims and fancies of the fair sex. Think: when single and free, we buy bikes with a single point agenda - that of impressing and wooing the birds. A really fast bike sets off a tremendous adrenaline rush. Hey, but don't we really want bikes that zip so that she holds on even tighter? A peg scraping tarmac on a favourite roundabout is music to a biker's ears, but isn't her embrace even closer when lean angles get leaner? Finally when we do get hooked up don't most of us trade our noisy, smoky RXs or RDs for a Splendor becoming one of the 'average kya kai?' crowd, maintaining bank balances to spend on the in-laws? Hmm… the trials and torments of tough macho dudes!

To list the bikes we have lined up for this mother of all motorcycle shootouts: we have the Hero Honda CBZ, the bike that spawned this segment over two years back and is still very much in demand among the enthu-crowd. From the TVS stables we have the Fiero, sporting a 150cc powerplant like the CBZ and which till recently held the crown for the most technologically advanced bike in the market. The usurper to that throne is the Kinetic GF125, now available at a Kinetic outlet near you after being in the development pipeline for almost two years. To provide a fair hunting ground for the GF125, we have thrown the top-line Yamaha mobike, the YBX125 powered by a similar displacement 125cc unit into the arena. Also in the fray are the Pulsar twins from Bajaj Auto, the Pulsar150 targeted against the CBZ and Fiero, and the Pulsar180 a giant step ahead of the crowd. To maintain sanity in this comparo, we shall refrain from pitching the Pulsar180 against the other five bikes, the capacity advantage that she boasts already placing her a step above the rest and to most intents and purposes giving her an unassailable lead. Only towards the end shall we bring the 180 into the overall picture. So settle down, ladies and gents, and let us have fun while choosing the bike for you.