Britten: The 'greatest motorcycle ever built'?

I'd never heard of the Britten motorcycle until I moved to New Zealand in 1997. But in the motorsport-mad Land of The Long White Cloud, John Britten is a household name—and rightly so. His V1000 has been described as 'the greatest motorcycle ever built', because Britten effectively built it in his own backyard, and it trumped the works machines on the racetracks. Designed in 1991, the Britten had a carbon fiber frameless chassis and carbon fiber wheels. The front suspension was an adjustable double wishbone girder-type, and the 999 cc V-twin put out over 160 bhp. (As an aside, this...