I cant agree on that as I have owned 4 efe's & loved every one, all day comfortable a lot more torque than a poxy bandit even in stock ish trim & dead easy to tune the nuts off if that's your thing, my last a Italian import gave 136bhp with minor tweaks (they had a bit more go than uk versions as stock)
Yes ground clearance is limited but they are no worse than anything else of the era & its the pegs or centre stand that touch down first which is easily sorted , bloody expensive for a good one now which tells you how sort after they are
I agree on the cbr1000 a much under rated bike & great fun until the inevitable cam chain rattle starts up at around 40k, pug ugly to look at but great to ride in my view & yes I have had a few, the last I bought on a whim one Friday morning did 1000+ miles on by Monday night fully loaded up with camping kit & pillion, no complaints from either of us on comfort or go..... sold for a modest profit the next Friday as another Suzuki took my fancy
Goes to show how subjective opinions can be. I hated the thing with a passion for the reasons I stated
The CBR1000FK (not the jelly mould model which was pig ugly) I thought was a lovely looking bike, and I had an FK and then had an FN, both brought new and both sold with mileage in excess of 100,000 miles
Never had cam chain rattle, but did have starter chain clatter, which I had done on the FK but 30,000 miles later it was back and as Honda advised, its annoying but it won't get any worse, so I left it on both.
Very under rated, but it also made me appreciative of all 3 Blackbirds.