It's half a century since Pop Yoshimura started his tuning shop in Fukuoka, Japan. And since then the company has grown from a one man workshop to a multi-national conglomerate with divisions in Japan and the USA. And, among sports riders at least, the name "Yoshimura" and that red and white logo must be one of the strongest and best known brands around.

Because everyone knows that Yoshimura make brilliant tuning parts. Especially exhausts. Beautifully crafted, designed for function rather than form and about as trick as you can get. And usually bloody loud as well.

But time moves on, and increasingly draconian noise restrictions, both on and off the track, meant that Yoshimura's products were in danger of being marginalised by one of the very things that made them so good. So a change was needed.

A lot of exhaust companies started to produce compromise solutions - exhausts which made more power than stock but which were almost as quiet. But these were often heavy and tended to blow their guts out of the end after a few thousand enthusiastically ridden miles. Yoshimura didn't want to compromise on their quality so they looked for an alternative. And finally came up with the Cyclone.

At a glance the Cyclone looks just like the normal, not for road use Tri-Oval. It's a triangular can with rounded off corners. It's the same length and has the same fittings. It comes in Stainless, Carbon and Titanium, just like its race cousin. In fact, until you look at the actual exit hole there's no difference at all. Looking at the exit gives the game away, though. Nestled inside the yawning hole you'd expect from a race exhaust there is a second, smaller pipe. And underneath is a CE mark. Because yes, this exhaust is completely road legal.

So you might wonder what on earth the advantage is in replacing the standard, perfectly effective, end can with this. Surely it's purely cosmetic, right?

Well, partly. Because the standard can, while not exactly an eyesore, is somewhat enormous. But also, stuffed full as it is with catalytic converter, it's heavy and incredibly restrictive. The Yoshi can weighs a full 2 kilos less than standard. And though it's no louder the absence of a catalyst means that gas flows through far better and so you get, if nothing else, a far cleaner power delivery. The real surprise is that this extra silencing weighs just 100g over the race version.

Fitted to the bike the improvement in looks is dramatic and obvious. But if that were the only result then I would be disappointed.

I'm not.

Five minutes with the Yoshimura fuelling adjuster,which plugs straight into the bike's ECU, makes the fuelling slightly richer to account for the improved gasflow and generally tidies up the power curve. The result is a throttle response which feels significantly crisper at all revs, improved ground clearance (not that I'm going to need that for a while looking out of the window today) and a much nicer noise. It's still quiet enough that the neighbours don't get stressed but the aggressive bark that was already there in the background is now far more pronounced, and added to the faster throttle response, downshifts in particular are a far more satisfying experience.

So here we are. The Yoshimura Cyclone isn't cheap at around £450, but it's beautifully made, looks the business, sounds great and gives a real performance boost through improved gasflow and reduced weight. It's also around £200 cheaper than the standard Suzuki can, so if you need a replacement for any reason it has to be worth looking at.

In short, it's a great exhaust and gets an unequivocal thumbs up from here.