motorcycle live Archives

Motorcycle Live (December 2021) Exhibition Review

Posted on January 16, 2022 | by Nick Tasker

Until Covid-19 put paid to the expo season last year I hadn’t missed a single Motorcycle Live since I first passed my test in 2009. A family event, my Mum views it as a nice day out with the family where she can snag a few bargains on next year’s touring gear. My brother and his wife poke sceptically at bikes while meeting up with friends. I use the opportunity to corner bewildered staff and bombard them with technical questions, climb all over every motorcycle I can find and try to take motorcycling’s metaphorical temperature.

motorcycle live 2021 — *Lots of great bikes, but is there anything really exciting?*

My motorcycling obsession – and there is no other word – is about everything on two (or more wheels). I never got into it for the culture, or the machismo, or the bragging rights – I liked the machines. As such, stepping into the hall at the NEC is just…fantastic. Doing so on a weekday and discovering that there are half as many people crowding the space was a wonderful surprise, allowing me to get more time with more bikes. I usually come with a list of specific machines to get up close and personal with, but also try to get an overview and see if I can put my finger on the pulse of the British motorcycling industry.

This year was always going to be a bit weird; Covid-19 hasn’t gone away, and there are some manufacturers who, after getting stung last year, clearly gambled on the show not happening at all. But even ignoring the fact that the only Yamaha products on display were T-shirts and that the entire Piaggio Group failed to materialise, there was still something rather flat about the show this year. The stands that were present were a little more restrained; marketing budgets and general uncertainty contributed to this, but so did customs and border issues, slimming Honda’s line-up and stranding most of Ducati’s bikes in France.

Half the bikes I’d seen announced in manufacturer press releases in the previous weeks and months were absent. I was curious about the newly-updated Yamaha T-Max 560 and the all-new Moto-Guzzi V100 Mandello would have had my attention. Ducati’s Desert X was notable by its absence, and Triumph were only showing a camo-wrapped ‘pre-production’ version of its (since revealed) Tiger 1200. But even if those bikes had been there, they wouldn’t have been anything truly revolutionary. The only genuine surprise was BSA, unveiling for the first time their re-launched (Indian-owned) brand and very aesthetically-convincing new Gold Star. And that’s just a dressed-up old BMW/Rotax engine in a retro chassis.

It was cool to see (and sit on) Harley-Davidson’s new 1200cc adventure bike, the Pan America, and the suspension that automatically lowers as you come to a stop is a neat addition to the genre. Their new Sportster uses the same water-cooled engine and comes with so much plastic cladding that it makes a Kawasaki Ninja look naked by comparison. I like flat bars and I like feet-forward riding positions, but not on the same bike. I’m sure we’ll see ergonomic variants of that platform in the years to come as noise and emissions regulations strangle the life out of their air-cooled engines, but on this occasion, I was left feeling somewhat underwhelmed.

And honestly, that’s my overriding impression of the entire show, and indeed motorcycling as a whole at the moment. In theory, we’ve never had it so good – choice, build-quality, features, performance…we’re living in a golden age of motorcycling. And yet, there’s no excitement, no passion, and no risk. Late-stage motorcycling has figured out what the best way to solve every problem is, and no-one’s trying anything new. They simply benchmark the leading competitors and remix their own version. And if a manufacturer is already the segment leader, then they just iterate and tweak the formula, so as not to upset their existing customers.

The Moto-Guzzi V100 Mandello should be a seismic event; Guzzi is finally going water-cooled! Piaggio has clearly decided the brand will live on and has stumped up the not-inconsiderable investment in an all-new power plant. But by all accounts, it’s yet another ~110bhp two-box half-faired sports-tourer. Harley-Davidson making an Adventure bike should have stopped the whole motorcycling world in its tracks, but instead, we’re informed that it’s merely another credible entry in the fully-saturated 1200cc Adventure market. One neat new innovation does not a groundbreaking motorcycle make. It seems churlish to complain about a bunch of really good new motorcycles simply because they’re not blowing my mind, but that’s what gets people out into showrooms. Nobody gets so giddy they can’t resist rushing out to buy a bike that’s basically the same as the one they already have.

Honda’s new NT1100 is literally a restyled Africa Twin with a smaller front wheel. Same engine, same frame, same electronics suite. The Japanese manufacturer had more stand-space dedicated to a display of old Fireblades than their “all-new” sports-tourer, which says a lot. Suzuki’s GSX-S 1000 GT is an updated GSX-S 1000 with panniers; they fixed the obvious flaw from the old model and executed an extremely questionable styling pass. On paper, it finally trades blows with the Kawasaki Ninja 1000SX, but ignoring aesthetics it does nothing whatsoever to get my attention. That aside, Suzuki had nothing new to offer, and so tried to distract everyone with old race bikes instead.

Triumph added a half-fairing and luggage to their Trident to make the new Tiger Sport 660. I’m sure it’s fine, and I can summon zero enthusiasm for what will, I’m sure, be a very competent and practical entry in the segment. Honda added slightly bigger panniers to the Goldwing and refined a bunch of their scooters slightly. BMW added radar-guided cruise control to their R1250RT. Ducati rebranded the Multistrada 950 into the Multistrada V2, raising the price and reducing the engine performance to get past EU emissions regulations. There are updated variants of most of their bikes, so I guess they’re all better now…?

Kawasaki added some electronics to the Versys 650. Royal Enfield had me temporarily excited when I spotted a Himalayan with the 650cc twin-cylinder engine from the Interceptor, but I later learned that this was a third-party one-off and not a production model. CCM are still selling unlimited new variations on their 600cc single-cylinder naked retro thing, and KTM boosted their 790 Adventure to 890cc to create the new 890 Adventure. I’m sure it’s just like the old one, but slightly quicker.

We’ve got a real problem here, folks. I normally find all motorcycles exciting and interesting, and yet looking at the current showroom options leaves me cold. There’s nothing new, nothing exciting, nothing that might make me sell everything in my garage in order to claim as my own some all-new and revolutionary new two-wheeled machine. The closest we’ve come of late are Kawasaki creating an insane 200bhp supercharged sports-tourer (a few years old, now) and Ducati stuffing a V4 in their already-excellent Multistrada. Light-weight adventure bikes are apparently all the rage, but Yamaha’s existing Tenere 700, MV Augusta’s new Lucky Explorer, and Aprilia’s just-released Tuareg 660 were all no-shows.

In theory, this apparent plateau could be explained by the fact that internal combustion motorcycling’s days are certainly numbered. The dates are already set for cars, and it’s only a matter of time before the two-wheeled world is given its own deadline. Against that backdrop, it makes sense to reduce the models and engine choices, re-use platforms, and recycle existing, winning formulas. Now is the time to maximise profits while they still can, because manufacturers sure as hell aren’t ready for the electric revolution.

Super Soco and various other Chinese manufacturers are working hard on building credible urban-use 125-equivalents for reasonable money, and at the other end of the spectrum you’ve got £20,000 Zeros and Livewires. There’s nothing with reasonable range, reasonable performance, and a reasonable price tag, which puts us about 10-15 years behind where electric cars currently are. My own calculations suggest that fitting enough batteries into an electric Ninja 1000SX to match the petrol version’s performance would result in a 750kg motorcycle. Electric cars are averaging over two tons, or around double that of their petrol forebears at the turn of the century. Like an obese diabetic vacationing at an all-you-can-eat fast-food buffet, Motorcycling can’t survive that kind of weight gain.

In short, I think that the entire motorcycle industry is holding its breath. No-one is spending any money developing any radical new internal-combustion motorcycles because they don’t know if that investment will pay off before the technology is banned. They also don’t want (or aren’t able) to sink the vast sums required into battery R&D, and know that current technology can’t meet their current customers’ expectations on price, performance, or range. They’re hoping that someone in the car world, where deep pockets are engaged in extremely expensive research, makes some kind of breakthrough (solid-state batteries, batteries-as-chassis etc.) that suddenly makes electric motorcycles a realistic proposition, and are saving up to buy said tech when it becomes available. They’re probably also hoping that said technology becomes available before internal combustion two-wheelers are banned from showrooms.

Those of us who like to travel or don’t want to have to recharge every 70 miles when commuting or riding for fun will just stick to used bikes, maintaining what we have while we wait for electric bikes to become genuinely competitive. But many motorcycle manufacturers simply won’t survive that gap, if it comes. They need sales year-on-year to maintain R&D and staff budgets that will be required to develop, build, and sell future motorcycles. You need a healthy industry to attract new riders and fight over-regulation. If the new-bike industry goes into hibernation, it might never reawaken.

So; if you’re in the market for a new motorcycle, then go out and treat yourself. Enjoy it while you can. That’s what the whole industry is doing right now…

Nick Tasker

First published in Slipstream January 2021

Motorcycle Live 2018 Part 2

Posted on February 15, 2019 | by Nick Tasker

Continuing Nick Tasker’s review of the Motorcycle Live event held last November at the NEC…

Ducati

We had all the big reveals last year so, for 2018, the Italian firm have tried to make as big a deal as possible about mid-cycle refreshes to their existing models. Their hilariously silly Diavel cruiser and monstrously oversized Multistrada Enduro got the new 1260cc DVT engine, resulting in smoother running and a more civilised low-speed response. The Multistrada 950 is joined by an ’S’ model, with electronic suspension and a few other goodies, raising both the price and a number of questions.

The attraction of the smaller-capacity Multistrada for me was that it was a simpler, cheaper bike for real-world riding where the bigger brother was more of a car-priced technical showcase. So how many people really want the toys from the bigger bike, yet shun the extra power, given that the weight and seat height figures are so similar? If you wanted something much lighter you could always treat yourself to the new Hypermotard, which now sports the smaller Multistrada’s engine and restyled bodywork, but loses any semblance of practicality. I bet it’s utterly hilarious to ride.

A lot of people have been expecting a new Streetfighter with the V4 powerplant, but instead we were given the Panigale V4R. Available with either 221bhp or 234bhp with the optional Akrapovic exhaust system and featuring winglets on the front fairing to keep the even-lighter bike on the road, I’m honestly not sure what to say. I haven’t ridden the previous V4, but I’m told that it’s terrifying and exhausting in equal measure. I’m not sure how increasing horsepower by 15% is going to help things in that regard.

Ducati Diaval 1260S

Triumph

Triumph are increasingly fond of announcing their new bikes at dedicated events throughout the year rather than saving them up for show season and those shopping at their local dealer next year have a breadth of updated models to choose from. The Street Twin is now quite a bit more powerful, making it an interesting choice for solo retro motoring rather than simply a castrated, beginners-only Bonneville. The Bobber has spawned so many new variants that I’ve lost track, although the more practical Speedmaster version does stand out. Even so, someone should tell Triumph that adding a pillion seat only helps matters if said seat is large enough for an actual human backside.

The T120’s have gained a couple of rather pretty special editions to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the original Bonneville for 2019, but they’re entirely styling exercises with no real changes. The only genuinely new model was the Scrambler 1200, a bike that the company claims has genuine off-road capability when compared to the more style-oriented alternatives on the market. The inclusion of a bluetooth-connected dash with GPS functionality leads me to suspect that we’re actually seeing the genesis of the retro adventure bike. Big and powerful enough to haul you and your luggage across the country and with just enough off-road capability to handle the gravel road to the campsite. It would solve the one problem that even those of us who like, and ride, adventure bikes generally agree on – they’re all pretty ugly motorcycles.

Triumph Scrambler 1200

Moto Guzzi

Speaking of retro adventure bikes, that’s possibly what Moto Guzzi is pinning its future on. The V9’s continue to be ignored in favour of the cheaper and more entertaining V7s, but at least the styling department has recognised this and is churning out new variants faster than even Harley-Davidson can manage. With their older 1200cc-engined bikes all killed off by Euro 4, Moto Guzzi would surely have folded were they not sustained by owners Piaggio. I bet an awful lot of jobs depend on the success of the new V85TT, and so they’re keeping their cards close to their chest with no solid details available.

It’s interesting that the bike was showcased with Metzeler Tourance tyres rather than some semi-knobbly treads, suggesting that the Italians are very aware that this is going to be a road bike rather than something aimed at serious off-roaders. All the other boxes are checked – metal panniers, raised mudguard, spoked wheels – so it remains to be seen whether a charismatic but overweight and underpowered air-cooled engine can compete in a world where even Triumph’s classic bikes sport secretly modern, powerful liquid-cooled engines.

Moto Guzzi V85TT

Honda

I feel that Honda have been on a roll lately. None of their models have shattered segments or set sales charts alight, but every single one of their models seems to be really rather good. Traditionally one of the more conservative manufacturers, and frequently late to the party on any new trend or fad, they’ve been showing and then releasing some interesting new interpretations of their old staples lately.

Their CBR650F has morphed into the upgraded CBR650R, with more power, less weight, upside-down forks, radial four-piston brakes, lower clip-ons, an all-new fairing with LED lighting styled on the new Fireblade, and a very cool LCD dashboard. Despite all this, you can still take one home for less than £8,000 and enjoy a genuinely usable road bike that doesn’t need revving to the stratosphere to pull away from the lights. For sporty riders, who mostly ride on the road and don’t need to win forum arguments with power figures, this could be a fantastic choice.

If you like the 650cc inline-four but prefer the style of the larger Neo-Café CB1000R, that combination will be available to order in 2019. Even A2 licence holders can get in on the fun with the CB300R. Going back up a capacity step, the three 500cc twins have had a styling revamp, and the X version even gains more ground clearance and a 19” front wheel to bring it more in line with other road-focused adventure bikes.

The only genuinely all-new bike for 2019 is the return of the legendary Super Cub. A glorious re-imagining of the original, it oozes quality and style and is a far more practical nostalgia trip than last year’s MSX-based Monkey. Complete with a semi-automatic gearbox, solo seat, luggage rack and even a fully-enclosed chain, this would be a brilliant way to get around town while making every other scooter look dull by comparison.

Honda CBR500R

Honda CB650R

KTM

KTM have teased us with their 790cc twin-cylinder concept for years, finally delivering their new middleweight Duke last year. Riotously fun to ride, journalists and early adopters were nonetheless concerned with what seemed like a rather cheap, flimsy feel to many of the components. I’m concerned that this new platform may end up sharing the reputation for build quality that the Indian-made 125 and 390’s suffer from, which would be a real black mark against the new 790 Adventure.

KTM 790 Adventure

Like its 1090 and 1290 stablemates, the smallest Adventure can be optioned in either base or R trim, depending on how much of your riding is likely to be away from tarmac. This, itself, raises the ongoing debate for our age, which is how much off-roading you can really do on a motorcycle that weighs more than 210kg wet. I daresay Lyndon Poskitt or the like could make any of the 800cc/210kg adventure-bike crowd positively fly, along even the very worst terrain, but he’d be far more likely to take something that weighed half that much for such an excursion.

KTM have a reputation for building genuinely capable faux-roaders, and the 21/18” wheel combos on offer along with the novelty engine-hugging fuel tank means the 790 adventure certainly has the right ingredients. The R model comes with an extra 2” of ground clearance and all the electronic gadgets that are expected these days and, of course, there are plenty of accessories available for those looking to spend even more.

Everyone Else…

Shall we start with Watsonian-Squire? You might have missed them at previous shows but they were always there, usually as part of the small Royal Enfield stand with a Bullet 500 clamped to one of their sidecars. Things must be looking up, as their marketing department found the budget for a much larger dedicated stand. Personal favourites were the bright-orange Vespa GT200 and the previous-generation Triumph Bonneville, both with beautifully matching sidecars. I’m not sure they work in the UK as anything but a novelty and, without proper fork conversions, they will be absolutely pigs to steer, but I want one all the same.

Watsonian Squire Vespa

Kymco were there as usual, their stand growing in strength and stature each year as their market share in mainland Europe continues to expand. This time they were showing off a beautiful 55th anniversary edition of their AK550 max-scooter. What? You didn’t know that Taiwanese Kymco have been making motorcycles since 1963? Or that they make a pretty cool swingarm-equipped sport-scooter that’s a bit like a cheaper, better-specced Yamaha T-Max? We don’t really buy scooters here in the UK, possibly because there seems to be a hard divide between those who commute into and around big cities and those that ride for pleasure. That doesn’t seem to be stopping Kymco from trying though.

Kymco AK550 55th Anniversary Edition

Indian trotted out a tweaked and varied range of Scouts (small, 1200cc water-cooled cruisers) and Chieftains (enormous air-cooled cruisers), but also announced their intention to be taken seriously by the rest of the motorcycling world by showing off their new FTR1200 naked. Although lightweight and powerful compared to anything else in their lineup, 120bhp and 235kg wet could be a tough sell in what is an incredibly competitive segment. At £12k for the base model it’s outgunned by pretty much everything until you start looking at bikes with a third less capacity. I’m glad they’re branching out, but I’m going to need someone to explain to me exactly why I should walk past every other bike in the segment and choose one of these instead.

Indian FTR1200

Vespa had a rather reduced showing this year, normally showing up with enough scooters to seriously worry a cafe full of Rockers. More disappointingly was that their new electric scooter was up on a plinth with Do Not Touch signs stuck to it. It’ll probably disappear without a trace here in the UK, but this thing could be a game-changer in the likes of Milan or Rome. When everyone rides scooters to work, people default to Vespa. That means that until Vespa make an electric scooter, you’re not even going to entertain the idea of buying one. The performance is about equivalent to a 50cc petrol scooter, maxing out at around 30mph, and range shouldn’t be an issue given the application. I’d certainly like to try one, but if my commute were that short, I’d probably just cycle…

CCM Spitfire

I was genuinely worried that CCM were going out of business after their stands shrunk dramatically over the last couple of years. Their clever 450cc single-cylinder adventure/enduro bikes were great on paper, and were much loved by everyone who bought one. But the old Rotax engine couldn’t pass Euro 4, and so CCM had to go back to the drawing board. They made a couple of lightweight tube-frame roadsters, mostly as an internal experiment and now they can’t keep up with demand for variants thereof. Every bike at the stand was either sold out or taking pre-orders, each one customised according to its buyer’s preferences, and all of them hilariously light weight and beautifully made. With no plans to make more than 200-300 per model but with new variants each year it seems that the only way to get on the list is to take a chance and put down a deposit!

Norton Ranger

Norton have been parading their V4-based race bike for what seems like forever, but that also means that a lot of people will have missed the other carbon-fibre-faired race bike they debuted at Motorcycle Live. Effectively their V4 engine with the rear bank of cylinders chopped off and bored out to meet the 650cc class limit for the super twins race series, the nearly £20,000 bike is unlikely to sell in huge numbers. It is road-legal though, as required for homologation purposes and weighs around 180kg wet in that form, but race kits are available to shave several kilos off that number. The bike will also be available in presumably cheaper naked form, with a variety of concepts shown off at the show. Think of them like really upmarket Yamaha XSR700’s.

There were at least a dozen other players present – mostly Chinese makes that had acquired existing historical nameplates in an effort to buy credibility, such as Benelli and AJS. While the former would probably resent association with the latter, any Chinese manufacturer has an uphill struggle convincing British buyers that their bikes are a worthwhile investment. Lexmoto continue to fly the flag for recognisably Chinese imports, but I have inside information that suggests the build quality and after-sales support is still nowhere near minimum acceptable levels. Building trust takes time and I’m not sure that the meagre sales available in our car-dominated part of the world will ever really be worth the effort for companies used to selling millions of units a year back home.

Didn’t make it to the show this year and fancy doing some speculative shopping without being bothered by dealership sales staff? The London Motorcycle Show runs this coming weekend from the 15th-17th of February at the Excel Centre in London. See you there!

Nick Tasker

First published in Slipstream February 2019

Motorcycle Live 2016 (Jan 17)

Posted on January 5, 2017 | by Nick Tasker

Another year, another Motorcycle Live – the final of the big three European winter bike shows, and the one most likely to attract TVAM members. After all, Birmingham is a far shorter drive than Cologne or Milan. For some, it’s simply a great day out, for others it’s an opportunity to decide which new metal is worthy of an early deposit at their local dealer. There were many new or updated models on display, but also some gaps. Many bikes were missing, discontinued due to falling sales or an inability to meet the looming Euro4 emissions and noise requirements. To that end, let’s go through the main manufacturers and see what was of particular interest this November.

HONDA

Minor changes to many of their current models, a cool Africa-Twin concept for those determined to run the Dakar rally, and a pre-production prototype of the now-confrmed X-ADV scooter. Closely related to the existing NC750-based Integra, Honda have surprised everyone by confrming that they will be putting a chunky, lifted, spoked-wheeled and knobbly-tyred scooter into showrooms next year.
While the idea of off-road adventure riding seems to be very much in vogue (even if single-digit percentages of riders actually venture away from tarmac in the UK), I do believe this might be a step (through) too far. I wouldn’t mind seeing those four-pot twin radial Tokiko brake callipers on the rest of the NC750 range, however.

Honda also introduced a more comfortable, faired version of their popular CRF250L road-legal dirt bike. 2bhp more, a larger tank, a more comfortable seat, a reinforced subframe and the oddest looking headlights this side of an R1150GS should make for a truly practical round-the-world traveller. Anyone who buys a KTM 1290 Super Adventure and says they’ll be heading to Mongolia next year is kidding themselves. Serious travellers take something small, simple, and lightweight into the wilderness, not something approaching 300kg with an iPad for a dashboard. The big news, in theory, was of course the new Fireblade. The CBR1000RR now comes in three different favours depending on your credit rating, with even the base model featuring a 15kg weight loss and small power bump, along with the sadly prerequisite riding modes and lean-sensitive brakes and traction control.

For those of us left slightly depressed by the contradictory manner in which the whole industry is adding electronic restriction as an antidote to their excessively powerful engines, Honda was one of the last holdouts, the last bastion of a bygone age. If riders can’t handle 200bhp, then why not simply make smaller, lighter, less powerful, and ultimately cheaper motorcycles?

Apparently it’s our own fault, because the CBR600RR’s poor sales are such that it’s no longer worth Honda re-engineering the bike to pass next-generation emissions regulations. Commuters and couriers are buying NC750s in droves, and well-heeled hobbyists are focking to big power Africa Twins and Fireblades, but PCP has apparently made the middle ground unattractive. Why get a 600 when for just £30 a month more you could have a 1000?

SUZUKI

Suzuki surprised and annoyed me by doing the complete opposite of what I was hoping for with the V-Strom range. The rumoured changes to the 650cc version can be summed up by taking the current 1000, complete with beak and upgraded traction control, then replacing the engine and stickers to make it a 650.

There’s lots to like – the larger bike’s subframe allows for ftment of some excellent tucked-in hard luggage, the low-mount exhaust is a welcome dose of realism in a world otherwise convinced that full- size adventure motorcycles are somehow going rockclimbing, and the fully-featured dash means that home-brew voltmeters and 12v sockets will no longer be required.

Unfortunately, they’ve also copied the 1000’s inferior stacked headlights, narrower fairing and screen, and irritatingly fashionable beak. And while they were at it, they completely failed to upgrade the brakes or suspension, the two biggest weak spots in the otherwise sensible, practical and effcient 650.

At least there’s now something for beginners. The Inazuma 250 has donated its engine to the GSX250R and V-Strom 250, both of which are reskinned to match their larger-boned and larger-engined cousins. It’ll be nice for new riders to have something that could be mistaken for their friend’s adventure or sports bikes, but low-rent running gear will mean that experienced riders searching for a lightweight commuter should probably look elsewhere.

Conversely, Suzuki have taken the competition a little more seriously with the GSX-R 125, giving the UK’s 17-year-olds something to lust after alongside the ubiquitous Yamaha YZF-R125, KTM RC125 and Aprilia RS125. Top speeds and overtaking ability will be too limited for older riders, and more practical machinery such as Honda’s CBR125 will be of more interest to penny-pinching commuters.

Same goes for the GSX-R 1000, joining the rest of the 200bhp, electrically-assisted superbike world, and bringing variable valve timing along for the ride. Based on their centrifugally-driven MotoGP-based system, Suzuki claim it will give them the beefy midrange to match the stratospheric high-rev power, but I hardly think the likes of BMW’s S1000RR are lacking in that department. Price may be key here, as it always is with Suzuki, but all those electronics surely can’t come cheap.

The sole victim for 2017 seems to be the GSX-R 750. Already the last man standing from the days when everyone had a sports 750, the Suzuki has long soldiered on as an example of restraint. Without the additional 50bhp that require electronic safety nets in its larger cousins, yet with enough mid-range to improve noticeably on the day-to-day drivability of the smaller 600, it could be argued that the 750cc inline-four was the perfect goldilocks sportsbike. Not too big, not too small. I almost bought one once, but then didn’t. I guess neither did anyone else.

YAMAHA

Completing the far-eastern triumvirate, Yamaha had one of the largest stands of the three, yet had the least new metal to show. Part of this was because they already had the most up-to-date range of all the Japanese manufacturers, and part was because they seem to sell a dozen different versions of each bike. In fact, it’s become easy to guess which model Yamaha will announce next, given the now obvious gaps in their formula. My money’s on a retro-styled version of the MT-10.

What was new was the R6; mechanically very similar to the previous model, but gaining more advanced electronics and an R1-esque restyle. Clearly here’s one manufacturer who believes that there is still life in the 600cc sports bike market. Power and torque numbers haven’t moved noticeably despite Euro4 certifcation, which could be more of an indication that we’ve hit a plateau on what can be done with four 150cc pistons, even at almost 17,000 RPM.

What was missing? Just the 660 Teneré. What, you forgot they still made a 47bhp, single-cylinder adventure bike? Yep, so did everyone else. Fortunately, the obvious replacement is already being shown off as a concept, with the brilliant MT-07 engine as a base. Before long you’ll be able to walk into a Yamaha dealer, pick your engine from 2, 3 or 4-cylinders, then choose a modern naked, retro, sports-tourer or adventure version of each bike!

BMW

BMW were, of course, the original platform-sharing pioneers. Ignoring the single-cylinder G650 (everyone else does) you could choose between the 1200cc water-cooled boxer, the now ten-year- old 800cc 360-degree parallel twin or the searing 1000cc inline-four and then select naked, sports or adventure for each. At the top end we’ve got the 1.6-litre inline six K1600 in all its Goldwing-destroying glory, and off to one side, all alone, the hilariously overpriced C650 scooters.

Well, last year some parts of the world got the G310 reverse-mounted single-cylinder naked bike, although for some reason it’s still not made it over here from the factory in India. By the time it arrives it should be joined by its new R1200GS-inspired twin brother, a sort of higher-spec, higher-priced competitor to the V-Strom 250. Again, if you’re a 17-year-old who wants a bike just like Mum or Dad, then maybe it’ll be of interest. If it’ll attract the attention of the hardcore around-the-world crowd remains to be seen.

Beyond that it’s mostly Euro4 tweaks for the existing engines, including ride-by-wire for the 800’s and a light restyle for the GS. BMW engineers figured out how to remove the high-frequency vibrations from the S1000XR and shuffled colours around on some other models. Most owners won’t notice or care. They’ll just wait until their dealer phones them up to remind them to renew their PCP subscription and collect the latest version of whatever they already ride.

KTM

KTM’s range is either exactly the same or completely overhauled, depending on how closely you pay attention to the details. Their corporate styling and insistence on painting everything orange makes it diffcult to spot what is actually a fairly comprehensive overhaul of their entire adventure range, with signifcant changes to their naked bikes as well.

The 1290 Super-Adventure has been visually slimmed down, given an iPad in place of a dashboard and picked up the meanest-looking headlights I’ve ever seen on any vehicle. With LED lighting finally powerful, light and compact enough to replace ancient incandescent bulbs on increasingly cheaper motorcycles, manufacturers are free to experiment with non-traditional lighting arrangements. And no-one has taken that more to heart than KTM. Blimey.

Other than that, it’s the usual silliness. A 1300 cc v-twin making an excessive 160bhp, all kept in check by an unnecessary number of traction control computers, and suspended by an undesirably complex electronic suspension. I’d love to tell you how much it weighs, but the latest trend in all these large, expensive motorcycles is that they’ll only tell us the dry weight, which here is 217kg. Add fuel, water, oil

and the rest and I suspect you’ll be lucky to see less than 250kg on the scales. And that’s before you cover it in another 100kg of brushed aluminium accessories…

The entire 1190 Adventure range has been cut, proving once again that there’s no-one willing to sign a PCP plan for a £15k motorcycle who can’t be persuaded to sign up to an £18k motorcycle. Instead, we see a replacement of the perplexingly stunted 1050 Adventure and its meagre restrictor-friendly 94bhp with the much more potent 123bhp of the new 1090 Adventure. With less power, fewer gadgets, a simpler dash and more basic lights, the new mid-range KTM Adventure costs signifcantly less than its big brother, and is an altogether more interesting proposition.

The 390 Duke joins its 690cc bigger brother in gaining the fashionable full-colour TFT display. It seems nobody remembers when car dashboards tried to go fully-digital in the 80’s and everyone very quickly demanded analogue dials back. The prototype Duke 800 shows off KTM’s new parallel twin, a first in the company’s street bikes, and likely slotting in between the featherweight single-cylinder 690 and the frankly scary 1290 Superduke.

KTM didn’t need to lose anything else for Euro4, although the hi-tech wonder that is KTM’s MotoGP bike does rather rub our noses in the fact that we’ll likely never see an RC8 successor.

TRIUMPH

It’s easy to come to the conclusion that Triumph only makes two motorcycles, but will configure them for you in a practically infinite number of ways. The 1200cc and 800cc Tigers each come in eight different factory-provided specifications, and are visually impossible to tell apart. The new 900cc and 1200cc retro-styled twin-cylinder engines are slowly being bolted into every possible combination of cafe-racer, scrambler, bobber and cruiser, with further options available off-the-shelf at dealers for exhausts etc.

In reality we’ve now got a Bonneville with less power and worse brakes in the new T100, a 54bhp Street Cup cafe racer created by bolting the Thruxton’s clip-ons and seat to the Street Twin, and an interesting, concealed mono-shock linkage giving us the pretend-hardtail Bobber. I’m hoping that if I wait long enough I’ll get the option to buy a bike with the brakes, suspension and engine from the Thruxton R, but with an upright riding position and cast wheels to make it actually usable for more than trundling to the pub and back for two weekends a year.

If you weren’t looking for them, the sheer volume of brushed aluminium and smell of beard oil might have distracted you from the fact that nothing featuring Triumph’s legendary 675cc triple has survived the Euro4 cull. If Honda is right, then no-one is buying 600-class sports bikes anymore, but I know for a fact that the Street Triple was a hot seller.

It’s an open secret that there’s a new 800cc version in the works, complete with half-faired touring variants and dripping with unnecessary riding modes and traction control. It’s just a surprise that Triumph didn’t have it ready in time, leaving a conspicuous gap in the lineup. Joining the 675s in enforced obscurity is a bike at the other end of Triumph’s scale, the 2.3-litre three-cylinder Rocket. Never a huge seller, but always a crowd-pleaser, I can only guess that fully modernising the gigantic engine couldn’t be justified in an era where riders seem more interested in plaid shirts than unending torque.

DUCATI

Ah, Ducati. The manufacturer whose engineers literally cannot separate motorcycle from sportsbike. Ask them to build you a cruiser, they build you a low, stretched sportsbike. Ask them to build you an adventure bike, they build you a tall, pannier-equipped sportsbike. Speaking as someone who repeatedly tries to turn cheap Suzuki all-rounders into sportsbikes, I can completely relate to these people.

Obviously there’s a swathe of Euro4 tweaks for existing models, although the rumour is that the 1299 Panigale has only survived due to low-production rules granting a stay of execution. The swan song, then, is the new Superleggera, a feather-weight opus in orange and white, a world-frst production bike with a carbon fbre frame, swing-arm and wheels, weighing less than my Street Triple, yet making almost 220bhp. Staggering.

The Scrambler persists in a variety of flavours, now including a Café Racer and Desert Sled, which at least has the decency to feature some suspension and frame upgrades to justify its off-road styling. It also lends its engine to the new/old Monster 797, which is presumably for people who wanted a classic 75bhp air-cooled Ducati twin but still wanted modern wheel sizes and brakes. Pricing will be critical, especially given that you can buy the exact same thing in the classifieds from a few years ago.

An apparently growing theme amongst the European manufacturers is to realise that not everyone wants or needs the power, weight and complexity that come with their top-tier adventure models, yet still want high-quality running gear. And just like KTM, Ducati will now be offering a tantalising new mid- range model in the Multistrada 950, featuring all the stuff you want (cast wheels, monobloc brembos) with none of the stuff you don’t (electronic suspension, iPads for dashboards). Colour me interested.

EVERYONE ELSE

Harley-Davidson either have 50 new models or none, depending on how you defIne new model. They do have a new big-twin engine, which looks a bit nicer, runs a bit cleaner, vibrates a little less and has a tiny bit more power. Just like BMW, if you’re a Harley fan, you’ll buy one regardless of the spec, so don’t worry too much about it.

Husqvarna stole the show for me with their Vitpilen and Svartpilen 401’s, both beautifully-envisaged future-retro concept bikes that somehow made it to full production practically unchanged. Company owners KTM donate the engines from the 390 and 690 Dukes, the former going into these smaller bikes, the latter already used in the you-know-you-want-one 701 Supermoto.

Vespa and Peugeot paraded their usual ranges of modern and retro-styled CVT-equipped scooters. The various 125s and their tiny, unstable wheels are best kept inside city limits where a bicycle would already be a cheaper option, and the 300s add enough power to get out onto the motorways, where you can really scare yourself. The larger-wheeled maxiscooters make more sense, and I’ve met people who swear by those for touring or bad-weather commuting, but the riding position makes for questionable handling and the massive weight makes for poor fuel economy.

Aprilia seem to be shedding models left and right, the poor sales from their otherwise excellent motorcycles not enough to pay for the necessary Euro4 upgrades. The Shiver will return as a 900, as will the Dorsoduro, the Caponord 1200 persisting only in Rally form, and likely only because they sell few enough to squeeze through the regulations for one more year. A shame.

CCM were present and correct, showing off the clever bonded-aluminium frame and BMW-sourced 450cc single they use in their lightweight adventure bike. Recent price rises at the high end of the segment now mean that the CCM looks better than ever for people with genuine long-distance off- road ambitions. Light, economical, yet capable of lugging all your luggage across the Sahara without requiring a mechanic to fy in for emergency repairs half-way through. Buy one, ride it through a muddy quarry, then park it at your local Starbucks to make all the local GS’s look really silly.

Curiously, although having dominated the world of badly-maintained 125s throughout UK cities, the Chinese manufacturers were conspicuously absent this year, despite starting to finally field semi- convincing larger capacity models at previous shows. Perhaps getting hauled away for egregious copyright infringement at one EICMA after another is finally making them realise that stealing everyone else’s designs isn’t fooling western consumers. Perhaps buying or investing heavily in existing
manufacturers (Benelli, I’m looking at you) will prove a safer strategy for breaking into this particular market.

But the company that sticks in my mind the most, is definitely the boutique Italian Energica. Based in the famous motor valley in Italy, this relatively young frm is determined to be the world’s two-wheeled Tesla. More mainstream competition Zero seem happy to incrementally advance electric motorcycles an inch at a time, a strategy chosen by many car manufacturers to produce sadly similarly forgettable vehicles. But both Energica’s Ego sports bike and its matching Eva super naked are something else.

Capable of delivering more torque from a dead stop than a 1299 Panigale can at peak and artificially limited to 150mph, both bikes will run away from literally anything.

With quality workmanship and detailing, top-drawer suspension and brake components and an electric drivetrain that proves once and for all that the eventual switch from hydrocarbons to electrons needn’t be a downgrade, the only questions remaining are range and price. Before government subsidies you’ll be putting down £28,000 for the privilege of riding your Ego home, and that’s assuming you live within100 miles of your dealer.

But give it another 5-10 years and we could be looking at a genuine choice. In the same way that you can walk into a Peugeot dealership and pick petrol or diesel with minimal differences between the two, your 2025 BMW R1200GS will likely be offered in both petrol and electric versions. I can’t wait!

Regardless of what you ride and what you’d spend your lottery money on, Motorcycle Live! proves once again that biking in 2016 is still one of the most varied and exciting ways of propelling yourself across the face of the earth. With just a few short weeks until it’s smaller cousin, the London Motorcycle Show (February 17th-19th) will be a perfect opportunity for anyone who missed it to go along, and tell me that I’m completely wrong about their favourite brand. I’ll see you there!

Nick Tasker