Having read Nick Tasker’s review of the triumph Tiger 900 GTPro I thought it might be useful to respond from an owner’s perspective.
I purchased my 2020 Tiger, at 6 months old and with 600 miles on the clock, from Bulldog Triumph.
Two points before proceeding: Firstly, I do not have a particular allegiance to Bulldog Triumph, nor indeed to any other dealer or manufacturer. Secondly, I fully appreciate that we live in a society where people are free to express their thoughts openly.
I’ve been riding on the roads for around 46 years, have had far too many bikes to remember from 50cc two strokes to 1100 cc sports tourers. The Tiger being my first experience of an adventure bike and previously riding sports tourers, it did take a bit of getting used to, mostly that was me rather than the bike.
My Tiger is now very nearly 3 years old and has 17,000 miles on the clock. I am very pleased to report that I have suffered none of the issues raised in last month’s article. Shortly after purchase I did have a small problem with the quickshifter, which was resolved rapidly and effectively, and the bike has given me no further issues.
I would very happily buy another one, should I have the need to.
For many years I rode a variety of Japanese machines, mostly the ones with the wings on. In 2018, when looking to replace my Observing bike the Street Triple 765R fitted the need very nicely and still performs admirably. So, 2 years later, when looking to replace my touring bike, I had no hesitation in returning to Triumph. Indeed I am now the very proud owner of three Triumphs, having just purchased a 20 year old Speed Four, and no regrets.
I would actively encourage members, if you are looking for that style of bike, pop into Bulldog Triumph and ask for Jason. Have a look, sort a test ride and decide for yourself.
While the big 1200cc Tiger is Triumph’s bike of the moment, the brand’s smaller 900cc adventure bike continues to get a great deal of attention. I loved the final iteration of its predecessor, specifically the Tiger 800 XRT, so much that I recommended it to my own father. It’s still a bike I would happily own, and having struck out on its big brother I felt it only fair to give the Tiger 900 GT Pro a fair shake
A quick summary, then. The Triumph Tiger 900 GT Pro is the all-singing, all-dancing, and road-focused version of Triumph’s middleweight adventure bike. It seems ridiculous that something with an engine just shy of a full litre of displacement and over 220kg of metal and plastic is now considered a middleweight, but here we are. It’s smaller in every way than its big brother, including the price tag, but does lose a few of the toys (and more than 50 horsepower) along the way.
In the early 90’s, an engine this big would’ve meant you were top of the sportsbike food chain.
There’s a chain final drive rather than a shaft, the electronically-controlled rear shock still requires manual adjustment of preload, and the front forks have no electronic adjustment at all. You still get LED headlights, heated grips and seat, and even a digital TFT dashboard. It has to be said, however, that the user interface is truly, spectacularly awful, with several different view options, each worse than the next. It’s clear that the graphics and animations were designed in a studio by a graphic designer, rather than a motorcyclist or user interface designer; they look very cool, but they’re horrible to use on the road. Triumph know this, which is why the newer Tiger 1200 has a completely different visual and functional design.
TFT dashboards allow designers to create anything they can imagine… which isn’t always a good thing.
Keep your eyes on the road and actually ride the bike and there’s plenty to like, however. Triumph does seem to have figured out the formula for a good-handling, sweet-steering road bike, which mystifyingly still eludes some manufacturers. The weight drop versus its bigger brother shows the 900 in a favourable light, but look further and the cracks begin to show. Despite the front brake calipers being identical in specification to the heavier 1200, the 900 did not inspire the same confidence under braking. It features a more basic master cylinder at the lever which could be a contributing factor, but both bite and power were somewhat lacking. My local dealer suggested that perhaps it was to do with my example having been ridden on wet roads without being cleaned, but I don’t call that an acceptable excuse for a motorcycle on our wet and windy island.
Brakes were surprisingly underwhelming, belying their chunky size and branding.
As speeds picked up, the weaknesses in the cheaper suspension began to reveal themselves as well. Fidgety over bumpy surfaces, both the forks and shock failed to remain their composure and sapped confidence when pressing on. I tried using the electronic adjustment of the rear shock and honestly found that it made very little difference from one extreme to another. Once again, and in common with most sub-£20k motorcycles, I would want to have a suspension specialist modify or swap the hardware to suit my 75kg weight. And as with all integrated electronic suspension, such modification or replacement wouldn’t be cheap.
The up/down quickshifter on this GT Pro model works well at any speed and in any gear.
The longer I rode the bike, the more problems began to appear. Firstly, the engine. Triumph has, just as with their newer, larger 1200 Tiger, deliberately unbalanced the engine’s crankshaft to give it a lumpier twin-cylinder-like feel, with the predictable side-effect of extra vibration through the handlebars. Given that the rotating mass of the engine is so much less, the vibrations are similarly reduced, but they’re still there. I’d call them livable, but definitely not welcome, and still prefer the silky-smooth previous-generation triple. Unlike its bigger brother, the 900 doesn’t even share the same exciting noise and rush in the higher echelons of the rev range, so there’s no real loss in using the slick up/down quickshifter to keep the engine out of the buzzier heights.
Electronically adjustable damping on rear shock only, with manual preload and forks.
But despite all of this, the deal-breaker for me this time was the seat. After 30 minutes I was uncomfortable; after 45 I was in agony. I suspect that the marketing department is again to blame here; off-road bikes need narrow seats to facilitate a better standing position, and the on-road bike shares these components. Even if the road-focused GT models will never see anything dirtier than a muddy lane, it’s important to maintain the image. But the result is a hard-edged plank of a seat that in no way supports the real-life human anatomy of a seated rider. I’d need to replace that, immediately, and probably expensively. The same is true for the windshield, whose clever on-the-go one-handed adjustment is rendered moot by the fact that it has no discernible impact on buffeting or airflow. Another upgrade needed there, I fancy.
The narrow seat helps your feet reach the ground at a stop, but makes any real time in the saddle a painful experience.
Which rather sums up my feelings on the Tiger 900 GT Pro, I’m afraid. A good motorcycle, provided you’re willing to replace or upgrade the suspension, seat, windshield, and brakes, and assuming that you are willing to live with an irritating dashboard and unnecessarily buzzy engine. I might accept those issue on a cut-price budget bike, but not on a premium model costing almost £14,000. Add the obligatory panniers and top box necessary to make the bike usable for its intended purpose and you’re well over £15k for a motorcycle that needs several thousand pounds of changes and upgrades to essential hardware to meet my minimum acceptable standards.
I’ll never understand why road bikes don’t come with proper mudguards; look at the state of those exhaust headers…
Now of course, you could buy a lower-spec version of the Tiger 900 and save around £2,000, but you’d then need to add things like heated grips back onto your modification list. I think that Triumph knows it has a pricing problem here, which is why the heavily de-contented and detuned Tiger 850 Sport exists; the same engine, same chassis, but every possible corner cut to hit a £10k price point. But if price is all you care about, then a lightly-used Tiger 800 XRT will get you a lot more for a lot less. You’ll get better fuel economy and range, a more comfortable seat, and in my opinion, a much nicer engine.
Lots of toys, but I’ve not had great experiences with microswitch-based switchgear on motorcycles.
So, no; I sadly won’t be adding a Triumph adventure motorcycle to my garage any time soon. I like the brand, and the build quality and attention to detail often set an example to the rest of the industry, but I am clearly not their target customer this time. Your mileage may vary, of course; maybe you have buns of steel and won’t have a problem with the seat, and perhaps the buzzy engine and suspect brakes won’t bother you either. But when Triumph’s current range of Tigers seems objectively worse than their previous generation versions, the discounts that can be had from lightly-used low-mileage examples mean that you have to really want a brand-new bike to deliberately choose a Tiger 900.
Time to keep looking…
Great on paper, but with too many rough and unfinished edges, especially for the price.
Ever convince yourself that a bike is perfect, even before you’ve had a chance to ride it? I’ve done it before, but not usually with money in my pocket and a genuine need to replace a freshly-sold motorcycle at short notice. Watching every video, reading every article, poring over every photo. But you should always try before you buy.
Triumph’s new Tiger 1200 really is all-new. Forget the marketing; a close look is all that it takes to confirm that there are very few, if any, parts carried over from the old Tiger. I was actually a fan of the old ‘Explorer’, even if it wasn’t really the right bike for me. Big engine, comfy seat and cosseting fairing, ample luggage and pillion capacity, and you could even get it with creature comforts like an electric screen, heated grips, and cruise control. Shaft drive was just the icing on the cake – and I know from experience with my Yamaha T-Max that not having to oil or adjust a chain is really, really nice.
Redesigned shaft drive is a little snatchy, but means no more chain to lube while touring
The new Tiger has shed weight – a lot of it – and gained power, a neat trick in this era of multi-catalyst exhaust systems and sound-deadening engine casings. Depending on which spec sheet you read it goes toe-to-toe with BMW’s all-conquering R1250GS, and by the time the average owner has slathered either in accessories I doubt there’s really much in it. At around 250kg it’s still a big, heavy bike, and you do feel it at a standstill. But on the move, the big Tiger finally makes the case for factory-fit electronic suspension in a way no other bike has.
With damping adjustable in a dozen steps from the pretty (if slightly slow) dashboard it’s very easy to get the ride dialled in from the saddle. I daresay a specialist with a lot of tools could do better, but for once I can ride a showroom-fresh motorcycle and genuinely find a setup that works for my weight without spending thousands on a rebuild. And that’s just as well because the weight figure isn’t the only thing Triumph is apparently trying to copy from BMW. In top-trim GT Explorer form, it’s a hair over £18,000, and like its boxer-engined competitor, that doesn’t include luggage or any accessories like crash bars.
No fancy branding or flashy logos, but Triumph’s semi-automatic electronic suspension really works, really well
It has to be said though, up close the Tiger 1200 does a better job of justifying the price tag than the current German option. BMW’s have become increasingly plastic-y in recent years, with unpainted or matte surfaces undermining the luxurious reputation. In contrast, there’s almost nothing to fault about the Triumph’s presentation, with beautifully-finished components on display all over the bike. Look closely and you’ll even find details like stainless-steel fasteners and reusable rubber cable ties – it really seems like no expense has been spared.
I’m probably the only person who cares, but modern switchgear just doesn’t feel as nice to use; reportedly less reliable too
I don’t love the microswitch-based buttons, especially the indicators – everything feels a little sticky and is difficult to feel while wearing heavy gloves. And the TFT dashboard, while easy to read, seems to stutter, as though the onboard computer isn’t powerful enough to animate the graphics smoothly. But at least it’s got every option under the sun and can be configured to show you pretty much any information you want, even if it takes a while to figure it all out.
The real story, of course, is the engine. Triumph has done some very interesting things here, not least of which is the deliberate unbalancing of the three-cylinder crankshaft in order to create a lumpier, more twin-cylinder-like feel to the power delivery. They’ve also moved the radiators up and to the side, allowing the entire powerplant to be moved further forward without fouling the front wheel. There’s actually more space still on the road-biased GT model I rode, thanks to the smaller 19″ wheel. Those looking for more fashionable or off-road capable spoked wheels get a 21″ version in the Rally models, though they also suffer a weight penalty and an even taller seat.
And the GT Pro version isn’t exactly small. Everything about the bike seems to be built to 120% normal scale – the distance to and width of the bars, the seat height, and of course the sheer mass of the machine itself. At 170cm and 75kg geared up I once again feel like I’m a good few sizes smaller in every dimension than the intended target market. Even the bend of the handlebars seems to expect my shoulders to be a whole size wider, with bigger hands to reach the levers. Just as well modern clutches are so light and easy to pull, and at least the wide bars make the bike easy to steer.
It looks lithe until you realise that those are 18″/19″ wheels being made to look like 17s
And boy, does it steer nicely. I still think the BMW R1250GS still wins by a hair on front-end feel, but it’s astonishing how quickly and comfortably I can throw around this heavyweight adventure-touring monster. But unlike the BMW, the rumbling, growling engine snarls as you rev it out, the full 150bhp catapulting you forwards and the speedometer upwards at a truly exhilarating rate. The seamless up/down quick shifter works at any speed, any throttle opening, encouraging you to open ‘er up one more time and hear that intoxicating roar from the airbox.
It’s just as well that the massive Brembo brakes on the front wheel are up to the task, as you often find yourself arriving at corners far sooner – and far faster – than you’d expected. But with the latest lean-sensitive rider aids and sticky rubber, the Tiger 1200 genuinely feels unflappable, even on rough, pockmarked Northamptonshire roads. I challenge anyone to ride this bike hard and keep a grin off their face.
Really good brakes, on a really confidence-inspiring set of front forks
Unfortunately for me, this is where it all started to go wrong. I’m no stranger to wrestling oversized bikes around, nor to swapping out handlebars and levers to get a better post-showroom ergonomic fit. The windshield isn’t great, but that can be changed, and the drivetrain snatch is a small price to pay for never having to oil or adjust a chain ever again. But one thing that won’t ever be fixable is engine vibration – not when it’s as severe as this, and especially not when it’s a deliberate design decision driven by the marketing department.
You see, Triumph’s incredibly-smooth 120-degree even-firing triples have been criticised in the biking press for years as being unsuitable power plants for off-road machinery. The big, lumpy pulses and heavy cranks of twin-cylinder machines are easier to manage at low speeds, more difficult to stall, and bite harder into the dirt – or so the story goes. I’m still not convinced that anyone should really be trying to ride 250-270kg motorcycles anywhere you wouldn’t take a Vespa, and the vast majority of adventure bikes never see more muck than whatever the local farmers have left on the roads. But it’s the image – the fantasy – that sells.
For me, the buzzy engine ruins everything; at least it’d be easy to clean with no radiator blocking access…
Three-cylinder engines are Triumph’s unique selling point, the main way their bikes are different from everyone else’s, so the chosen solution was to deliberately unbalance the engine’s crankshaft and artificially create the sort of uneven power pulses that journalists apparently crave. I wish they’d thought to ask their own customers. I wish, just for once, that the marketing department hadn’t interfered in the engineering process. Because I’m afraid to say that, for me, this redesigned engine is a disaster.
Sure, it sounds great, and the extra vibration at lower engine speeds adds a bit of character when trundling around town. But as speeds climb into the second half of the rev range the vibration gets worse and worse, becoming a harsh buzz all through the handlebars. Keep the bike on the boil while carving up a series of fast bends and anyone with an ounce of mechanical sympathy would wince – it almost feels broken. But worst of all, it’s painful. I’ve never experienced this before in all my years of riding, but after 5-10 minutes of hard riding, my hands were genuinely going numb from the vibration. I had to back off, change up a few gears, and slow down to let the pins and needles subside as blood flow returned to my extremities. I can’t imagine what it would be like for someone who suffers from bad circulation.
The 30-litre tank option is wider and comes further back, necessitating this rubber insert on the smaller model
The solution, I suppose, would not be to ride that hard, but then why purchase a motorcycle with 150bhp? Why spend what would ultimately be £20,000 on a high-power adventure tourer if you’re going to be forced to trundle around with two-thirds of the power off-limits? It’s heartbreaking, honestly, as with the smooth firing order from their own closely-related Speed Triple Triumph might honestly have had a shot at convincing me to trade in every one of my bikes to scrape together a deposit. You can even choose to order the Tiger with a 30-litre tank, and the idea of being able to comfortably cover over 300 miles without stopping sounds brilliant.
Even without this fatal flaw, the Tiger 1200 isn’t perfect, of course. The peculiar choice to equip even the road-going GT models with an 18″ rear wheel limits tyre choice, with none of the top sport-touring tyres currently available in that size. If you don’t get the higher-spec models you do end up with buttons that don’t do anything, such as for the heated seat that isn’t there. The 10,000-mile service intervals are great, but very expensive, with lots of plastic to remove before mechanics can get to the oily bits. The side stand is too far forward for my stubby legs, and there’s no getting away from the fact that a bike this big and heavy could easily get away from you.
The seat is comfortable enough, with a wide surface for the rider, if less so for their passenger
It’s honestly a massive disappointment and one that means I’ll have to keep looking for my own next bike. Other riders may not be bothered by the vibration, and I encourage everyone who can stomach the eye-watering cost to give the Tiger 1200 a fair shake. It’s certainly a match for Bavaria’s best, and you might just find you’ve discovered the perfect high-spec do-it-all motorcycle.
A really good bike, ruined by Triumph’s own insecurity about their three-cylinder engine
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.
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.
Norton are back! And they’re offering the same V4 and retro twin they made before…
Ducati’s new 17″ Multistrada Pikes Peak was stuck in France, along with most of their other bikes.
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.
Dressed-up BMW engine in a 60s chassis and running gear. Cool, but not new.
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.
Like Ducati discovered with the Diaval, making a modern bike look “authentic” takes a lot of plastic.
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.
Tucked in a corner of the Honda stand, the NT1100 looks fine but lacks “wow” factor.
If anything, that front fairing looks even worse in person.
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.
Adventure re-skin for the Forza 350 scooter will probably see as much dirt as the average Africa Twin.
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.
Even with Formula 1 tech employed we’re still nowhere near parity with petrol.
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.
None of the established players are seriously developing marketable electric motorcycles yet.
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.
Will motorcycling survive the electric transition?
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…
I’ve owned and ridden several motorcycles over my 30 years of riding, and like many of us have not had much experience with cruisers. I am however working for a car/motorcycle manufacturer, and one of the perks is to have a company motorcycle which is changed every 5 months. Given this amazing opportunity, I ensure that I pick something different each time, although I have had some favourites over the years. To my delight and excitement, I managed to get one of the first R18 1st Editions which I picked up in December 2020.
I arrived at the site where we swap over our bikes. I was giving back a BMW F900R, which is quite a different machine to the huge, low chrome covered monster that awaited me. It was time to ride it home. Clutch in, press the starter button and the huge 900cc pistons fired into life with a side-to-side shudder, although much quieter than I’d hoped!
The ride home was very damp and an accident on the M3 caused me to have to negotiate some muddy back roads. With brand new tyres and 1800cc of grunt, the bike handled everything I threw at it without a stutter. After an hour and a half in the saddle, I got off feeling as comfortable as if I’d been on a touring bike. After only 2 more rides we’re back into lockdown, so the beast was put back in the garage with 100 miles on it and onto trickle charge.
After what seems like forever, April finally arrived, and I get to go out on a peer-to-peer ride with another Observer who’s on a BMW R1250RT. The first thing I notice is that the R18 is slow to steer into corners. I adapt my riding style to go slower in and use the huge grunt to fire out. My friend commented that as they are following me, they had to really twist the throttle on the RT to stay with the R18, such is the bottom end and mid-range. After a couple of hours out on it, I still feel comfortable and am enjoying the torque and the surprisingly good front twin disc brakes.
Second ride after lockdown, we were off on a small social ride to the Cod and Waffle in Leighton Buzzard. Lots of fast A Roads and nice twisty back roads. There is a mixture of sports bikes, tourers and super nakeds and the R18 didn’t let me down at all. It has no problem on the straights or the twisty bits, and to quote what Bike magazine said, “ride it like a big retro, not like a cruiser”! Once you get your head around this it works perfectly.
Now what seems like only a couple of weeks and a few observed rides in mostly bad weather, its time to give the big beast back and onto the next one. I’ve really enjoyed the massive torque, excellent brakes, comfy seat and riding position, and despite what your mind tells you, I’ve never had an issue with ground clearance. Only negative side is that it gets absolutely covered in muck every time you go out, and takes ages to clean it and the suspension is a bit on the hard side.
I will really miss the R18. It has put a big smile on my face during the short amount of time I’ve been able to ride it, and I would definitely have another one. I’d encourage anyone, regardless of what you ride, to pop into your local BMW bike retailer and take a test ride on one of these amazing machines. I guarantee you’ll be surprised, and it will put a big smile on your face!
This month Nick Tasker reviews the other Italian bikes that warrant some page space, along with the rest of the Japanese and the European manufacturers, Indian and Chinese, plus the electric bikes new to the market.
THE OTHER ITALIANS
While Ducati may be the quintessential Italian motorcycle, it’s easy to forget that their sales volume is completely overshadowed by those of the Piaggio Group. Their Moto-Guzzi brand has taken the best part of their V85TT adventure-touring bike – the charismatic 850cc air-cooled engine – and used it to give their ageing V7 platform a new lease of life. Keeping air-cooled engines alive post-Euro5 is going to be very difficult indeed, and it will be interesting to see just how long the traditionally-minded manufacturer can keep it up. With the death of the old V7 engine, Moto-Guzzi is now a single-engine manufacturer, building effectively just three models. I suspect that the next couple of years’ sales figures will determine whether or not parents Piaggio decide to invest the considerable resources required to develop a future-proof, potentially electrified drivetrain for this niche brand. If you like old-school, air-cooled naked bikes, buy one while you still can.
On the other side of the corporate roster sits Aprilia, another Piaggio brand that’s been shedding models for years now. With every penny apparently going into keeping the remaining few models competitive through occasional nips and tucks, this ‘other’ Italian sportsbike company surprised everyone last year by announcing their new RS660 sportsbike. Lightweight, festooned with high-end running gear, and extracting an impressive 100bhp from a 660cc parallel twin engine, almost 50% more than the Japanese competition. The price tag (£10,000) is closer to what bikers used to pay for their 600cc-class sportsbikes than the current crop of more practical middleweights, so it will be interesting to see if there’s really a market for such a machine. The reduced piston count should mean a less peaky, more road-focused delivery and Aprilia promise that the suspension is tuned for bumpy B-roads, not glass-smooth racetracks. I’m looking forward to finding out if it can live up to the hype.
Light, the right amount of power, sensible suspension and leading edge electronics? Consider me intrigued…
But while many won’t agree, the Italian bike I’m most keen to actually ride after the Multistrada V4 does, in fact, sport an exposed trellis frame and single-sided swingarm. What it doesn’t have is front forks, a pillion seat, or a surfeit of power. The Italjet Dragster 125/200 look, quite frankly, like concept bikes or one-off specials made by someone who really misses their Peugeot Speedfight. Even Italjet’s own webpage has to confirm that no, they are not joking – this really is a production bike. It’s expensive for a 125/200cc scooter, but at around £5,000 it’s still nothing compared to what most people spend on their two-wheeled toys. And imagine the crowd you’ll draw after parking up at your local bike meet on one of those!
The end of an era; if you want to tour with lots of luggage and a pillion, you’d best buy an adventure-tourer. Everyone else is…
Nips, tucks and new tech abound, but still no word on a UK price…
Looks great, probably handles well, and will have fantastic electronics. So why aren’t I excited?
Sounds good on paper, but have the clutch-cooling oil jets been fixed on this one?
Slim pickings here – mostly just new paint and stickers across the board. Plenty of models are living on borrowed time, with derogation rules allowing pre-Euro5 models to be sold only while limited stocks last. Suzuki and Yamaha’s showrooms will look noticeably less diverse as 2021 progresses and for the first time since the 80’s Honda won’t have a V4-powered bike in its line-up. The Yamaha FJR 1300’s almost two-decade-long production run is coming to an end, with changing tastes having already killed off the Honda ST1300 Pan European and Kawasaki GTR1400. But even though adventure-tourers are the flavour of the month, the Yamaha Super Tenere never found much of an audience and the cost of Euro5 compliance was evidently too high to justify.
On the other hand, Tracer 700 & 900 have become Tracer 7 & 9 respectively, the larger of the two gaining a number of high-tech features alongside it’s fractionally larger and cleaner three-cylinder engine. It sounds like some of the things I complained about in my review have been addressed (better handling, new up-and-down quickshifter), along with a few things I didn’t really have a problem with (bigger panniers, new electronically-controlled suspension). The latter could result in another unwelcome price bump, and given that the Tracer 900GT was already in danger of losing the value proposition compared to the Kawasaki Ninja 1000SX, this could be a real problem. Move too far up-market and suddenly the more prestigious European offerings start to look more reasonable by comparison.
Speaking of the Europeans, BMW has updated their S1000R naked bike. No ShiftCam technology here, just mild Euro5 tweaks, but the styling is much more cohesive and makes for a significantly more attractive motorcycle in my opinion. But I’m afraid it’s also one of the least interesting offerings in the segment. Flat-plane crank inline-four naked bikes are a little bit like washing machines. They’re very good at their job, they just aren’t usually terribly interesting. And when similar money buys you almost any other engine configuration, you’ve got to discount a lot of other really charismatic motorcycles to end up at the S1000R.
KTM realised that everyone was pushing 800cc adventure bikes up to 900cc and did the same thing, creating the 890 Adventure in the same various flavours as the previous 790. I really wanted to consider that bike as a V-Strom 650 replacement, but the damning reliability reports from the then-new power plant combined with the existing stories I keep hearing about electrical problems prevent me from seriously considering the Austrian brand. Maybe the new 890 platform will be the point when things change; maybe not.
In Kawasaki’s world things have been pretty quiet, save for the unveiling of the updated Ninja ZX-10R. Speaking as something of an apologist for what many people would consider to be ugly motorcycles, I am afraid to say that I haven’t seen a front fairing design this…unfortunate in a very, very long time. Then again, given that no-one except racers buys them anyway, and the fact that they’ll just replace all the bodywork with race fairings, it probably doesn’t matter too much.
I know you can’t see it while you’re riding it, but…
INDIA & CHINA
This is where things get a little left-field. There are now so many Chinese manufacturers masquerading as old European brands that it’s hard for even an obsessive like me to keep up. Traditionally fiscally flaky Italian firms like Benelli have enjoyed drinking from the financial firehose of Chinese investors and have a slew of impressive-looking, if rather underpowered and overweight models in showrooms. Chinese manufacturers desperate to shed the stigma of their previous sub-standard efforts have been snapping up defunct British nameplates and using them to flog ultra-trendy small-capacity bikes for years, and some of the results have been just as bad as you’d expect. But for every zombified AJS there are a few that claim to source their engines and electronics from China, yet assemble them in Europe according to our more exacting quality and longevity expectations. Herald even claims that they are graduating from this process after ten years and that their new Brute 500 is wholly manufactured in the UK. Now there’s something I’d like to see in person…
Regardless of where they’re built, it’s true that the quality and dealer support for these less well-established brands has improved dramatically in recent years with the more successful and, one hopes, trustworthy of them all branching out into larger capacity offerings. CFMoto have been selling ultra-budget, Kawasaki-derived 650cc motorcycles for a few years now, and a recent tie-up with KTM is set to extend their range with engines sourced from their new Austrian partner. Chinese police are already testing a 1290-derived fully-faired bike that would be an interesting BMW R1250RT competitor, especially at half the price.
Their countrymen over at Zontes haven’t been selling products in the UK quite as long, but they’re clearly determined to catch up fast. While their 125cc selection does a good job of imitating Kawasaki and Suzuki’s various naked models, their catchily named ZT310-T looks like a Triumph Tiger 1200 that shrank in the wash. Part of the truly enourmous Guangdong Tayo Motorcycle Technology Company, Zontes are keen to follow CFMoto in demonstrating that Chinese brands can deliver more than just throw away learner bikes. The spec list is quite frankly incredible given the £4,199.99 asking price. Keyless start, TFT dash, electric screen, backlit switchgear, Bosch-sourced ABS, Lithium-Ion battery…some of these are features that bikes four times the price don’t always offer.
Designed and built in the UK, they claim. That exhaust system screams “small-series type approval”…
If the Interceptor is anything to go by, then the Meteor could be the bargain of the century.
It’s also available with either forged 17” wheels or a spoked 19”/17” combo, depending on whether you expect your journeys to take you onto gravel or not. This thing undercuts the much-vaunted Royal Enfield Himalayan on price and weight while beating it handily on features and performance. It’s well worth checking out the feature video on their UK website which, unlike a few Chinese brands I could mention, actually works and looks like it was designed by professionals. No, I don’t expect the bike itself to be up to the standard of bigger, more expensive European or Japanese fare, but my own experiences with the Himalayan weren’t great and plenty of people took a chance on those at a similar price point. If your £20,000 BMW is too precious to actually take off-road and comes out in a rash in the winter salt, then maybe a Zontes ZT310-T could be worth a look.
Speaking of Royal Enfield, their less off-road focused bikes continue to show promise. Hot on the heels of the universally acclaimed and best selling Interceptor 650 comes the Meteor 350. A more cruiser oriented offering, the new bike will cost just £3749 on the road here in the UK. If the quality and riding experience are up to that of the Interceptor, that price could help move a lot of metal once stocks arrive at UK dealers. Japanese small capacity cruisers have always struggled to maintain the all metal authenticity cruiser riders crave, and the Interceptor’s success proved that well-judged running gear and an ultra-competitive price can make up for the power deficit that often prompts the Japanese to choose water-cooling for their offerings. Royal Enfield has serious ambitions for the western market and I’m very interested to see if the Meteor helps maintain their momentum.
Electric
Those of you who have been paying attention at trade shows over the last couple of years will have noted the proliferation of small electric motorcycle and scooter companies. SuperSoco always stood out for me, simply because their design spoke of ambitions beyond the fray of rushed lookalikes. Their bikes have a unique visual aesthetic that suggests actual care and thought are steering the brand even if the performance limited my interest in the past. But while many of these cheap cash-in marques have come and gone, SuperSoco is still here, and frequently sold alongside the more established electric brand Zero in dealerships. What’s more, for 2021, they’re finally offering a 125cc-equivalent option in the shape of the TC Max. It’s currently available for just £3,825 after the UK government’s OLEV Plug-In Motorcycle Grant, which is slightly cheaper than Honda’s similarly styled and performing CB125R. 125’s aren’t exactly expensive to fuel and tax, but charge the removable battery at the office and the savings could add up quickly. Definitely worth a look!
60 miles of range at 30mph isn’t much, but then it doesn’t cost much either.
In the same vein we have relative newcomers Horwin, imported to the UK through electric scooter stalwarts Artisan Electric. I’ve never been overly impressed with Artisan’s product: plastic and fake chrome covered imitations of classic Italian scooters matched with relatively low-tech electric drivetrains. They’ve lately diversified into more futuristic designs which I think are much better executed. Their tie-up with Horwin brings the very stylish EK3 electric scooters to the UK for under £4k, but it’s the CR6 retro-bike and upcoming CR6 Pro that really caught my eye. The latter uses the same motor and battery combo, but adds a 5-speed manual gearbox and clutch to eke out every drop of performance and theoretically push the bike up past the 60mph mark. I’m forever pondering the idea of getting another 125cc motorcycle to handle my 70-mile round-trip commute and it would be very interesting to see if the technology has finally reached a point where electric becomes a viable option.
Bring on 2021
As you can see, there’s lots to be excited about for the 2021 riding season. Motorcycling was one of the few success stories of 2020 as dealers reported record sales following the first lockdown in spring. Commuters were encouraged by the government (and, perhaps, common sense) to avoid the crowded petri dish that is public transport but unable or unwilling to switch to their car or bicycle. It seems they suddenly discovered what the rest of us have known all along: that motorcycling is the perfect way for most people to get to work. CBT’s were booked solid and 125’s flew out of showrooms.
But bigger bikes sold well too, even amongst the luxury brands. Perhaps those buyers were simply looking for an outdoor hobby that allowed them some fresh air with built-in social distancing. Perhaps the sobering news gave people the nudge they needed to finally get up off the couch and live a little. All that lockdown enforced time for self-reflection may have helped many realise that life can be short, and that no amount of risk-aversion, healthy eating, and clean living can fully protect us from something like Covid-19. As an otherwise fit, young, healthy individual who caught it early on and was on oxygen a week later, I can confirm that it’s not just the frail, infirm, or incautious who can fall victim to this invisible killer.
Yes, motorcycling can be dangerous, and going for a ride without the right gear and training can multiply that risk significantly, but perhaps 2020 helped a number of non-riders consider that a little bit of risk can be worth it, given the thrill and excitement that motorcycling offers. None of us really know how much time we have on this planet and, as the saying goes, don’t put off until tomorrow what you could do today.
So, 2020 is finally over. I don’t think there has ever been a year that so many people all over the world have looked forward to seeing the back of. As motorcyclists in the UK, we snatched a scant few weeks of good riding between various lockdowns, but European trips were largely cancelled. The smart ones with flexible schedules shot off to Scotland at the earliest opportunity, but the weather was typically appalling by that point in the summer. In the end I escaped the claustrophobia of my own four walls on four wheels, not two.
My motorcycling blog saw traffic more than double as bored bikers headed online for their motorcycling fix, but I was generally stuck at home and able to provide little in the way of new content. With a vaccine on the horizon and hopes of a return to normality for 2021, has the global pandemic permanently changed motorcycling in any way?
Looking over my notes from the last few weeks’ sustained barrage of press-releases a few trends do start to emerge. For one thing, we might be about to see history repeat itself as the complacent European and Japanese brands find themselves tripping over more affordable and increasingly well-spec’ed offerings from India and China. The flood of cheap and nasty 125s has abated, with quality and features improving as product ranges expand up the capacity ladder.
At the same time, we’re seeing traditionally off-road-exclusive brands like Fantic bring genuinely intriguing road-legal offerings to market. I don’t quite think we’re going to see Triumph once again swept aside in a wave of better and cheaper machinery as they were in the 70’s. The more established brands do seem to have learnt their lessons from history. Manufacturers with existing small-capacity programmes are expanding them; those without are scrambling to extend their large-capacity-focused ranges downwards. Still, competition is going to be fierce and some of the established businesses may not be able to survive on the more meagre profit margins that will be on offer once traditional motorcyclists stop buying £20,000 toys in the numbers they’ve become accustomed to.
As old age begins to bite, motorcycling’s traditional bulk-buyers are increasingly looking for smaller and lighter machines that will be less likely to overwhelm them at the next stop light. The few young riders that are fighting their way into the sport despite all the roadblocks don’t have any loyalty to the old brands and are just as likely to consider a Zontes as they are a Yamaha. They also don’t know or care which brands are genuinely European and which are simply classic brands slapped on Chinese-made hardware. A long-time motorcyclist might be able to tell the difference between an unbranded brake calliper and a top-shelf Brembo item, but they’ll still struggle to convince a cash-strapped twenty-something that such jewellery is worth five times the price.
All of this means that I’ll be watching how the industry reacts and changes over the next couple of years with great interest, and that the list of bikes I’m looking forward to riding in 2021 has never been more diverse. Let’s take a look, shall we?
HONDA
By sheer number of interesting new models, the Japanese brand takes the top spot. That being said, like many of their established competitors, we’re mostly talking about small capacity bumps (CRF300L, Forza 350/Forza 750) and light styling work (NC750X) as older engines are reworked to meet the new Euro5 emissions regulations that come into force this January. We may no longer be part of the EU, but the UK market isn’t anywhere near big enough to justify the development costs of its own models, so we get what Europe gets. The good news is that in most cases these emissions-related tweaks also result in more power and in a few surprising, but very welcome cases, less weight.
But wow, talk about blindsided – I did not see either the Trail 125 or CMX1100 Rebel coming, though perhaps I should have. In the same way that the original Trail 90 was derived from the C90 of the time, it must have been relatively cheap/easy to repurpose and restyle the current Cub platform to create this intriguing new off-road focused model. The low-range gearbox its ancestor featured may be missing, but the Trail 125 makes up for it with more power.
And while ground clearance improvements may be marginal, that rear-mounted snorkel and light weight should mean you can take this thing damn near anywhere – as long as you’re not in a hurry. The only slightly worrying thing is that Honda UK has been strangely silent on UK/European pricing and availability, with all the press focused on the US launch. Here’s hoping we’re not going to miss out like we did with the CTX700…
The Rebel 1100 is interesting if only because it shows that Honda are serious about extending their platform-sharing approach to every engine in their range. Shoehorning the latest Africa Twin’s 1.1-litre parallel twin engine complete with DCT gearbox into their existing CMX500 Rebel chassis caught everyone by surprise, but now adds credence to the rumours of a similarly-powered CB1100X sports-tourer. I’ve got a soft spot for feet-forward cruisers, but an even softer spot for do-everything road bikes that combine reasonable power with all-day comfort and hard luggage. Add in Honda’s excellent six-speed dual-clutch transmission and you’ve got a potential 2022 bike I’d ride tomorrow.
Look at that snorkel! Look at that luggage rack! Imaging how light it is! I bet you could ride that anywhere…
Triumph
Triumph’s new entries are notable, if not necessarily terribly compelling. The brand announced it would cut a quarter of its UK workforce during the summer and the pressure was presumably on to put some new metal in dealers without spending any significant sums on development. The internet (and some personal friends) collectively lost their minds over the Trident 660 and as an avowed previous-generation Street Triple fan they assumed I would be all over it. But I’m afraid that I may be as cynical about this machine as I suspect Triumph’s product planners were. Detuning and sleeving down their current 765cc three-cylinder engine and slotting it into a cheaper steel-tube chassis with even cheaper brakes and suspension is a price-point play, plain and simple.
Basic steel frame, two pot sliding calipers and a sleeved-down engine. I just can’t see what all the fuss is about...Some stickers and ten horsepower off the top; laziest rebrand ever
The retro styling is very fashionable right now, and the £7k price is extremely competitive, but it’s very telling that journalists coming back from the launch have been very polite and noncommittal about the performance. I’m sure it’s fine, and if you really want a new middleweight naked that looks a little less futuristic than the current alternatives then, by all means, go right ahead. But one day you’ll pull up next to a more powerful, lighter, better-specced 675cc Street Triple and I suspect that you may have some regrets. Low-mileage Street Triples from that era can be had for less than half the price of a new Trident 660, and won’t really depreciate much further. And if your heart is truly set on that single round headlight, there are kits you can buy for the Street Triple that’ll do that for you too.
Then we have the ‘new’ Triumph Tiger Sport 850. The name alone had my attention, as I pictured a smaller, lighter, more modern version of the practically Neolithic 1050cc-engined Tiger Sport. I imagined a slick half-fairing, aerodynamic hard luggage, and a full suite of touring creature comforts. Instead, some bright spark has put new stickers on the base-model Tiger 900 and taken 10bhp out of the engine. Hilariously, none of the marketing material suggests any actual mechanical changes, implying that said power cut was achieved solely through software changes. I daresay a Power Commander and some dyno time could get it all back just as easily.
If ever there was a motorcycle designed by the marketing department, this was it. The base-spec Tigers probably weren’t selling terribly well, as no-one walks into a dealer and then signs up for a fractionally cheaper PCP plan in exchange for losing most of the features that made the bike so compelling in the first place. My read on such models is that they exist purely to allow the advertisers to quote unrealistic starting prices in their ad copy, and are rarely actually purchased by anyone (I’m looking at you BMW). My guess is that no-one was buying base-spec Tigers, but Triumph didn’t want to lose the opportunity to write “starting from £9,300!” in their ad copy. This is their attempt to bring in some buyers who can’t convince themselves to accept the stripped-back option, but could live with it if they convinced themselves that it was actually the “sporty” option. It’s the most cynical thing I’ve seen a manufacturer do in a long time and suggests that Triumph are really feeling the pressure.
Ducati
Ducati are a brand I usually steer well clear of, because their line-up already contains too many things to tempt me. Admittedly, the purchase prices and running costs can usually throw a bucket of ice water on any serious notions of ownership. In the meantime, the brand is slowly but surely shedding everything that kept it rooted to the past, and not everyone is happy. Traditionalists are losing their minds over the fact that the new Monster abandons not only its iconic steel trellis frame but also the stylish single-sided swingarm they know and love. They complain that the reinvented version looks too much like the Japanese competition, which is deeply ironic if you know your motorcycling history. But I strongly suspect that folks old enough to lament the loss of these ‘defining’ features haven’t bought a Monster in years – they’ve been buying and riding far more powerful, expensive motorcycles and were never the target customer anyway. Younger riders who choose Ducati for their £10k naked bike aren’t likely to care how true to the spirit of the original M900 their new bike is. But they will probably appreciate the significant weight savings brought by that new extruded aluminium frame.
No trellis frame? No single-sided swingarm? Traditionalists hate it, people who’ll actually buy it don’t care.
I need to start playing the lottery…
It will be interesting to see how those older, more affluent riders react to the new Multistrada V4. If moving away from the classic L-twin and it’s expensive-to-service cambelts wasn’t bad enough, Ducati surprised the entire motorcycle world late in 2020 by announcing that their V4 Granturismo engine would also leave behind desmodromic valve actuation in favour of the same spring-based system that every other engine manufacturer in the world has been using for decades. Modern engineering means that the advantages of using separate followers to close as well as open the valves of a four-stroke engine have fallen away. And while tradition might have been reason enough to persist until now, switching to a mechanically-simpler system has also allowed them to double the valve-check service interval to a staggering 36,000 miles.
Kawasaki have been embarrassing the competition for years with their 26,000 mile intervals, and Triumph’s more recent large-capacity engines aren’t bad at 20,000 miles. But I’m willing to bet that plenty of Multistrada owners won’t ever cover 36,000 miles in the entire time they own the bike, trading in as many do every three years under their PCP agreements. Those owners will never actually pay for a valve check ever again. For people like me who keep their bikes for years and rack up six-figure mileages, this means significantly reduced servicing costs over the life of the bike. Throw in world-first features like adaptive cruise control and the kind of refinement and attention to detail that Audi’s stewardship has instilled over the Italian brand’s recent history and we’re left with a seriously compelling do-it-all motorcycle.
Tour, commute, embarrass sportsbike riders at trackdays…I bet you really could do it all, and perhaps even without the traditional flakiness and servicing expenses for which Italian motorcycles have been known in the past. The only two flies in the ointment are the reported thirst of that engine (compensated somewhat by the impressive 22l fuel tank) and the purchase price. In theory you could ride out of your local Ducati dealer on a Multistrada V4 for ‘just’ £15,500, but given what you’d sacrifice over the ‘S’ version, I daresay nobody will. I expect the base model to be quietly dropped after the first year, just as they did the cooking-grade Multistrada 950. Add the ‘Travel & Radar’ pack to get the touring basics like panniers and heated grips (as well as that fancy radar-guided adaptive cruise control) and you’re going to need to find more than £20,000. I’d also be adding a top box and a bit of crash protection, so let’s call it a nice round £21,000. At that price, it had damn well better be the only motorcycle you’ll ever need, because you’re certainly not going to be afford to buy any others.
Nick Tasker
First published in Slipstream January 2021
Next month Nick moves on to review the other Italian bikes that warrant some page space, along with the rest of the Japanese and the European manufacturers, Indian and Chinese, plus the electric bikes new to the market…
Are motorcycles finally ready to embrace electric motors?
2020 will be remembered for a lot of (mostly terrible) things, but it also stands to become the turning point for electric car ownership in Western Europe. A number of regulatory and social factors have collided with the relentless march of technology, and electric cars are finally good enough to replace their petrol-powered versions for many people.
There is now genuine choice from a broad swathe of manufacturers at a wide range of price points and form factors. Need something cheap and cheerful? The Renault Zoe has you covered. Got kids to haul around? The Kia E-Niro awaits. Money to burn? Sir or Madam’s Porsche Taycan is right over here. Time to replace your Volkswagen Golf? Try the ID3. All good cars at competitive price points, and despite their high-tech electric powertrains they are all genuinely usable real-world transportation.
Car manufacturers in Europe are under the gun of course, with new internal-combustion-engine (ICE) powered cars set to be banned from sale in the next couple of decades. The UK government has triggered one of the shorter countdowns, with 2035 looming large for manufacturers who have yet to dip a serious toe into electric waters. True, questions remain on how those forced to park on the street will charge their cars, and our high-speed recharging infrastructure is a patchwork of broken and incompatible chargers, but I’m confident that those problems can be solved in time. Price and range still leave room for improvement, but we’re honestly not far off. No, the bigger question and my chief concern is how our precious motorcycles will fare in this brave new world.
For now, the upcoming UK ICE ban does not include motorcycles and scooters, so it sounds like you’ll still be able to buy petrol-powered two-wheelers in 2035. Of course, there’s plenty of time for our Government to change its mind, and even if not, it’s only a matter of time before ever-tightening emissions regulations squeeze the petrol out of your tank. It’s also true that our electric two-wheeled choices are getting better, even if pickings are slim at the moment. In a few short years promising newcomers Alta Motors and Mission Motors have both risen and then fallen again, while electric pioneers Zero have been quietly, ahem, plugging away.
Despite Harley-Davidson’s £30,000 Livewire and its high-profile television debut garnering all the publicity, it’s Zero’s new SR/S that caught my eye this year. Essentially a faired version of 2019’s SR/F, the SR/S and its naked sibling mark a turning point in Zero’s product design and capabilities. Their previous offerings with their less powerful, shorter-ranged bikes never caught the imagination of mainstream motorcycling. Performance and finish quality equivalent to a 20-year-old Kawasaki Ninja 250 and asking prices not far removed from high-end Ducatis were of little interest to all but hard-core early adopters, though they did show up in some odd places. I’ve never ridden one because, quite frankly, they were just too expensive and too short-range to be serious contenders for any of my purposes.
But the new SR platform is a very different beast. Gone are the spindly wheels and questionable running gear, and instead we’re looking at proper modern sports bike tackle. Sure, the J. Juan brakes are an oddity and don’t quite match the bite and power of the best Italian or Japanese competitors, but twin four-piston radial-mount calipers are nothing to sniff at. Showa adjustable suspension front and rear ticks a quality box, while LED headlamps and a TFT dashboard present the very picture of high-tech modernity. But where you’d expect to see cylinder heads and a catalyst-packed exhaust system poking out from under shiny plastics, we instead see a lightly-finned battery pack and gold-anodised electric motor.
And what a motor it is. Packing 110bhp and a frankly ridiculous 190Nm from a single moving part, Zero’s latest-generation permanent-magnet brushless motor spools the fat 180-section Pirelli Diablo Rosso 3 rear tyre up through a maintenance-free kevlar belt drive. Numbers like this have to be taken with a pinch of salt, because the way that electric power is delivered is so different to what we’re used to. But in the right throttle mode, the SR/S builds speed more than quickly enough. I actually suspect that output at lower speeds is being limited by the traction control to prevent either burnouts or wheelies, and I wasn’t brave enough to try switching it off.
Conventional… until you notice the lack of exhaust
Zero were one of the first to market.
An unassuming piece, this beast of a motor has to be held back by electronics.
Even my dealer had trouble adjusting the settings, and that was with the bike stationary.
Electric motors deliver 100% of their maximum torque straight from zero rpm, so there’s no waiting for an engine to spool up and into its power band to make swift progress. But also unlike an internal combustion engine, that torque figure never gets any higher as revs climb. In unrestricted form an electric motor’s dyno chart would be a straight diagonal line, with output plummeting as revs rise. The Zero’s chart is weirder still, supporting the theory that the bike is massively limiting its output until almost 4,000 RPM. I suspect that 140Nm isn’t the maximum twist the motor can produce – it’s simply the maximum that the bike’s traction control system has decided that it’s safe to deliver.So what does that feel like to actually ride? Well, it’s…different. An electric motor under load actually makes quite an interesting array of (admittedly quiet) noises, and is honestly a lot more interesting to listen to than many of today’s overly-silenced petrol bikes under many conditions. It is utterly silent when stationary, however, and it’s almost eerie pulling up to a set of traffic lights and being able to hear the sounds of the city or countryside around you. It’s also hilarious to swoop past traffic on the open road in total silence, having changed no gears – just twist and really go.
There’s a hell of a lot to like about electric powertrains. Obviously, electricity is cheaper than petrol, but the fact that you can top up at home and leave the garage with a fresh ‘tank’ every day is a novelty that never gets old – or so I’m told. At a stroke, zero-emissions zones are of no consequence, and you’ll never wake up your neighbours leaving for an early Sunday blast, nor get dirty looks from people as you rattle past them outside peaceful village cafes. The instant on-demand power at any speed is addictive, and you’ll never experience a power train with more immediate throttle-response.
The ownership experience should be more relaxing, too. All those dirty, messy, oily reciprocating parts are gone, replaced with a big sealed battery pack and a spinning shaft inside some electromagnets. There’s no oil to change, no valves to adjust, no filters to replace – not even a chain to lubricate! Aside from your tyres and brakes there’s nothing to warm up when cold, nor anything to bed in when new. An electric motor is a devilishly simple thing compared to the incredible complexity of an internal combustion engine, and needs practically no maintenance. And that’s what makes Zero’s insistence on a 4,000-mile service schedule so baffling. Yes, pivot points need lubricating and brakes and tyres need checking, but not even Suzuki insists on dealer visits that often. Still, an electric motorcycle is a prime candidate for easy low-cost home servicing.
But there are downsides too – both to electric motorcycles in general and the Zero SR/S in particular. Electric motors are extremely efficient at turning energy into motion (95+% is not uncommon) with petrol engines struggling to convert more than 20-35% of their fuel into motion. Yet even state-of-the-art lithium-polymer batteries are hopelessly poor at storing energy when compared to liquid fuels. Based on a number of sources, it’s generally agreed that the energy density of a high-tech 14.4kWh battery pack like the Zero’s is handily beaten by just two litres of bargain-basement supermarket petrol. And that battery pack is heavy, pushing the otherwise mechanically simple SR/S up to a meaty 230kg curb weight.
The efficiency of that electric motor is a good thing then, because I doubt that even my V-Strom 650 would get very far on just two litres of fuel. But while Zero claim 150 miles’ range in the city, after just 13 miles of mixed riding I had already drained 23% of my battery’s charge. Ride normally and a fully-charged battery wouldn’t get you much more than 60 miles. Ride hard and you wouldn’t last an hour before stopping dead at the side of the road. Trundling in a more relaxed manner between public charging points might make a new type of touring possible, but one mistake and you’d be calling for someone to collect you in a van.
No clutch lever, obviously – just direct, instantaneous drive.
Commuting might make more sense. Regenerative braking, where ‘engine braking’ is actually the electric motor converting your unwanted momentum back into electricity, makes stop-start traffic a far less wasteful endeavour, and the average European commute would be comfortably handled by the Zero’s battery pack. My own ~70 mile round-trip to work and back might be a challenge, except that my employer has installed free electric charge points all around the parking lot. I’m the perfect target customer for a good electric motorcycle.
But while the Zero SR/S nails the electric part, it falls somewhat short on being a good motorcycle. I was actually surprised when I checked the specs later and found that the bike weighs ‘only’ 230kg, because on the go it feels like it weighs a lot more. In a straight line, even on bumpy roads the suspension does its best to hide the bulk, but arrive at a corner and suddenly you realise that there is almost no feel from the front forks. I can only surmise that the suspension and chassis are simply underdeveloped, the result of a tech company building a drivetrain first and a motorcycle second. The bike understeers when first tipped in, then dares you to lean it further to complete the turn, all while the front end is communicating nothing about how much grip is actually available. The contrast to Kawasaki’s identically-weighing Ninja 1000SX could not be starker.
Approaching a corner is almost as bad as riding around it. The brakes are fine, but again, the front forks let them down. You don’t have the confidence to squeeze hard, and for some reason the sportier the riding mode, the less of a braking effect the motors are programmed to give you. The result is that you freewheel into every corner as though in sixth gear, yet don’t have the front-end feedback you’d need to trail-brake to compensate. And before anyone suggests dragging the rear brake as a solution, it’s so ineffective that it’s barely adequate for slow-speed manoeuvres, never mind high-speed corner entry!
That battery sits low in the chassis, but doesn’t actually hold that much energy.
J.Juan front brakes are fine, but Showa-sourced forks deliver little feedback.
Unpack your sandwiches and a good book, and plug in the charger.
Direct-action shock absorbs bumps well, with plenty of adjustability.
Perhaps these handling issues are merely a symptom of my age-old problem – I simply don’t weigh as much as the suspension’s designers anticipated. Zero is an American manufacturer, so their average rider specification may well skew heavier than the European or Japanese brands. I am usually able to determine whether a suspension is otherwise good or bad just by riding it, and can make an educated guess as to how the bike would perform once adjusted for my lighter stature. But in the case of the SR/S, I simply can’t tell. Maybe the Zero would positively scythe down British B-roads after £1,000’s worth of suspension work, but that’s a heck of a gamble on an already £20,000+ motorcycle.
Switching the bike into ‘Street’ or even ‘Eco’ mode cranks up the regenerative engine braking in stages, and ‘Eco’ provides much more natural control going into bends as a result. But with the throttle set this way getting back on the power is so slow and woolly that you lose all precision, making corner exits a sloppy mess. My dealer tells me that it’s possible to configure a ‘Custom’ mode that would combine the crisp throttle-response of ‘Sport’ with the maximum engine braking I craved, so maybe that would provide a solution for more enthusiastic riding.
But switching back into a gentler mode for cruising is not easy. The clunky mode-switch requires multiple press-and-hold operations, and you’ll need to spend a frankly dangerous amount of time looking at the dashboard to confirm that your inputs have been registered before moving on to the next stage in the process. Imagine trying to program the timer on a digital watch while also riding a motorcycle and you’re just about there. The heated grips are a similar story – adjusting the heat requires delving into a menu and holding various mode switches down for a few seconds. Would an extra button or two really have been so hard?
And the thing is, when riding progressively an experienced motorcyclist will adjust their engine braking constantly by selecting the appropriate gear for the speed and difficulty of each corner. Binding the regenerative engine braking to throttle modes makes this impossible, and makes you wonder why there isn’t a foot-operated lever of sorts that would allow you to adjust the level of the effect in real-time? Electric cars do this exact thing with paddles behind the steering wheel, and the concept works perfectly.
The overall impression the bike gives is of a product entirely built around its core technology, with details at the periphery left as something of an afterthought. The much-lauded hard luggage requires one of the ugliest pieces of bolt-on scaffolding I’ve ever seen, and the optional top-box mount is barely integrated at all. The bike is meant to epitomise the latest in high-tech transportation, yet features what I believe are 2006 Triumph Daytona 675 filament-bulb indicators. The switchgear is rather cheap and nasty, and the plastic hatches on the faux-tank and charging ports are very flimsy indeed. When so much of the bike oozes class, these other pieces stand out a mile and would really spoil the ownership experience.
No gear lever, of course, but you do get belt-drive and a centre stand.
The seat seems fine for short trips; you’ll never get a chance to try it on long ones.
The seat and general riding position is relatively comfortable and nicely detailed, the paint and lines of the bodywork clean and uncluttered in pleasant comparison to many modern motorcycles. The wing mirrors are incredible – mounted low, like old BMW tourers, they provide a clear rear view completely devoid of shoulder or elbow. I’m a fan of the clean and easy-to-read dash, even if the user interface for configuring it is a nightmare. For my height the windshield works really well, keeping pressure off my chest but directing clean airflow at my helmet. With the handling issues resolved, it would be a lovely motorcycle to spend time on.
Low mounted mirrors are excellent, something other manufacturers should take note of.
Really well-judged screen is effective, with no adjustment necessary or possible.
Of course, that brings us back to the range, because you’d be spending just as much time drinking coffee while it charged as you would riding it. And that’s not really Zero’s fault, who have been relentless in their push to bring practical electric motorcycling to the mass market. Harley-Davidson’s LiveWire can reportedly get a little further on a full charge and has the added benefit of DC fast-charging support, rare as such chargers are in the UK. Given Harley-Davidson’s more extensive experience of actually building motorcycles, perhaps the overall result is a little more cohesive – although you’ll certainly pay for it. A brand-new LiveWire makes Harley’s petrol bikes seem cheap at an eye-watering £30,000 a piece.
Consider the specifications and performance of both these examples and you’d reasonably expect petrol-powered equivalents to cost around half what Zero and Harley-Davidson are asking for their premium electric motorcycles. And while electric cars seem to be around £5,000-10,000 more than their internal-combustion cousins on a spec-for-spec basis, it’s a fact that those massive battery packs add a tremendous cost to the parts list. The SR/S and LiveWire have batteries that are much, much smaller, so where is all that extra money going?
I fear that the answers lie in sales volume and development costs. Even if electric vehicle battery cells can be purchased wholesale from any number of suppliers these days, developing a good motor and the supporting electronics costs money. Then there’s the engineering required to slot it all into a modern chassis, whose design has been steered by the physical dimensions and necessities of internal combustion engines for more than 100 years. Styling, marketing, user interface design – all the things that don’t directly contribute towards the individual cost of a product must still be paid for in the end, and when that cost is spread over a relatively small number of customers, each sale must cover a larger chunk. Later, when all that prior expense has been paid off, and if the products continue to sell, then prices can come down. That’s why a new Suzuki SV650 today is significantly cheaper than its inflation-adjusted 1999 ancestor. Cars, even electric ones, can amortise those costs over hundreds of times as many actual sales, rapidly closing the gap on their petrol-powered versions.
The people who jump in at those early price points, who are willing to pay an outsized chunk of the manufacturer’s research & development costs are called early adopters, and it is they who Zero and Harley-Davidson and all the other nascent electric motorcycle manufacturers are aiming for. They need that money to pay for the work that’s already been done, so that future models can be offered to the rest of us at more palatable price tags. And perhaps some of that money will go towards refining the experience, sanding down the rough edges and ensuring that those future products aren’t just notable for their powertrain, but instead notable for being really great motorcycles.
First published in Slipstream December 2020
TFT dash is easy to read, but the user interface is an ergonomic disaster.
That battery doesn’t cost £10,000, so why is the SR/S £10k more than a Ninja 1000SX?
And if it sounds like I’m disappointed, it’s because I am. I really wanted to come back from my time with the SR/S gushing that it was worth the sky-high price, that electric bikes had finally reached the point when they were good enough to not only compete with conventionally-powered motorcycles, but to replace them as well. If you’re a technology enthusiast with money to burn and can overlook the many rough edges then there’s plenty to recommend here. But for everyone else, I have to recommend sticking with petrol for a couple of years longer.Nick Tasker Rear brake is terrible, barely enough for low-speed manoeuvres.
I’d had my Suzuki SV650N for 8 years and it was time for a change. I now own a KTM Duke 790 which is fantastic – though not the usual choice for a step up from an SV. What led me to the KTM?
I had been pondering a new bike for a while, as I had outgrown my elderly SV and needed more power. The decider for me was a 250 mile TVAM ride in August in the wind and rain on my underpowered SV650…. time for a new bike.
I wanted a bike with a bit of spirit that I wouldn’t outgrow quickly, yet calm and stable, light [not more than 170kg], upright and flickable but would double up as a tourer with a bit of kit on it. I also wanted riding modes, abs, traction control and an up and down quick-shifter, and it had to be narrow and light enough to squeeze through the alleyway to my back garden.
Initially I looked at the F900XR, Shiver 900, Tracer 900GT, Tiger 900GT pro, MT07 and the Street Triple. Although these are great bikes, none of them actually fitted me or my requirements, and I had to be quite disciplined in turning away from them. This was hard.
So what did I need? Well, what mattered most of all [after the squeeze] was that I needed an upright seating position – less stress on the joints. Looking up Cycle-ergo.com and using my SV as a comparison, I was able to see what it would be like sitting on different bikes. I know this sounds rather mechanical but it was actually very helpful, further proven from visiting dealerships to sit on bikes. It was fun going in with my list of what I NEEDED not what have you got, and helped me see through the marketing blurb.
Cycle-ergo.com indicated the KTM naked sports bike Duke range. Power-wise for me, this meant either the 690 or 790. Anything bigger was wider and therefore irrelevant – I know you can get narrow bars for any bike but this was a mod too far for me. I wanted to keep it simple.
So it was down to the KTM Duke 690 or 790. A spin on Chris Brownlee’s 690R single was delightful – I came back saying, it’s really light I must have said it about 3 times, I was astonished at how quick and nippy it was yet stable and solid. However I wanted more technical gadgets and a twin, so this led me to the 790 and Alan Bradford who gave me loads of helpful tips on his, thank you.
I had first seen the KTM Duke 790 aka ‘The Scalpel’ in a ‘Ride’ magazine a couple of years back in 2018. The mere name of it put me right off. Who rides a bike called a scalpel? But two years on I saw it in a different light, looking closely at its features and found that it ticked all my boxes. I was ready to book in a test ride.
I loved it from the start. It was amazing. Light, powerful, flexible and equally at home filtering through town or out on the twisties. A little windy at high speeds and the original seat was like a plank but this was sorted with a touring screen and their comfort ergo seat. A parallel twin and 105bhp but only 169kg – perfect. Great price at £7,500 new for the 2020 version which I recommend, as they have re-designed and fixed some issues prevalent in the earlier version.
A second test ride confirmed my selection and I was ready to buy.
Early days were spent on local roads, learning all the technology – I had never had anything like this before, not even ABS on the SV. The emissions requirements make it a bit twitchy at low speed but I adapted and it doesn’t bother me now – choosing a lower riding mode helps. It is also a bit vibey at higher speeds but not excessive. Everything else is fabulous!
The first 600 miles were running it in so I was careful not to over-rev it. It felt like learning to ride all over again which was a surprise [only my second middle-weight bike]. A little ‘red mist’ was quickly eradicated by my advanced rider training.
At 1,000 miles, what do I like about it so far? It has had its first service, oil change and the full rev range has been unleashed. This bike just keeps giving and giving, right through the rev range. It accelerates really quickly, is light and fun through the twisties yet stable and not intimidating. I don’t feel overpowered by it and love the different riding modes, abs and lean-sensitive traction control. I’m loving the quick-shifter and auto-blipper. Narrow for filtering and lovely sounding – bangs and pops through the exhaust. The suspension, though not adjustable on the forks, feels well set up, and the preload is adjustable. I have it on the comfort setting and it is great. This bike gives me the potential to grow with it. I currently ride in the ‘street’ mode but am looking forward to exploring the sport and track modes. Would I recommend it? Absolutely! Check it out, what have you got to lose?
An absolute winner on paper; can the reality live up to my expectations?
Now here is a bike I’ve been waiting a very long time to ride. I never found time last year, and with the pandemic shuttering the country for months on end it’s taking some time to work through my shortlist of sensible do-it-all motorcycles. Can Moto-Guzzi’s retro-inspired entry into the increasingly-crowded market win me over?
On paper, things look pretty good. Technical specifications list a modest 80bhp from the modified 850cc version of Moto-Guzzi’s venerable ‘small-block’ twin pushing an acceptable 229kg wet weight. Part of this mass is accounted for by the class-leading 23 litre fuel capacity, a welcome sight in a world where BMW’s F900XR carries just 15 litres. ABS and traction-control are to be expected, full LED lighting is on-trend, but cruise control is still a welcome surprise. Four-piston Brembo front brakes bode well, and an air-cooled shaft-driven drivetrain is a fantastic recipe for a low-maintenance motorcycle.
Build quality is first class, even if aesthetics are highly subjective. I can appreciate the retro styling, but some colour schemes are definitely more appealing than others. There are fine details galore, including the Moto-Guzzi wings emblem designed right into the twin headlight housing as an LED running light. Paint is glossy and thick-looking but the number of exposed alloy surfaces suggest a salty winter might not be a good idea. Still, this is clearly a clean-sheet design – there are model-specific castings everywhere, and even the V9-derived engine is essentially all-new for this application.
Colour dash is modern, but very much a first effort with clunky menus and tiny text.
850cc 90-degree longitudinal twin has lost none of its character.
The rather small full-colour dashboard comes to life with a flashy animation, confirming that Moto-Guzzi are trying hard to be taken seriously in an increasingly high-tech market. But the noise and physical response that result from pressing (and holding) the starter button tell a very different story. The starter motor clunks, seethes, and whines, and the two cylinders cough and splutter into life after a second and settle into a loping, uneven idle. This is nothing like the refined experience recent BMW boxer twins have become; it’s far more akin to coaxing a Harley-Davidson to life.
That engine – and the sensations and motions it generates in the chassis even before you’ve selected first gear – set the tone for the entire riding experience of the V85TT. My words on that score should not necessarily be taken as criticism – I happen to love this sort of mechanical theatre. It gives each ride a sense of drama and occasion, but others may find the crudeness at odds with their expectations and quickly resent it.
Holding the bike upright in preparation for takeoff, the whole machine throbs beneath you, and blipping the throttle causes the chassis to twist to the right in reaction to the spinning crankshaft. Dropping into first is a little clunky, but once warmed up the gearbox is as slick as any I’ve used, to the point where clutchless shifting becomes easy and fun. Not that using the clutch is hard work – it’s feather-light, a modern affectation that hints at the modern engineering lurking beneath the old-school aesthetic. The ride-by-wire throttle is equally light, enabling the one-button cruise control and variable riding modes that, while having zero discernible effect, are de riguer for any new motorcycle in 2020.
Once on the move, the mixed bag of new and old starts to become more problematic. The brakes work as well as you would expect from premium parts, and the suspension is on the good side of firm, but never quite settles. Turn-in is a little slow, possibly due to the extra weight of those spoked and tubed wheels. Still, the wide handlebars make it easy enough to lever the V85TT into corners, where it will happily hold or adjust a line without complaint. Trundling around town, the throttle seems a little imprecise, and there’s a definite feeling of stumbling from the engine, especially down low. I suspect that tuning an air-cooled engine to pass 2020 emissions regulations required some difficult compromises, and the ride-by-wire throttle is clearly being used to filter throttle inputs in compensation for the dips and bumps in the torque curve.
I like to think I’m a technical guy, but I couldn’t get the V85’s cruise control to work at all.
Beautiful to look at. Worst seat ever.
Outside of 30 mph speed limits some issues become magnified. The bike I rode was still being run in, with the engine speed limited by the computer to just 7,000RPM. Anything above 5,000 generated an increasingly distressing array of Christmas lights on the dashboard as the on-board computer implored me to take things easy with the new engine. As such, short-shifting was the order of the day, and while the 850cc 90-degree twin is willing enough low down, there isn’t enough power there for progressive overtakes, and not enough of a rev ceiling to go in search of all of the power plant’s claimed 80 horses. Once the unusually-long 1,000-mile running-in period was over and the full range of the engine could be used, things might be easier, but I can’t imagine the engine vibrating any less at higher revs. While this is one area where I was unable to make a fair assessment, I’m confident in saying that this is an engine that will always be happier on a relaxed trundle than a spirited ride.
And honestly, that could be said for the entire motorcycle. The firm yet unsettled suspension detracts from the enjoyment of the ride, giving a worryingly numb or detached feeling. Combined with the rather imprecise throttle, the V85TT comes across as somewhat bewildered at or above the national speed limit – more of an ivory-handled butter knife than a carbon-steel scalpel. But then you have to ask yourself – what would you rather have in your hand when buttering a scone during an unhurried afternoon tea?
The fact is, the Moto-Guzzi V85TT might be very good at a certain type of motorcycling, and might be the perfect choice for a certain type of motorcyclist. That person would still need to do something about the horrendous windshield, which generated buffeting so bad it almost gave me a headache after an hour. Standing full upright on the pegs only just put my helmet out into clear air, while ducking right down improved matters significantly.
Next, a new owner will need to do something about the worst seat I’ve ever encountered on a motorcycle. I can see what Moto-Guzzi were trying to do – it’s narrow near the front to facilitate a shorter reach to the ground, and wider further back for comfortable seating. But pushing yourself back that far creates an uncomfortable reach to the bars and prevents you from bracing your knees against the tank. I understand that shorter riders need to be accommodated, but those riders would also have even shorter arms, making this configuration a lose-lose for all parties. Moto-Guzzi offer an optional comfort seat, but I wouldn’t be enthusiastic about gambling on that solution with my own money.
Every bike should have a shaft drive, in my opinon.
Mode switch seems to be entirely for show – the bike doesn’t feel any different regardless.
Exhaust looks bland and is mostly drowned out by the wind noise.
There are a few other small niggles. The indicator switch has no click when you press it, and very little travel, meaning that you’ll need to look down at the instrument panel to check if you’ve actually cancelled your signal. I couldn’t figure out how to activate the cruise control system, and it took two of us to deduce how to change engine modes, which, as I’ve mentioned above, seem to have zero actual effect. If you move your boots too far back or in and touch the frame you’ll discover the unpleasant buzzing vibrations that the rubber-faced pegs are hiding, so you have to be careful where you place your feet. And the tubed tyres mean that any punctures will require either tyre levers or a breakdown truck, rather than a 5-minute plug at the side of the road.
It’s a damn shame, as I’ve recently confirmed that the maintenance costs on Moto-Guzzis are hilariously low, thanks to those exposed cylinders and lack of coolant. Not only can mechanics get to the valves easily, adjusting them is the work of a moment due to their old-fashioned pushrod design. No chain to oil or adjust removes a tedious job at the end of a long day’s touring, and the oversized fuel capacity and impressive 55mpg should make for an excellent touring bike – and for some people I’m sure it will.
For my purposes, I need something a little sharper on a twisty road with fewer potential compromises to put down the £11,000 Moto-Guzzi want me to hand over in exchange for my own V85TT. It’s possible that I could fix the handling and comfort with suspension mods and a new seat, resolve the buffeting with an aftermarket screen and get used to the frustrating switchgear. Maybe I could convert the wheels to tubeless tyres, or replace them entirely with an aftermarket alternative. That done, I could perhaps enjoy the character and practical benefits of an air-cooled, shaft-driven Moto-Guzzi. But that’s a lot of ifs and maybes, a lot of financial risk I’d have to be comfortable with, and I’m not sure I’m willing to do that.
If you like what the V85TT has to offer but don’t actually do any long-distance touring, then the reality is that you can pick up a V7-III Stone for almost £5,000 less and enjoy that same low-tech, low-effort, low-precision experience while trundling around your local roads. But if you are planning to do a lot of long-distance travel or need something you can rely on as your do-it-all daily bike, I’m afraid I have to recommend looking elsewhere.
Can Kawasaki’s updated Sports-Touring stalwart win over a V-Strom fanboy?
Kawasaki’s Z1000SX has been a best-seller for the brand ever since it launched in 2011. It almost single-handedly breathed life into the dying sports-tourer genre of motorcycling, offering ageing sports bike enthusiasts an alternative to the unstoppable adventurer-tourer juggernaut. Of course, it wasn’t perfect, and has been revised every couple of years since with nips and tucks to keep customers happy. Now the evergreen bike has been re-branded the Ninja 1000SX, and has received a plethora of upgrades to match. Is it enough to tempt my fancy?
A first-generation Kawasaki Z1000SX actually made it onto the same shortlist as the freshly-updated Triumph Street Triple R, the bike I eventually purchased in 2013. Back then my criticisms were that it was expensive and heavy, and I was keen to try something light and flickable after my 250kg Suzuki Bandit 650S. But all the reasons I considered it then are still true today, and at £12,000 on the road for the Tourer model it’s downright reasonable compared to some of its increasingly expensive competition.
A shame then that it’s still a 235kg proposition, a mass figure that’s quite apparent when wheeling the bike around for photographs – and that doesn’t include the 56 litres of included waterproof plastic panniers that clip neatly onto the integrated luggage racks. You could save yourself £1,000 and choose the standard bike, but alongside those boxes you’d also lose the taller touring screen, tank pad and heated grips. The version I was given to ride for this review lacked all of those extras, but they’re certainly features I’d want on my long-distance touring motorcycle.
What has changed in the last decade is that motorcycle user interfaces have become significantly more sophisticated. Tucked away in the Ninja’s fairing is a neat little full-colour computer screen, providing more information than most people would ever want about their ride. The basics are all there – speed, tachometer, gear position – alongside some more modern content such as average and instant fuel consumption. Toggle through the display and you can also find some truly nerdy delights such as battery voltage and highest-recorded lean angle. You can even set the display to show you your current lean angle in real-time, a feature that is almost guaranteed to result in a spectacular crash!
While the right-hand switch cluster holds nothing more than an integrated starter/kill-switch, the left cluster has been hoarding the remaining buttons. Not only can you control every aspect of the dashboard from here, you can also activate this bike’s new killer feature – electronic cruise control. Z1000SX owners have been clamouring for this feature for years, and the best compliment I can give is that it works exactly as intended. What’s also new is the two-way quick-shifter, allowing you to change up and down through the gearbox without touching the clutch. Usually, I find these systems tend to disappoint, working only at high revs and at wide-open-throttle, but Kawasaki have clearly spent a significant amount of time calibrating their implementation. Any gear, any engine or road speed, any throttle opening – it just works seamlessly.
Passenger grab rails incorporate the mounting lugs for the 28-litre hard panniers.
Not as big and beautiful as BMW’s, but Kawasaki’s TFT dashboard is well designed.
So many buttons on the left cluster, and yet only a single switch on the right.
Quick-shifter works flawlessly up and down the gears; it’s genuinely useful.
Not that using the clutch is a hardship – it’s ridiculous how light modern slipper clutches are, and the Ninja is no different. Kawasaki apparently removed three of the six clutch springs and still somehow generate enough clamping force to keep all 140 horsepower directed at the rear wheel. The new electronic throttle is equally light. With no direct connection to the throttle plates, only a light return spring is working against your wrist, and the combination of the two controls makes tickling out into traffic as easy as on an automatic scooter.
Fuelling is ever-so-slightly fluffy at low revs when cold, but the engine quickly shakes off any cobwebs and provides entirely linear drive as you trundle through town. There’s no drama, it’s all very civilised, with no trace of the low-rev jerkiness I’ve come to associate with big-power motorcycles. What’s more, you can choose pretty much any gear you wish for this job – even sixth works just fine, the 1,043cc in-line four responding without hesitation or complaint to any request at any speed. Kawasaki could have left the engine modes on the drawing board and just reminded their customers that the gearbox will do the same job of modulating rear-wheel torque just fine.
Once opportunities to make progress appear, you might expect me to report that a twist of the wrist transforms the docile steed into a snarling, raging monster – but that simply never happens. I did find that you can provoke a slight head-shake through judicious throttle application in first gear, but the sophisticated traction control systems quickly bring things under control. Perhaps disabling some of these safety features would add a little terror to your day, but the only thing that makes the default bike scary is when you look down at the speedo and realise that you’re going a lot faster than you thought you were.
The brakes are excellent; the suspension sublime.
Rear shock preload can be adjusted easily to cope with luggage or passengers.
It’s deceptive. Whereas other bikes let you know you’re going fast through noise or vibration, the Ninja simply hums along quietly as you smoothly build speed. It’s almost as though Kawasaki have found a way to dampen inertia itself – you twist the throttle, and the tiniest moment later you are simply going faster. A lot faster. It’s just as well that the Kawasaki-branded mono-block four-piston brakes are so good, because you’ll want to know you can safely and quickly scrub off any excess speed before the next corner arrives. Overall, it’s honestly hard to judge your speed because it’s just all so eerily smooth…which is also when you first notice just how astonishingly good the suspension is.
You see, the way I can usually tell that I’m going too fast on most motorcycles is when I’m holding on to the handlebars for dear life while being bounced out of the seat. When I upgraded the suspension on my V-Strom I initially thought I’d wasted my money because nothing seemed to have changed…until I checked my speedometer. Good suspension does that – it lets the useful information from the road surface through while filtering out all of the noise and sharp edges that unsettle both rider and chassis. You should know that there was a nasty bump there without actually getting…well, bumped, and can instead focus on maintaining smooth, fast lines.
Well, the Ninja does that out of the box. I’ve never encountered a stock suspension setup this good before – it’s almost like it’s already been reworked for my 11 stone weight. Gripping the tank with my knees I could feel exactly what the front wheel was doing, could intuitively tell how much grip was available to work with, and as a result had more than enough confidence to scythe along atrociously-surfaced Northamptonshire roads within minutes of setting off. I was able to safely exploit the entire width of the carriageway, positioning myself and the bike for maximum advantage without worrying that I was going to be launched off my line by a mid-corner bump. If I didn’t know better, I’d say the council had magically resurfaced my test route just minutes beforehand. Amazing.
The trade-off for slightly softer, more compliant suspension is that you lose some handling precision. It’s the same on my V-Strom – at very high speeds you start to notice just a touch of vagueness, and the chassis seems to take a little longer to settle itself after big inputs – from yourself, or from the road. While the Ninja 1000SX enables a fast, smooth riding style, it also requires it. There’s no defying physics here – a 235kg motorcycle cannot be forced to react like a 190kg Supersport, and you won’t be flicking the big Ninja from side to side like a ZX-6R. It’s not exactly ponderous, nor are brakes or acceleration noticeably blunted by the extra mass as on some bikes I’ve ridden. I suspect that you’d want to tighten up the damping somewhat before your next trackday, but here in the real world, on real roads, it’s a compromise I welcome with open arms.
Wide, plush, comfortable – one of the best seats in motorcycling.
Tilt-adjustable windshield delivers good results in any position. Touring version is taller.
Supporting both the suspension and indeed my bony backside is one of the most comfortable motorcycle seats I’ve ever spent time on. In an era of narrow, scalloped designs prioritising low height over long-haul comfort, the Ninja’s seat is defiantly wide and plush. Another tricky area, wind protection, has also been resolved without apparent difficulty by Kawasaki’s engineers. The standard windshield can be manually adjusted for angle, and all positions result in a flow of quiet, clean air to my helmet. When so many stock windshields go in the bin on day one due to horrendous buffeting, Kawasaki should be commended for getting this part right straight from the factory.
What else is there to say? The wing mirrors are excellent, and even fold in neatly on a spring-loaded mechanism, allowing you to pop them back into position in seconds should you need to squeeze through a tight spot. Every light on the bike is LED, and the front indicators are even neatly faired-in for improved aerodynamics. You get a hydraulic preload adjuster on the rear shock for when you’re carrying a pillion or have over-filled those panniers, and both front and rear suspension is fully adjustable. Yes, you have to fetch your screwdrivers and do it yourself, but given how good the out-of-the-box setup is, that’s honestly not a problem.
Problems, in fact, are few, but they are there. The Ninja 1000SX is a sports tourer, and yet it’s unique amongst its competitors in not supporting the simultaneous fitment of both a top box and panniers. What’s more, Kawasaki say that this is on purpose, and that having all three boxes mounted at the same time would make the bike unstable at high speeds. Yamaha used to say the same thing about their FJR1300, but even they seem to have that figured out by now.
There’s also no way to mount a centre stand, as Kawasaki have filled that space with an ugly under-body exhaust silencer. Maintaining the drive chain would require a paddock stand at home, and an automatic chain oiler may be worth considering for solo tourists. Further still, because the Ninja 1000SX is technically a new product in the eyes of the insurance industry, the quotes I received were 50% more than an identical Z1000SX from the same insurers. Once the algorithms figure out that we’re no more likely to crash this new bike than the old one, prices should theoretically level out.
If I wanted to nit-pick I’d question Kawasaki’s mounting of the rear brake caliper underneath the swingarm where it will surely seize solid in winter salt. But they’ve been mounting it there since the 80’s, so maybe they know something I don’t. It does mean that paddock-stand lugs are set quite far forward, which might cause clearance issues for some stands. And I’m always going to wish they’d found a way to take 20kg out of the wet weight without compromising load capacity, but I guess that’s a trade-off I’ll have to accept. The dashboard screen is a little small perhaps, and I do worry that it will look out-of-date long before the rest of the bike does. And when everyone else is spoiling us with gold-anodized Nissins or big-block Brembos, the black Kawasaki-branded brakes look a little down-market. But honestly, these really are minor complaints.
No, the only big issues with this bike lie with its motor, and it’ll be up to each individual to decide if it’s a big enough fly to spoil the ointment. First up, my perennial bug-bears of fuel economy and it’s sibling fuel range. 19 litres of petrol seems like a reasonable amount until you look at www.fuelly.com and realise that 45 mpg (UK) appears to be average for this engine. That means around 180 miles to empty, with the low-fuel warning light coming on at just 150 miles or less. What’s softened my stance on this issue recently is the results of my research into long-term running costs, and determining that an extra 10 mpg really wouldn’t save you that much money, even over 100,000 miles. Maybe fuel prices will suddenly spike to £5 per litre and we’ll all switch to Honda PCXs, but otherwise it’s unlikely that many others will notice or care.
Paddock stand mounting lugs are forward, rotating chain adjuster is unique.
The second issue with the motor is down to the complexity and how it’s installed in the motorcycle. Kawasaki quote £400-£600 for minor/major services, and an additional £400 to check the valve clearances – more still if they need adjusting. That big engine is buried under bodywork, hoses, and wiring, and takes a long time to dig out. Combined with the poor fuel economy the Ninja 1000SX becomes one of the most expensive motorcycles to own long-term. It could be worse – valve checks only need performing every 26,000 miles, and if you’re comfortable handling oil and filter changes yourself you could save a lot of money while still leaving the really tricky tasks to the professionals. Still, that’s modern motorcycles for you – high performance, features, and reliability make for complex machinery. One more reason to look forward to electric motorcycles, perhaps?
The final issue with the motor is that it’s a little too good at its job. In-line fours have always prioritised high power-per-displacement ratios – it’s the boring choice, but it delivers results. Interesting inline-fours have existed in both cars and motorcycles in the past, but noise regulations have smothered raucous induction tones and made high-revving screamers impossible. The fact is that noise and vibration are waste products, energy not being used to drive you forward.
And while I still very much enjoy the aural sensations of an internal combustion engine, the tides are turning against us, with whole stretches of road in Germany and Austria now off-limits to all but the quietest bikes. The 1,043cc engine in the Ninja 1000SX has been around since 2003 in various forms, but it’s now so quiet and refined that I can’t imagine an all-electric drivetrain being that much different to experience. There’s a little more mechanical noise at very high revs, but it’s not really something you’d go chasing for aural pleasure.
Maybe you’d get used to it. Maybe you’d modify the airbox, swap out the exhaust, and liberate a little of that early-2000’s Superbike sound. Or maybe smooth, quiet efficiency is exactly what you’re after. Maybe you don’t want a torque curve littered with spikes that send the front wheel skyward when the engine comes on-cam. Maybe you just want to cross continents in speed and comfort, and then embarrass noisier, flashier riders as you overtake them on the outside of a corner while waving nonchalantly at them. If that sounds like your cup of tea, then the Ninja 1000SX might be just the bike you’ve been looking for.
I rode home after returning the Ninja on my de-baffled V-Strom, air-box and exhaust roaring a rousing symphony every time I slammed the throttle wide open for another overtake. It’s something I’d certainly miss were I to swap a mid-capacity 90-degree twin for a turbine-smooth inline-four. But the rest of the package is just so damn good that I may well forgive it this one flaw and learn to enjoy a different type of motorcycling for a while.
There are a lot of motorcycles that, on paper, look perfect. Ride enough bikes and apply a little critical thinking and you can start to spot the things you like and the things you don’t in each offering. Eventually, you build up a list of the best aspects of each, mentally combining them into one bike that, if it existed, would have no peer. For me, that bike could well be the Yamaha Tracer 900 GT.
Years ago Triumph emailed existing Street Triple owners like myself a survey in an effort to discover what features and technologies we would prefer they focus on for future versions of our bikes. Many of the items they proposed in that survey made it into the current 765cc Street Triples, but one major variant never materialised. I’d always believed that my Street Triple would be perfect with a small half-fairing and hard luggage. Triumph teased that very idea in the survey, but it would appear that more power and gadgets were more interesting to other respondents.
MT-09-derived 850cc triple provides smooth, balanced power across the whole rev range.
Now that platform sharing has become the new normal, bikes like the Tracer series are inevitable. Developing, and crucially homologating a road engine is an expensive business, so manufacturers have joyfully embraced the opportunity to cheaply fill out their product lineup by reusing the same architectures. Take BMW as an example; there are Naked, Sport-Touring, and Adventure motorcycles based on their 1250cc boxer engine and associated running gear. The same is true for their 1000cc inline-four, which can be had in Supersport, Naked, or Adventure- format.
Yamaha’s naked MT-07 and MT-09 motorcycles donated much of their engineering to their Tracer variants, and the 700cc engine has even arrived in Teneré format. But while the Tracer 700 has previously proven itself a worthy adversary for the Suzuki V-Strom 650, the Tracer 900’s 847cc three-cylinder engine means that the bigger bike has the potential to represent that most elusive of concepts: a perfect combination of sporting performance, touring capability, and every-day riding practicality.
Low-slung exhaust hides a modern bulky silencer better than many designs.
First impressions of the GT-variant Tracer 900 are good. Four-piston radial brakes on adjustable upside-down forks? Check. Smart half-fairing with adjustable windshield and standard-fit handguards? Check. Integrated scaffolding-free lockable panniers with optional top box? Check. Cruise control, TFT instruments, LED headlights, reasonably large fuel tank and surprisingly frugal engine? Check. While 200 miles per tank is nothing to write home about in my book, it’s still welcome in a world where manufacturers are increasingly using theoretical incremental gains in fuel economy to justify smaller and smaller fuel tanks. Heck, you even get a centre-stand, something many other bikes don’t even support, never mind fit as standard.
There are, of course, also a few disappointments right off the bat. While the design is, in my eyes, a significant improvement over the ugly original, there are still a lot of untidily routed and exposed cables and hoses. Unlike the V-Strom 1050, the mudguard is too short to do any useful work. And despite this being a top-of-the-range flagship model in 2020, Yamaha still ask you to pay extra for indicators that don’t rely on super-heated wire filaments for illumination.
Some of the plastics seem a little flimsy, some of the decals look a bit cheap, and after experiencing BMW’s beautifully animated and easy-to-use TFT dashboard, Yamaha’s version looks functional at best. Brake hoses are cheap-looking rubber as opposed to braided steel, and the clutch lever is non-adjustable – something I’d expect to find on a 125cc learner bike, not a premium Sports-Tourer. Features aside, the Tracer can’t quite shake its budget-bike roots. This is a problem when the GT model now costs more than £11,000.
Pulling out into traffic, the riding dynamics of the Tracer don’t immediately impress either. When cold, throtte response is decidedly fluffy at lower rev ranges, and experimenting with the three throttle modes only seems to make things worse. Fixed in the lower of its two adjustable positions the seat seems to tip you forward into the tank, and even at its closest position, the brake lever is a bit of a stretch for small hands. The suspension seems fussy, never quite settling itself, as though the forks and swingarm are rubber-mounted to the frame. In reality, it’s likely that double-rate springs have been used in the forks, a common tactic in cheaper mass-produced units.
Handguards look small, but seem to be effective at deflecting wind and rain.
Once out of town and with the engine up to temperature, matters begin to improve. As familiarity with the light and sensitive throttle grows, so does the confidence to exploit more of the vast swathes of usable torque the three-cylinder configuration offers. Seemingly happy at any speed in any gear, choosing a different ratio merely changes how responsive the engine is to your throttle inputs. It sounds fantastic too, a rare feat on a standard exhaust system these days.
TFT dashboard is functional, but is beginning to look long in the tooth.
Front brakes work well, with plenty of power if not necessarily the instant bite I personally prefer, but further into the stroke the forks harden considerably causing the front wheel to chatter along the road surface and robbing you of any confidence during high-speed late-braking manoeuvres. Your mileage may vary along with your bodyweight, but once again we are reminded that motorcycle suspension will always be a one-size-doesn’t-fit-anybody affair. But while as a new owner my first stop would likely once again be MCT Suspension for a complete overhaul, once you start to turn the wick up it’s clear that the underlying chassis is excellent and the bike really starts to shine.
The riding position begins to feel much more Supermoto than Adventure-Tourer; you feel like you are sat much closer to the front wheel than on e.g. a V-Strom. I always believed that larger 19” wheels conferred an advantage on bumpy Northamptonshire B-roads, but Yamaha has clearly demonstrated that they can handle rutted surfaces just fine with the smaller, and therefore more accurate 17” wheel. There’s a sense of playfulness that other, similar bikes simply can’t match, helped of course by the class-leading 214kg wet weight. A modern frame and modern engine mean a 30kg mass advantage over many competitors, and the results are immediately apparent in how quickly the bike gains and loses speed.
It’s also a likely factor in how long the Tracer 900 can make its 18 litre petrol tank last. In mixed riding, the trip computer reported that I’d managed 56mpg (UK), something that Fuelly.com confirms is a realistic and achievable real-world average. Take it easy, and pushing past 60mpg (UK) should be possible, a remarkable feat for a bike that, in the right gear, can build speed with deceptive and frightening ease. More than once I found my grumbling about brakes or suspension tempered when I glanced at the speedometer and found that I had wildly underestimated my rate of progress.
And you know what, I was having fun. It was hot, muggy, occasionally raining hard, and I was threading an unfamiliar bike along unfamiliar roads, and I was thoroughly enjoying myself. Yes, the stock suspension is far from perfect and would definitely benefit from the significant and expensive attentions of a specialist, but the potential is clearly there for this to be an exceptional multi-purpose motorcycle. And yes, the windshield, even in its highest position, is far too short for me, but ducking down just a little resulted in a bubble of silence with rain streaming off my visor. Clearly, a slightly taller windshield would do the trick, but it’s not something I would be enthusiastic about spending money on given the motorcycle’s stated touring intentions.
Four-pot calipers are fine, but let down somewhat by the front forks under hard braking.
Furthermore, the cruise control refused to engage in 30mph zones, a maddening oversight given the obvious licence-preserving benefit, and the right-side pillion footpeg can catch on your boot if you ride on the balls of your feet.
The minor annoyances continue with unintuitive on-screen menus, and the clickable scroll-wheel on the right-hand control cluster is stiff and awkward to use. Your left boot will catch on the footpeg when trying to lower the sidestand, and the up-only quickshifter is clunky at anything other than high-rev, high-throttle applications. The fuel gauge won’t tell you anything useful until after you have less than half a tank remaining, and activating or adjusting the heated grips can only be done by navigating into a submenu. It’s all a little bit…unrefined. Unfinished. And like Suzuki’s V-Strom 1050XT, at this price point the Tracer 900 GT is picking fights with Triumph Tiger 900s, BMW F900XRs, and Ducati Multistrada 950s – all bikes with more brand cache and decidedly more premium user experience.
Seat is two-position adjustable and both gel and heated alternatives are available.
Of course, buying European carries its own perils, not least of which are the cost and frequency of servicing. With valve clearance checks not due until 24,000 miles, the Tracer 900 costs just 6p per mile to maintain, and Yamaha regularly tops the reliability surveys that the likes of BMW and KTM sink to the bottom of. The Tracer is also noticeably lighter than anything in its class, a side benefit, perhaps, of dispensing with any off-road pretensions.
Windshield is adjustable while riding and well designed, but about 10cm too short.
Quickshifter only works going up the gears and is awfully exposed in this application.
As such, the Tracer 900 GT definitely makes my shortlist, in a way that I’m not sure the heavier, more expensive, and less exciting V-Strom 1050XT does. I’m still going to be sampling more of the competition first and may yet be swayed by the Moto-Guzzi V85’s charismatic air-cooled engine and shaft drive, or Triumph’s genuinely impressive build quality and uniquely-configured three-cylinder engine. As always, I’ll have to weigh up the pros and cons and may still decide that the Tracer 900 GT is the best choice for me, even with all its minor faults. So I can only recommend that you do the same and make up your own mind before handing over your credit card.
Impractical, too small, no wind protection…a perfect all-round motorcycle?
Has it really been six years? My RoadTrip report reckons so. It was the 5th of October 2013 when I signed the paperwork and rode away on my brand new Triumph Street Triple R. More than 40,000 miles later the very same motorcycle still sits in my garage, and though the odometer ticks up far more slowly these days, it still puts a smile on my face every time I ride it.
Part of that is down to how light the bike is. Triumph’s engineers shaved several kilos off the Street Triple’s wheels, frame and exhaust system for the 2013 model update, shifting the centre of gravity forwards and creating a bike with the same power to weight ratio as the original Honda Fireblade. 105bhp goes a long way when you only have 180kg to push around, and the lack of weight also helps fuel, tyres and other consumables to last longer when compared with heavier and more powerful motorcycles.
What’s more, this is a bike that seems to be growing in popularity, even as its 765cc successor receives styling tweaks and a price cut for 2020. It’s weird how many people have approached me in recent months to ask me my opinion on the older 675cc Street Triple. Perhaps the fact that the new, 17kg heavier version adds so very little to the experience and costs more than twice what a good-condition used example does has something to do with it. With that in mind, let’s dive into what almost seven years and 40,000 miles can tell prospective buyers about this wonderful little motorcycle.
Continuous hard riding pushes MPG down into the mid-40s, but the average is impressive
Firstly, the engine is a delight to use. It’s torquey off-idle and, with practice, you can pull away with barely a hint of the throttle. And yet, it’s smooth all the way to redline with a screaming, snarling exhaust note that puts an inline-four to shame. You can ride around in the middle of the rev range enjoying instant throttle response or waft along in a higher gear returning seriously impressive fuel economy numbers. And with the world moving to bigger, low-revving twins, the joy of a genuinely usable engine that can still rev to 12,500 RPM is something to be savoured.
Brembos would be a little sharper, but there’s honestly no need, even on a racetrack.
The brakes are great; in the years since taking ownership, I’ve had chances to sample some serious Brembo equipment that beat them on both bite and feel, but only by direct back-to-back comparison. Low weight means less mass to stop, and your forearms will give out long before you extract full power from the twin 4-piston Nissins. Triumph equipped the Street Triple R with high-friction sintered-metal brake pads as standard, and it’s the only bike I’ve ever owned where I haven’t felt the need to deviate from the OEM specification.
The fully-adjustable suspension wasn’t quite as great out of the box. As I’ve mentioned many times in previous articles, it doesn’t matter how high-quality or how clever the components are – a stock suspension setup will always be a compromise. The average rider doesn’t really exist, which means that the spring rates and valving will always be set either for someone lighter or heavier than you are. I seriously considered trading the bike in after just a few months because the bucking over bumps and skittering around corners had my confidence in tatters.
When I met Darren from MCT at the London Motorcycle Show and described my symptoms, he was quick to confirm that I wasn’t the first person to bring one of those Street Triples to his attention. He reckoned that there was a design flaw in the forks and that remedial work was necessary. It was an expensive trip, involving modification of the fork internals, but the results were transformative. Suddenly, I was riding what every journalist had promised me I had bought – one of the best-handling motorcycles in the world.
A further tweak was the reduction of the rear tyre pressure after my TVAM Observer commented that the contact patch on my rear wheel looked far too small. Reducing the pressures from the 42PSI indicated in the owner’s manual to the 36PSI recommended for the almost-identical Daytona 675 resulted in a much less skittish rear-end. There was no drop-off in fuel economy, nor an increase in tyre wear, and my only explanation for Triumph stating different pressures for functionally identical motorcycles is to blame their lawyers. With no separate rider/rider-with-pillion pressures listed as with most Japanese motorcycles, I concluded that the Triumph legal team didn’t trust their owners to make the necessary adjustments, and erred on the side of caution when writing the owner’s manual.
Same frame, same wheels, same engine, same suspension… different tyre pressures?
Shaving off several kilos makes a big difference in such a lightweight machine.
The next upgrade, and one I thought long and hard about, was the exhaust system. Believe it or not, the sound or volume was not the primary factor here, rather that the stock system is huge, ugly, and heavy, taking up a surprising amount of space underneath the bike. The catalytic converter is a separate piece from the silencer, so my exhaust emissions remain unchanged, and I’m still within the noise limits for most UK trackdays.
And that’s more or less it! I wanted to keep the bike lean and simple, and resisted excessive modification. I tried a filler-mounted tank bag for a while, experimented with Lomo drybags and eventually settled on a stack of Kriega luggage for my touring needs. A TwistyRide phone mount coupled to a 3A 5V charger handles GPS duties, and a 12V socket wired into the tail unit provides power for a compressor when encountering punctures. And finally, I swapped out the throttle grip for one from a contemporary Speed Triple, reducing the amount of wrist rotation necessary to fully open the throttle. It makes the bike a little snatchy for those not used to it, but means I can enjoy the whole engine, not just the first two thirds.
Without fitting scaffolding to the back of the bike, tailpacks are the only luggage option.
Somewhat disappointingly the paint on the tank quickly became scuffed where textile trousers rubbed on it and the seat has actually cut all the way through to the primer. The official accessory crash-bungs failed miserably at their one job when I finally tipped the bike over at a standstill last year. The indicator hit the ground first, bending the small mounting frame behind the fairing and finally crushing and popping open one of the cells in the radiator. Luckily the plastic pieces weren’t too expensive to replace, and while a new radiator was more than £400, a local specialist was able to repair and clean the old one for a mere £15. There wasn’t a mark on the crash bungs. Useless.
The crash bungs had one job, which they failed to accomplish the only time they were needed.
Other than that, the only issue to report is a hot-starting issue that’s plagued the bike for more than 30,000 miles. Often, when stopping the engine just long enough to fill up with petrol it coughs, splutters and stalls when trying to start again afterwards. It needs a little bit of coaxing and then settles down after a few seconds, but I’ve never been able to figure it out. I recently met another owner who’d experienced an identical issue and traced it to the idle control stepper motor, so maybe I’ll see if I can pick up a used one and swap it out.
Straight bars are a real asset on a tight track like Mallory Park.
And that’s it! With the help of ACF50 my bike commuted through two British winters before the V-Strom took over that job, and the standard-fit stainless bolts are all still shiny. Triumph charged me a fortune for servicing to maintain the two-year warranty, then refused to help when the hot starting issue materialised, so I gave them the finger and have been doing everything myself ever since. Oil changes are easy, but valve checks are a nightmare and due every 12,000 miles, so you’d best hope yours don’t need adjusting! You’d also better have a Windows laptop and a DealerTool handy, as that’s the only way for home mechanics to balance the throttle bodies and reset the service warning indicator.
What of the new 765cc Street Triples that Triumph launched a couple of years ago – am I tempted to upgrade? In a word, no. The resale value of a 40,000 mile Street Triple would barely cover the deposit on the new bikes, and the extra power and needless riding modes don’t interest me. And if you read the small print, you’ll notice that Triumph has started quoting dry weights for their bikes these days, leading some short-sighted journalists to claim that the new bike is slightly lighter than the old one. More recently a magazine actually weighed one and found that the bigger engine and reinforced frame add around 17kg to the total mass, cancelling out the benefit of the more powerful engine.
And in truth, those changes wouldn’t really add to the experience for me. Traction control is always nice, but the fact is that there’s nothing a Street Triple can dish out that modern sport-touring rubber can’t handle, even at a racetrack. If Triumph had made good on their threats to create a version with a half-fairing and hard-luggage, things might have been different. But as it stands, it wouldn’t be much of an upgrade.
Scotland, Belgium, France, Switzerland, Austria, Germany, Luxembourg…
In the last six years I’ve commuted, visited friends and family, travelled the length and breadth of the UK, explored its limits on the racetrack and scraped my pegs around alpine hairpins. It’s handled the Hard Nott Pass and the Nürburgring, moved house with me three times, and eaten 5 sets of tyres. It’s drunk more than 3,400 litres of petrol, chewed up two sets of chains and sprockets, ground down four sets of front brake pads and even worn out a set of front disks.
I’m planning more trackdays, more trips abroad once the present situation opens up the tracks and borders for foreign travel, and still go looking for every opportunity to take my Street Triple R out for a spin on our bumpy local roads now we can get out there again. It’s not as comfortable or practical as my other bikes, it’s not great at motorways or in bad weather, and it’s the worst motorcycle I’ve ever owned for carrying luggage. But with motorcycles getting heavier, with electronics filtering our every input and with the days of new petrol-powered bikes numbered, I’ll treasure my Street Triple R for as long as I possibly can.
I’ll update you all when I hit 100,000 miles, or when it explodes – whichever comes first!
Motorcyclists, on average, own more than one motorcycle. Only truly hardcore automotive enthusiasts own more than one car, the financial and logistical constraints of the format conspiring to ensure that even most performance-oriented cars need to be able to function as someone’s only mode of practical transport. Motorcycles don’t have that problem.
Today, it’s possible to have a garage full of bikes that have dramatically different operational envelopes. But what came first, the chicken or the egg? Do we need multiple motorcycles because each one is only good at one thing? Or is it the other way around, and brands are only able to thrive while selling specialised hardware precisely because they know you have other bikes for other purposes?
There are dirt bikes for exploring byways; sportsbikes for clipping apexes at trackdays; naked roadsters for B-road blasts; big tourers for nipping to the Black Forest for a long weekend in comfort; and even long, low cruisers for rolling up at your favourite biker cafe in style. In truth, I could spend the rest of this article just listing the many genres and applications of motorcycles, and still have someone email me a list of those I’d missed.
And yet, even if you have the means to stock your garage with diverse choices, there’s a purity to doing it all on just one bike. There have been several times in my riding career when the question of which bike to ride was moot, and it’s always liberating. No worries about whether I’ve brought the wrong bike for a particular ride or trip, no nagging concern that I might’ve had more fun on one of my other motorcycles. It was a bike ride, I rode my bike. Simple.
Insurance, tax and MOTs all need paying for regardless of how the mileage is divided up, and the reality is that you can only sit in one saddle at a time. Sure, there are practical benefits to sharing the load – if one bike is off the road for repairs or maintenance it’s handy to have a backup. Although it must be said that this argument breaks down if, like me, you aim for your fleet to have as little overlap as possible. If your sporty bike gets a puncture the day before a trackday you can’t exactly shrug and take your cruiser instead.
And yet, I’m increasingly convinced that one bike can do it all. Twenty years ago the only way to get good brakes, suspension and decent power was to grit your teeth and clamber aboard a dedicated sportsbike – comfort and practicality be damned. They were the flagships, and everything else was compromised in some way – and so people compromised on luggage and comfort instead. But these days the most expensive bikes in the showroom stand tall on their dirt-styled tyres, glowering down at lesser bikes with their array of LED spotlights. Adventure Bikes can do now everything as well, or better, than everything else in the showroom.
20 years ago, top-flight sportsbikes were the only way to get good performance.
Touring, trackdays & commuting – there’s a certain simplicity to doing it all on one bike.
Upside-down cartridge forks and radial brakes, but also two-up comfort and luggage?
Comfort? Check – Adventure Bikes, or Adventure Tourers as some variants are labelled, are designed to soak up big miles with ease. Performance? Check – the top-flight models from the European manufacturers use big engines to put out more torque and power than can be usefully employed anywhere outside a racetrack. Brakes and suspension are not only better quality than race bikes from just a few years ago, they manage the trick of enabling these big beasts to out-handle dedicated performance machines on the bumpiest of neglected British roads.
Want tech? Sportsbikes are the ones playing catch-up these days, with the slickest TFT screens, automated electronic suspension and riding aids going to the Adventure Bikes first. And finally, luggage; beefy subframes and fashionable yet functional top-loading panniers mean that the dedicated touring motorcycle has all but died out, with only BMW and Honda offering a grand total of three models between them in the UK. I know that there’s a little more choice in North American markets, but in Europe, the Adventure Bike has completely taken over.
And honestly, I’m just as guilty of contributing to this state of affairs. I bought a V-Strom 650, modified it to suit and then spent 75,000 miles riding it in all conditions, on all surfaces, in every type of terrain and weather, across borders, on road, track and beyond, with and without luggage and passenger. And during my adventures, did I ever think that another bike might have been better at performing the task at hand, might have made a trip, ride or other biking experience that much more enjoyable? Sure – but only for one small part of the journey. You see, unless you do all your riding within a few miles of your house, you’re going to put down some miles travelling to the good roads, or the racetrack, or the trailhead. And while a sportsbike will be slightly more fun when you’re actually knee-down at Mallory Park, there’s a reason why hardcore track-rats cart their bikes around in vans. Carving up mountain passes is indeed more rewarding on my Street Triple than it is on my V-Strom, but only just. And the V-Strom will make the journey there far easier and more enjoyable, with better wind protection, as well as easier-to-use, more spacious and more secure luggage.
Dedicated touring bikes still exist, but adventure bikes have largely made them redundant.
With bumpy roads, variable weather and lots to carry, would they have been better off on ADVs
After several days of re-packing and re-strapping my tailpack, I really started to miss my topbox.
This point was driven home by me earlier this year across two separate trips – one 7-day blast across the Swiss Alps, and another shorter loop around the Scottish North Coast 500 – both undertaken by myself and a friend on our trusty Street Triples. We both had an absolute blast, but after long days in the saddles we realised that we would’ve given up very little in terms of cornering enjoyment if we’d been riding middleweight Adventure Bikes instead.
500 miles along French motorways was a trial to be overcome. Squeezing clothes and toiletries into tiny tailpacks was a daily frustration. The bumpy roads of the highlands knackered our wrists and short fuel ranges were a constant gnawing concern. Sure, you may want to stop every 100 miles, but you can’t always find an open petrol station in many of the most interesting parts of Europe, never mind beyond! When the rain arrived, I missed my V-Strom’s windshield, fairing and handguards. And while oiling my chain would’ve been easier with the V-Strom’s centrestand. Many adventure bikes solve the problem entirely with shaft-driven rear wheels.
A BMW R1250GS is lighter and more nimble than it’s fully-faired RT cousin, has better wind protection than the naked R and will be far more comfortable during the long motorway stretches than the RS. An S1000RR has more power and weighs less than an S1000XR, but which one would you rather take for a long ride through the Pyrenees? Which one would your pillion prefer? Naked bikes, sportsbikes, retro roadsters – they all look great and perform brilliantly when the conditions are magazine-photo-perfect, but at any other part of the trip you’ll want something a little less single-minded.
Twenty years ago the compromises would have been huge. I would have had to sacrifice a massive amount of engine, handling and braking performance to get my desired level of comfort and practicality. Not any more. And there will certainly be those of you who see the pain and discomfort of using a more focused device as a badge of honour and pride, and I certainly understand that. There are those amongst you for whom any compromise will be one too many. My brother maintains that he’ll never give up the front-end feel he enjoys from his sportsbike, and his wife seems perfectly happy to tour from that tiny back seat. That said, it’s funny how he’s putting far more miles on his CCM GP450 these days…
And so, as always, it comes down to personal preference. I’m not going to be thinning my personal fleet just yet, nor stop adding more specialised bikes to the garage to fill ever-smaller niches. I’m fortunate enough to able to afford to keep multiple motorcycles, even if the annual mileages on my more focused vehicles is dwarfed by that of my Adventure Bike. And if you only have the resources or the space to keep a single motorcycle in your garage, then why not pick one that is a jack of all trades, while also managing the impressive trick of damn near mastering them all?
“Call that an adventure bike? This is an adventure bike!”
It’s safe to say that Triumph and I have had our differences over the years. My 2013 Street Triple R is the only motorcycle I’ve ever bought brand new, and the brand’s response to my textiles scuffing the paint on the tank within a few hundred miles was that it was my own fault for not paying extra for the paint protection. I paid many hundreds of pounds on maintenance to maintain the official service history during the first two years, and when I began to experience a hot-starting issue as the warranty drew to a close they refused to even investigate until I’d paid another £1,000 for the 24k service, 3,000 miles early. I gave my dealer the finger and did the work myself.
Beyond that, I’ve reviewed a number of Triumph‘s bikes in the years since, with mixed results. Still, time moves on and Triumph has been working as hard upgrading their Tiger 800 as I have upgrading my own V-Strom 650. Strange as it may sound, there are some things you can achieve with an entire engineering department, a couple of factories and hundreds of thousands of pounds that I can’t match with my meagre resources.
What’s more, contrary to the impression I may have given with the likes of my BMW R1250GS review, I’m not a complete technophobe. My disdain for the integrated electronic gadgetry increasingly infesting modern motorcycles is based on my overwhelming impression that they are primarily intended to improve manufacturer profit margins rather than the rider experience. In some cases, they actually seem designed to fix self-inflicted problems. For example, user-selectable engine or throttle modes (too much power), electronically-adjustable suspension (too much weight) and full-colour TFT dashboards (too many of the aforementioned throttle and suspension modes). It’s little wonder that many people are favourably comparing the genuinely old-school Royal Enfield Himalayan with bikes four times the price.
As a result, it was with mixed feelings that I took note of the newly-updated Triumph Tiger 800 at EICMA in 2017. In showrooms last year, it demonstrated that Triumph had spent the eight years since the launch of the original 2010 model nipping and tucking, rather than completely redesigning the bike. Some changes, such as the fashionable new TFT dashboard, I regarded with suspicion. Others, such as the new LED headlights, cruise control and upgraded front brakes were very welcome indeed, and I’ve been meaning to arrange a ride ever since.
But which one would I buy, in theory? Like many of their European competitors, you cannot simply walk into a Triumph dealership and select a bike anymore; you also need to choose a trim level and then pick from a list of optional dealer-fit accessories. A lot of glowing reviews from professional journalists fail to mention that the version they enjoyed on the press launch would cost a paying customer thousands and thousands of pounds more than the advertised retail price.
A base-model Tiger 800 XR can technically be bought for £9,200 but this is a price-point model so poorly equiped that even Triumph doesn’t expect anyone to actually buy it. Choosing the XRX version instead adds another £1,500 to the price tag and the XRT you actually want is almost £13k with a set of crash bars fitted. Adding the three-box luggage set means you’ll be riding home with a £14,000-sized dent in your wallet. Given my well-documented history of criticising the likes of BMW and KTM for similarly inflated pricing, why would I even entertain such an expensive motorcycle?
Setting aside the substantial price tag for a moment, we could have a perfect V-Strom replacement on our hands here. Regardless of trim level, you get very similar weight and dimensions as the Suzuki, the same cast 19″ / 17″ wheel combination, good weather protection, and a comfortable, upright riding position. Assuming you ignore the bare-bones XR trim level you get higher-spec Brembo brakes on the front wheel, solving one of my main criticisms of the original bike by dramatically improving braking performance. The suspension is also of higher quality, and Triumph claim to have improved the fuel economy through internal friction reduction and throttle management.
Spend enough money to get the top-of-the-range XRT model and you and your passenger are treated to heated seats, with the rider enjoying heated grips and full LED lighting. Many of the upgrades I made to my own V-Strom 650 (and would make to a new V-Strom 1000) are now standard-fit on the Triumph with other niceties such as cruise control, back-lit switchgear, tyre-pressure monitoring, self-cancelling indicators and traction-control thrown in for good measure. What the Tiger 800 lacks compared to its German, Austrian and Italian rivals is electronically-adjustable suspension, keyless ignition, hill-hold assist, a quick-shifter and an electric screen. For me, at least, that means it offers everything I want, and nothing I don’t.
Of course, if you’re of the 21″ wired-wheel persuasion there’s a mirrored set of trim levels available for you with the XCX and XCA versions. You also get slightly higher bars, a skid plate and taller, softer WP suspension.
Personally, I wouldn’t bother; the bigger wheels are heavier, blunting braking and handling considerably, with the only advantage being greater resistance to damage from high impacts off-road. But let’s be honest, here – if you’re taking a 230kg motorcycle out where that sort of situation is likely, then dented wheels are the least of your worries. Buy a Honda CRF250L instead.
Before I hit the road, I had the Triumph salesman take me through the new full-colour onboard computer – it took nearly twenty minutes. There are four riding modes, each of which can be customised with varying levels of traction control, ABS, several throttle maps and even three different dashboard layouts. While tachometer, speedometer, current gear, air temperature and time of day are ever-present, a small joystick underneath the indicator switch allows you to toggle between two trip meters, each with average and real-time fuel economy and range, coolant temperature and more. Separate buttons switch through the various heat levels for heated grips and seats, riding lights can be switched on and off, and cruise control can be enabled and adjusted in 1mph increments all the way down to 30mph.
I strongly recommend anyone buying one of these to set aside an afternoon with the owner’s manual to learn how to access all the various pieces of information, but it’s certainly true that you could simply hop on and ride the bike as-is. The default Road engine mode, unlike on many bikes, is just fine and the factory suspension settings are well judged across a variety of surfaces, something that can’t be said for many, far more expensive, systems. The brakes are good, if not quite as sharp as a set of four-piston calipers would be, but are nonetheless a far cry from the wooden, squishy mess that most two-piston systems offer.
The touring windshield fitted to the XRT is adjustable by grabbing it with one hand and then pulling it up or down and in the highest position is almost tall enough to push turbulent air right over my helmet. A clever arrangement of winglets, designed to work in conjunction with the mirrors and handguards, means that there is zero buffeting around the sides, suggesting that we finally have a maker who is paying attention to something the aftermarket has been fixing for years.
Throttle response is much improved over the first-generation Tiger 800, the new ride-by-wire system smoothing out the off-idle throttle transition extremely well. Even Sport mode is not as snatchy as the previous cable throttle and there’s noticeably more bite to the power delivery as you climb up the rev range. One downside of a fully electronic throttle manifests itself as a slight dip below 4k, as though the computers are just taking the edge off my inputs in order to satisfy noise and emissions requirements.
A look at a dyno chart reveals something else interesting however: a horizontal line as soon as the output hits the 94 horsepower mark. That is the maximum allowed if you want to be able to restrict a bike for 47 horsepower A2 license holders and the ECU is clearly holding power steady from this point on, even as the revs rise the rest of the way to the redline. It honestly looks like there’s another 5-10 horsepower waiting at the top-end for someone who’s willing to visit their local tuner and have such restrictions removed.
Beyond that, the riding experience is rather unremarkable, which can be taken as a compliment or a criticism, depending on your point of view. A snarling, roaring beast of raw fury and adrenaline the Tiger 800 is not, though there’s significantly more character than there was in previous models. Build quality on modern Triumphs is generally very impressive; fasteners are stainless steel by default and metal finishes are tough and should shrug off a salty winter with aplomb. Painted plastics still scratch like any others so it will be interesting to see how the optional matt blue paint would stand up to daily use.
Fuel economy was mid-50’s on my relatively conservative ride. My father was able to average better than that over two years on his 2012 example and Triumph claims that significant improvements have been made since. Controls are of good quality and satisfying to use, with the possible exception of the indicator switch; the fashionable modern microswitch design means that it barely moves when you press it, much like on modern BMWs. In thick gloves, it might be hard to tell whether you hit it or not. Another odd move is that both heated seats are now adjusted via the handlebars, which means that your pillion will have to tap you on the shoulder if their bum gets cold.
Ergonomics are good, although with my short arms I’d ask my dealer to fit a set of risers to the handlebars. Lower seats are available for the short of leg, although you’d lose the heating option, and all seats have two different height settings that can be switched without tools. For the truly vertically challenged, you can even order a version of the Tiger 800 XRX with lowered suspension, although ground clearance suffers and a centre stand can no longer be fitted. I’d encourage interested parties to try the low seat first – it makes a big difference. With my 30″ inseam I actually found the standard seat in the high position to be perfectly manageable, with the added benefit of reducing the bend in my knees.
Aesthetics? Well, adventure-tourers are never going to be the prettiest of motorcycles; upright riding positions and tall fairings/screens can make for ungainly proportions, although Triumph‘s designers have done their best to build a very angry, angular structure into the front end. The matt blue paint on my tester looked even better in the flesh, and the metallic silver or white, which are the other two options at this trim level, look suitably sparkly in the sunshine.
Behind the tank, things quickly descend into a mess of scaffolding and black plastic, with the seat floating on top as though the designers just sort of gave up half-way through. What’s more, choosing your colour has no effect on any part of the rear half of the motorcycle. Still, I’ve seen worse, and there’s no denying the practicality of having so many bungee points available. I’m sure the Italians would be horrified at the focus of function over form, but I could probably learn to live with it.
At the end of the day, I find myself rather taken by the Triumph Tiger 800 XRT. Sure, it’s expensive – a full £2,000 more than a Suzuki V-Strom 1000, which is a closer match in terms of power, suspension and braking performance. But I have to say, you do get quite a bit for your money – the materials and construction on current Triumphs simply ooze quality.
As for me? Well, I’d have to make a choice. The base-spec XR model almost achieves price parity with Suzuki’s V-Strom 1000, though with its more basic brakes and suspension it can’t quite match it for performance and loses much of the electronic gadgets that would make the Tiger 800 such a nice bike to live with. Where the Suzuki really wins, however, is simplicity and reliability.
The last chinks in the Triumph‘s armour are the running costs. The official maintenance schedule dictates minor services at 6,000 miles, with prices between £300-400 for each visit. At 12,000 miles the checklist for the mechanic is extensive, and includes an extremely time-consuming check of the engine’s valve clearances. Assuming everything is in spec, you can expect a bill of around £800, and it gets far worse if any of those valves actually need adjusting.
I suspect that most Tiger 800 owners cover more than the UK-average 4,000 miles per year, so it’s worth doing some calculations to determine just how expensive things could get for you before signing on the dotted line. At my rate of 25,000 miles per year, I’d be looking at paying my local dealer a hefty £2,400 annually just to maintain the warranty. I’m sure you can see why I tend to do my own servicing these days.
Like my own V-Strom 650, a new V-Strom 1000, or any of the other 800cc road-focused Adventure-Tourers, the Tiger 800 XRT is an effective way of crossing countries quickly. The top speed won’t make headlines, but the focus on rider comfort and compliant suspension matched with a real-world fuel range approaching 250 miles per tank means that the miles just fly by.
Cruise control takes the stress out of the motorway stretches, and the wide bars and light handling make easy work of curvier roads. By focusing on genuine, practical improvements rather than flashy but marketable gimmicks, Triumph have succeeded in turning the previously disappointing Tiger 800 into a motorcycle I can wholeheartedly recommend. I can give no higher praise.
Henry Ford is said to have opined that, should he have asked people what they wanted from a future transport solution they would have simply requested a faster horse. Apple famously made its fortune delivering products that nobody knew they wanted, and it’s arguable that the original BMW R80GS did the same thing. Journalists at the time were baffled, complaining that it was too heavy to compete with dirt bikes, and that more traditional touring bikes had it beat on paved roads. Yet a combination of genuine everyday capability, iterative improvement and a healthy dose of clever marketing mean that the modern-day iteration sold more than 4,000 examples in the UK in 2017.
Almost 40 years of development brings plenty of improvements and refinements, as engineers try to satisfy marketing’s desire to appeal to wider and wider demographics. Lower seat heights entice the short of leg to join the fun, while better brakes and suspension as well as a power output 270% of the original bring in those of a more sporting persuasion. Stronger chassis and subframes provide the passenger and luggage requirements of the touring set and an ever-more sophisticated electronics suite rounds off the package for tech fetishists. The latest revision, the new R1250GS, really should be all things to all people.
Every major manufacturer is working hard to constantly broaden the appeal of every bike in their range. The main problem with iterative development arises when you keep moving the goalposts, when your target keeps shifting. Before you know it, you have lost sight of the original purpose of the thing you were building, and have created something that is a caricature of itself. But going backwards, aiming for less weight, less power, and more control would be unthinkable! It would surely be commercial suicide, as no-one would buy a bike that had lower numbers than the competition!
This story isn’t unique to the R1250GS or even to BMW; consumers have never been good at separating what we ‘want’ from what we ‘need’, and the people in charge of selling us stuff have zero incentive to discourage our appetites. Marketing, journalists and consumers all demand more power, but riders can’t actually handle that, so electronic aids are brought in to compensate. The chassis and suspension can’t handle it either, so they are both beefed up and yet more electronics added to shocks and forks in a desperate attempt to keep the rising mass of modern motorcycles under control at ever-higher speeds on fast-degrading roads.
All those electronics now mean that handlebar switchgear has begun to resemble video game controllers, so manufacturers are sticking with the theme and adding full-colour computer screens where the dashboards used to be. You need a half hour with the instruction manual to get the bike ready to go, and piloting a modern motorcycle at speed is now like flying a modern-day jet aircraft, the laws of physics kept barely in check by an overlapping network of electronic safety nets.
I rode the first-generation water-cooled R1200GS back when it first launched, and found it to be extraordinary. The tremendous capability of the machine far exceeded what I could make use of at the time, and while my riding has continued to develop in the intervening years I suspect that the 2013 machine still has more performance than the average rider can safely use on public roads.
BMW hasn’t been idle either, making nips and tucks throughout the life of the water-GS, with premium features becoming standard-fit and new tech introduced almost every year to tempt well-heeled buyers into adding more ticks to their options list. In fact, the only really notable change over last year’s version is the extra 80cc’s of displacement that give the R1250GS its name. As such this new BMW is simply an example of the culture of excess that has spread throughout mainstream motorcycling; let’s see if we can identify the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Figures show that mass has increased over time, with the latest GS now weighing in at a shade over 250kg with a full tank of petrol. The optional spoked wheels add a few more kilos, as will the crash bars, luggage and other accessories that owners will undoubtedly bolt on (or more likely have their dealer install). Styling tweaks have served to add a fair bit of visual bulk over the years, and the German flagship is now a truly imposing beast.
Switchgear is of high quality, with a satisfying feel that is a joy to use – with the sole exception of the indicator and cruise-control switches. There’s so little movement that you find yourself looking down to confirm you’ve definitely pressed them. Despite adding an actual scroll-wheel (which itself contains an additional two tilt buttons) many of the dozen or so buttons have different functions depending on how long you hold them down. Outside of the basic riding functions, the bike is impossible to operate without looking down at the gloriously animated full-colour high-resolution digital dashboard.
The new BMW computer screen is far better than anything Triumph, Ducati or KTM have on offer at the moment, and feels like a genuine functional improvement over existing analogue or LCD units. It’s large, clear and easy to read even in direct sunlight, uses colour to enhance rather than distract, and provides all the information you need at a glance. Triumph’s units have fascias so large they remind me of old CRT televisions, and reading a Ducati TFT is like trying to decipher a detailed spreadsheet.
And yet, as I alluded to earlier, I strongly suspect that BMW’s primary motivator was not to one-up the competition, but simply to make all their technology manageable through a graphical user interface. It’s already a bit like using a digital watch, with multiple functions attached to each button, and navigating the various menus via the left-hand scroll wheel is probably something that gets easier with familiarity. There are main menus and sub-menus, with screens hidden behind other screens. At one point I resorted to turning the bike off and on again as the fastest way to get back to the regular dashboard layout.
The R1250GS has all the hallmarks of a bike designed through exhaustive focus testing. It has loads of power – 135bhp and 143Nm of torque. The levers, screen and seat are all adjustable, and the suspension can not only be adjusted electronically on the move, it’s now self-levelling depending on load and passengers, and even adjusts the damping in real-time to manage whatever surprises the road surface can throw at it. The brakes, despite no longer sporting the ultra-fashionable Brembo logo, are stupendous; how quickly you can stop is solely dependent on how much g-force your upper body can handle.
You can attach loads of luggage, and even remove the pillion seat for more space to strap stuff to. The lighting is now full LED, and fully automatic. It has cruise control for long motorway trips, the seat is comfortable and the windshield height-adjustable from the cockpit. It even gets acceptable fuel economy, and only very aggressive riding managed to push the average mpg down below 50. Everyone wants multiple riding modes now, so it has those too. Good grief, it even has a quick-shifter, something originally designed for racing and now this season’s must-have accessory. As I said earlier, this bike has been designed to be all things to all people, the formula polished until it gleams – this should be the perfect motorcycle.
And yet, there are serious issues. Every review of the R1200GS inexplicably complained that it was underpowered compared to the competition, and so an incredibly clever new variable-valve timing system was developed that boosts torque and power across the entire rev range. Despite the 80cc more cubic capacity this enormous engine revs up more like an inline four-litre bike engine than a big, torquey twin. I’m used to the snatchy aftermarket quick-action throttle on my Triumph Street Triple, and in Dynamic mode the R1250GS was far twitchier.
BMW know this, which is why you have to pay extra to even get access to that particular riding mode. ‘Road’ and ‘Rain’ dampen response considerably, but also add a woolly feel and even hesitation that made smooth gear changes extremely difficult. The new quick-shifter suggests that BMW spotted this issue as well, allowing fully hands-free gear shifts. Unfortunately, in almost all circumstances it works very poorly, resulting in jerky upshifts and even worse downshifts. It was so bad that I was prompted to ask the BMW rep if the system was disabled on my example, and I was condescendingly told that I merely needed to get used to it. Perhaps having your pillion’s helmet crashing into the back of your own is an acquired taste?
Similarly ferocious sportsbikes are normally equipped with extremely stiff suspension to counteract the squatting and diving forces caused by accelerating and braking. Matters are complicated somewhat when you’re carrying around 50kg of reinforced subframes, and probably another 100kg of luggage and passenger. But touring riders want a soft, comfortable ride, so computer-controlled suspension is available to try and provide the best of both worlds. It’s a testament to BMW’s engineers that it almost succeeds. The trick, it seems, is to keep the shock absorbers soft most of the time, and then firm them up quickly in response to large, sudden inputs to control excessive movement.
In practice it seems that the on-board computers just can’t cope, at least on Northamptonshire’s rutted tarmac. Small surface undulations are absorbed well enough in ‘Road’ mode, making for a comfortable ride and allowing you to maintain the rapid pace that the engine enables. But hit a patch of rougher asphalt and the dampers seem to lock up, transmitting the shock into the chassis and causing the entire bike to shudder and flex. I’m afraid it’s not what I’d expect from a brand new £16,000 flagship.
Switching the suspension over to ‘Dynamic’ simply made matters worse, delivering a ride so firm that both wheels were frequently bouncing off the ground and triggering the ABS and traction control. The only solution was to ride more slowly, rendering all that power utterly pointless.
Perhaps a beefier rider might better suit the spring rates that BMW have chosen for their shocks, and if you only stick to smooth, open roads you may find the suspension to be perfectly adequate. But surely the whole point of adventure bikes is that they allow us to continue enjoying our roads even as they continue to fall apart? Perhaps that fast-revving engine would be blunted somewhat were I to weigh more than my meagre 70kg, and the bike further loaded down with a pillion and full complement of hard luggage. And perhaps the steep inclines and high altitudes of the Swiss Alps would smooth things out the rest of the way. But unless I just described your sole use-case of a purportedly ultra-versatile machine, I think there are less compromised solutions out there.
I really wanted to like this new GS, I really did. I have tremendous respect for the bike and the BMW brand, and I think that they’re one of the few manufacturers actively trying to solve the marketing and dealership problems that threaten to strangle the motorcycle industry. But I’m afraid that their product has fallen victim to fashion, and the demand for more power and gadgets has resulted in a demonstrably compromised motorcycle. I’d love to see what a 900cc version would look like – 100bhp and a 30kg diet might be the sweet spot, and more of the bike could be enjoyed without computer interference at every turn. It’s a shame the road-oriented F750GS has been so badly neutered to give the off-road focused F850GS room to breathe.
Unfortunately, from my perspective, the iconic motorcycle that kick-started the entire adventure segment has now become just like the company’s cars: overweight, overcomplicated and overpriced. An impressive technical showcase whose electronic faculties are less of a testament to innovation and more of a desperate attempt to win the ultimate game of motorcycle Top Trumps. It’s a little bit like my cooking, in fact: all the right ingredients, yet somehow the result just leaves a bad taste in your mouth.
Do expectations always deliver? And just what is the true potential of the new Yamaha Tracer 900GT? Keith Yallop reports on his bike purchase of May 2018. After over 9,000 miles he asks, “Is this the ultimate jack-of-all-trades?”
I have been biking for many decades having ridden about 1/2 million miles – or to the moon and back – on over 50 different machines of various sizes and capabilities.. My last few bikes have all been high-performance sport tourers with the emphasis on ‘sports’. I do quite a lot of touring in this country and across Europe with my riding buddy, Paul Ruden. We quite often do over 500 miles a day. In 2017 we did a European trip with me on my Kawasaki Z1000SX, which is a great bike, but the riding position was starting to take its toll on my ageing joints. At the end of a day’s ride I was glad to get off it. I came to the conclusion that my biking requirements needed some major reassessment.
So over Christmas 2017 I drew up a list of what I wanted from my motorcycling, taking into account that I was entering into my twilight years and my ageing joints were not as flexible as they used to be. High on my list was comfort, ease of handling, light-weight, narrow (to aid filtering), panniers which were not too large and could be easily removed. Low on the list was dropped bars, big cc, massive horsepower and MotoGP acceleration. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate a bike with low down punch but over 100mph top speed was definitely moving off my radar and comfort was becoming a priority.
So what fitted these requirements? I started to look at a range of bikes all in the upright adventure touring position. During December 2017/January 2018 I visited BMW, Triumph, Honda, Ducati, Suzuki, Kawasaki and Yamaha. All the dealers offered great sports tourers, all with good points and some not so good. However at The Motorbike Shop in Farnborough I was invited to take out a Yamaha MT-09 Tracer. This bike was not on my list but I thought why not give it a try? After an extended 50 mile ride I felt that this machine and I could have a long and happy relationship. It all seemed to gel for me, this was probably helped by the fact that I have owned a number of Yamahas.
The throttle response was very lively, especially when in sports (A) mode, where with its short wheelbase it would easily lift its front wheel if you left traffic lights too energetically. On my return to the shop I was informed that a brand new model called the Tracer 900GT would be launched in early summer 2018. It would have an extended swing arm to reduce front wheel lift and make the bike more stable with panniers fitted. It would have a host of extras as standard, including panniers, touring screen, narrower bars, better seat, quick-shifter, updated suspension, cruise control and the list went on. It would be sub £11k. They offered me an excellent part-exchange price for my Z1000SX so I made an instant decision to place an order, one I hoped I would not regret.
I spent a nervous 5 months wondering if I had made the right decision and found myself asking if it was going to be anywhere near as much fun as the demo MT-09 on which I had ridden. Or had the practical additions to the GT changed this new model for the worse?
On the 21st of May I was the first rider in the UK to take delivery of the Tracer 900GT, or so I was told. The first thing that struck me was just how impressive the bike feels. It has the same grand presence as an adventure bike, but obviously with the road-focused bias. Sitting on the machine allows for a good view over the traffic ahead and the large screen appears to provide good protection (more on that later).
The bike feels tall with an 850mm seat height, but despite this I’m still able to flat-foot pretty easily when sat on it (I’m 5’ 11”). For those who might be a little more vertically challenged this could be more of a problem, however there is a lowering kit available.
It’s all well and good babbling on about the GT’s finer details but unless it rides well on the roads and operates well in real situations then it doesn’t mean diddly squat. So how does it ride?
Well the suspension was not one of the best points of the MT-09 based models of old. I was therefore pleased to discover that the revised suspension immediately puts to rest any previous questions over the earlier model. The suspension has been uprated using Kayaba units featuring dual springs and adjustability of both high and low speed compression damping, as well as preload and rebound damping. The rear shock preload is easily changed thanks to a side-mounted adjuster, perfect for those who are looking to travel with a pillion and/or lots of luggage. Yamaha have obviously been listening carefully to their customers, which is certainly refreshing in the motorcycle industry. Through corners it is probably one of the most ‘flickable’ bikes I have had the pleasure to ride.
Yamaha have also gone to town on reprogramming the MT-09 ECU mapping. Renowned for being a little snatchy on the power, the old map has been updated to give a much smoother delivery and also make the bike much more manageable when sat at a higher revs.
After riding over 9,000 miles on the bike in this country and across Europe, I must say it is a very pleasurable bike to be sat on for long distance cruising. It is very responsive and agile even though it weighs in at 227kg fully kitted out with panniers and fuel. Combining the excellent chassis with the brilliant 847cc triple power unit makes for an engaging ride that doesn’t leave me feeling disappointed or achy.
It would be pretty easy to think of these rather significant updates being the end of the story, but it is in fact just the beginning. Yamaha have seemingly thrown most of their accessories catalogue at the GT to make it into a machine that you could pick up tomorrow and set straight off on a European tour.
The most notable of the accessories is of course the hard luggage, which offers a mediocre 44-litres of storage. As the silencer is tucked away under the engine this allows both panniers to be of equal size. However the panniers will not take a full-face helmet. I have modified a soft bag of similar capacity to clip onto the rear seat thereby giving me close on 90-litres total luggage for touring. I replace this large bag with a smaller bag of 15 litres for weekends away. A plus point is that the paniers are very easy to remove using the ignition key and there is no scaffolding left behind.
Alongside the panniers the GT also comes with a centre stand, hand guards and heated grips where all 3 settings can be programmed individually to allow 10 different heat choices for each setting (30 in total), this makes winter riding a far less disconcerting prospect.
The rest of the electronics package is also very impressive with three selectable engine modes and traction control settings. There’s also cruise control, which definitely makes long range touring much more pleasurable. The coloured TFT instrument panel is from the R1 dash and although it is a bit on the small size it can be programmed with just about any information you would like the bike to give you, including gear indicator.
Impressively, the Tracer 900GT also comes with a slipper clutch down and quick-shifter up. The quick-shifter certainly makes for a smooth and simple affair when kicking up through the gearbox, it’s very easy to get used to clutchless upshifting. However I have to say that I still often prefer to use the old way and change gear with the clutch. But the choice is yours.
With panniers removed the bike is fairly light at 205kg and with the ECU programmed to give low down torque it is no slouch. For those of you who are interested in the tech figures, the bike has a triple cylinder 847cc engine producing 115bhp at the crank, has a top speed of 140mph, does 0-60 in 2.7 seconds and quarter mile in 10.6 seconds. But what about stopping? Well the rear brake is ok but not super efficient, the front brakes come from the R1 and are very positive having ample stopping power with very little effort even when the bike’s fully loaded.
However it is not all honey and roses – I do have a few gripes. The first is with the original tyres. The Tracer 900GT came with Dunlop Sportsmax D222 as standard and I was not at all impressed with them. I think Yamaha must have got a bulk cheap deal from Dunlop! Driving hard out of bends the back end seemed to be a little skittish and lively which took me back to my old days of scrambling. It also seemed to grab at every crack or seam in the tarmac. Not quite what I wanted on my new touring bike. So at sub 2,000 miles I visited Mel and he advised fitting a pair of Bridgestone Battlax T31’s. The difference in handling was amazing, the skittish feel had gone and the line grabbing was vastly reduced. What a difference a good tyre can make!
Secondly, I don’t personally like the fuel gauge. It only starts reducing after you’ve dropped to lower than half of the tank’s 18 litre capacity, then it shoots down and hangs around for a long time at 1/8 of a tank. It’s not a big deal and to most of you it won’t make any big difference at all, it’s just what I prefer. So I have set the TFT screen to show how much fuel I am consuming. When it gets near 4 gallons (18 litres) I know I need to look for a petrol station pretty quickly. The fuel consumption indicator is showing 55mpg and on tours I have managed to push a full tank to over 200 miles, the warning light comes on at around 185 miles. That makes it one of the most economical bikes I have owned, other than a BSA Bantam and a Triumph Tiger Cub!
My other major gripe is the screen. I seem to be in good company with this moan as nearly all magazine and online testers say the same. At higher speeds the wind coming around the screen is noisy and seems to buffer me around, especially on motorways travelling behind vehicles. Before my tour to Europe I purchased an MRA touring screen with an aerofoil on top and that has made a lot of difference. The screen is manually pinch and adjust with one hand which was useful in Alps when we came out of a tunnel straight into a tremendous rainstorm. Yamaha do offer their own larger touring screen but it costs a lot more and I am not sure how good it is.
Another minor moan is that you cannot fully put your toes on the foot pegs without hitting your heels on the pillion foot-peg mounts. However I have learnt to come off my toes and use the balls of my feet, seems to work just fine and is probably a little more comfortable.
My final moan is the position of the ignition key. If the handlebars are straight ahead then it is difficult to get your hand in, if they are turned to the right it’s impossible to reach. So steering needs to be turned left to get to the key. Why could they not mount the key in a more accessible position?
I have to be honest though, what I’m most impressed with is the price. While on paper the £10,649 price tag may seem like quite a lot, what you get for the money is nothing short of incredible value. I could not find another comparable motorcycle in this price bracket that even comes close to the specification of the GT as standard and it really makes this motorcycle very hard to fault.
So what extras have I deemed necessary apart from the MRA screen (£108)? Well I have fitted a radiator guard (£40) along with a front mudguard extender (£22). I have also fitted twin horns (£15), a Yamaha larger side-stand foot (£48), a pair of R&G bar ends (£23) and Givi engine crash bars (£126) – just in case I feel the need to gently lay the bike down.
So did the Tracer 900GT tick all my boxes from my Christmas 2017 ‘nice to have’ list? I think it has and probably more. I believe the hard fact about the Tracer 900GT is that you’ll grin like a Cheshire cat whenever you ride it, despite the weather, season or journey. Cold or hot, rain or shine, commuting or charging; the GT will be everything you could ever need and be lots of fun whilst doing it. It’s definitely a bike that has been designed to be a little easier to live with and, importantly, you don’t need to remortgage the house to buy it. The Tracer 900GT is definitely going to appeal to those who want just one bike that will comfortably do a bit of everything and do it well. And finally, to quote MCN, ‘a seriously good bike at a seriously great price’.
Remember when the Dacia Sandero launched in the UK? It made a big splash in the automotive press and even beyond; an actual, proper car for just £6,000. With the competition priced close to three times that amount it was no surprise that a lot of people picked one up almost on impulse. Once things calmed down a bit, the more serious, cynical journalists got their hands on them. Eventually a consensus was reached that, while you could buy a new car for just six grand, you could also buy a much nicer used car for around the same money.
My suspicion is that the Royal Enfield Himalayan might suffer a similar fate. Right now, we’re all going crazy for the things and, on paper, it’s easy to see why. A brand-new air/oil-cooled 411cc single with a low seat height, genuine off-road capability, and impressive luggage capacity for just £4,200 on the road? Surely there must have been a mistake? The internet is already awash with videos of people loading them to the gills, throwing on a set of serious knobbly tyres and tearing off into the wilderness; the big-dollar BMW/KTM/Triumph adventuring experience for a quarter of the price.
While at our local Royal Enfield dealer, I saw a chap pull up on a Himalayan wearing what looked like a full set of very clean BMW adventure textiles. It occurred to me that someone who had already signed on the dotted line for a motorcycle that was just a few accessories short of costing £20,000 would probably not be too keen on risking their expensive new machine down a rutted country lane. One mistake, one surprise rock or rut and the repair bills could easily be in excess of what a whole Himalayan costs to buy outright. And so, in a way, this new Indian-made motorcycle might simply be the world’s most expensive set of crash bars.
Those of you who have recently sat down with a salesman in a European motorcycle dealership will have noted how little adding thousands of pounds of electronic suspension, heated seats and aluminium panniers seems to add to the proposed monthly payment. I can’t help but wonder how long it will be before some enterprising BMW dealership starts offering to roll a whole second motorcycle into that 3-year plan.
But does the Himalayan deserve better than this? Can it stand alone as a perfectly good motorcycle, a worthy competitor to our overwrought, over-complicated and over-priced Japanese and European machinery? Have the Indian-owned Royal Enfield finally got the hang of quality control and delivered a reliable, dependable, rugged motorcycle that we can be proud to put in our garages?
Judging that last point is normally very difficult on a carefully-controlled test-ride. Manufacturers, and by extension, their dealers, are understandably very careful to ensure that a potential customer has a flawless introductory experience that will encourage them to hand over their credit card at the end. Fortunately, the Himalayans we took out obliged by breaking down almost immediately, thereby putting the matter to rest.
My brother’s bike decided that throttles were for wimps and wedged itself wide open, refusing to be fixed and needing to be coaxed back to the dealership with the clutch. In addition, neither of us could read half of our instruments due to the significant condensation behind the glass on the displays – a common issue, according to the internet, and apparently preventable by greasing all the connectors to the clocks, but still not really something I would expect to have to do on a new machine.
The next black mark was for the brakes. We both discovered that stopping distances were far, far greater than we would expect, and had to haul on both lever and pedal rather brutally to prevent obstacles in front causing unplanned wheelbase reductions. The front brake has no feel and no bite, requiring the rider to simply squeeze the lever as hard as they can as far in advance as possible. The rear is the opposite – loads of feel and bite, but it locks up almost immediately, causing the ABS to cut power to the brake and rendering it essentially inoperative. It’s possible that the softer brakes might be ideal for use in dirt or gravel but on the road they’re simply not fit for purpose. Better pads might help, but again, it’s something that should have been resolved at the factory.
Things start looking better as we work our way down the parts list. The seat is surprisingly comfortable – even for pillions – and the riding position somehow works well both when sat down or stood up on the pegs. Combine that with an extremely low seat height that would allow most riders to rest both feet flat on the ground yet miraculously fails to result in my knees sticking up around my ears while on the move. Our shortened ride time did mean that an extended test would be required to confirm if things remained comfortable for longer trips.
The suspension was soft, but not sloppy, and probably a good fit for the sort of riding this bike was designed for. I’m quite sure that the higher cornering speeds possible with better tyres might cause wallowing but achieving those high speeds would be a challenge with the meagre 24bhp on offer.
That’s not to say that the Himalayan feels slow, as long as your expectations are realistic. The 411cc air/oil-cooled engine is surprisingly smooth and relatively punchy, feeling more like a slightly breathless V-twin than a thrashy single. There’s not a whole lot going on below 4,000rpm, even if it’s more tractable than plenty of larger multi-cylinder bikes I’ve ridden, but the show’s all over before the needle reaches 6K. Even then you can feel valve float setting in and distressing noises can be heard from the top-end before the tachometer is past 5,500, so the usable power band is surprisingly narrow. It’s just as well that the gear shift is accurate and the clutch light, as you’ll be using both frequently.
Speaking of the clutch, one modification I would have to do on day one would be an adjustable lever. The biting point on the Royal Enfield is somewhere just beyond my fingertips, meaning that those of us with smaller hands may find pulling away from a stop a matter of setting the revs and just letting go of the clutch entirely. The soft bite and small displacement mean that setting off isn’t too bad but low-speed manoeuvres inevitably lack accuracy.
Other than that, it has to be said that niggles, irritations and deal-breakers are notable by their absence. The Himalayan may not do anything spectacularly well, but neither does it fall noticeably short anywhere. The footpegs don’t get in your way when you set your feet down, and the side stand is easy to extend and retract, two tricks that plenty of bikes costing 3-4 times as much somehow struggle with. The windshield is well designed, if a little too short, and a small fairing would make motorway stints entirely manageable.
As standard it comes fitted with a pair of practical tank-mounted pannier rails, with an optional rear-mounted set and matching metal panniers available from your local dealer at a refreshingly low cost. The dashboard is fully-featured, offering an analogue tachometer and speedometer as well as various trip meters and even a compass – something I cannot recall having ever seen before on a production motorcycle. So far owners have been averaging almost 80mpg in mixed use, meaning that a 250-mile range is easily achievable from the relatively meagre 15 litre tank.
I would prefer to reserve judgement until I’ve had more time in the saddle, but my brother feels that the only test ride long enough would involve multiple border crossings and a few months of atmospheric exposure. All the enthusiastic video reviews online seem to be shot in the driest, dustiest parts of Utah or Arizona, and I can’t help but wonder how well this machine would survive a couple of wet British winters. Used Bullet 500’s seem to be either immaculate fair-weather bar-hoppers, or look like they’ve been dredged up from the bottom of a river.
I could excuse a lot about the Himalayan by recalling that I could take one home for just £4,200. I could excuse the cheap components, the list of urgent upgrades/repairs, and even the 3,000 mile service intervals that include a valve clearance check every single time. I can appreciate the rugged styling, practical touches, low seat height and impressive fuel economy, and I would probably struggle to point out a serious competitor at any other new-bike dealership.
The Honda CRF250L would come close for entry-level dirt capability, although luggage and pillion capability are comparatively non-existent. Triumph or Ducati’s latest small-capacity Scramblers would be just as capable off-road and far better on it, but are double the price. In fact, the biggest competition for this £4,000 new motorcycle is a £4,000 used motorcycle. And that is where, test-rides or not, things fall apart rather upsettingly for the Himalayan.
You see, you can buy a whole raft of used mid-capacity adventure bikes for around the same price and, with matching dirt-oriented tyres, would be no less capable off-road than the small-capacity Royal Enfield. There’s nowhere that I would take a Himalayan that I wouldn’t take my V-Strom 650 and you can buy those for £3k. It wouldn’t be new and it wouldn’t be covered under a warranty but experience has shown me that you wouldn’t actually need one in any case. It would shrug off a few winters, be more competent during the tarmac sections of your trip, and would likely feature fewer pre-existing issues that required your immediate attention.
Certainly, a BMW F700GS or Triumph Tiger 800 would weigh more than the Himalayan, but not by much – the small 411cc single manages to tip the scales at a surprisingly heavy 190kg. If the low seat height is what caught your attention, then might I suggest you leave the majority of your budget in your pocket and pick up an early Honda CB500 instead? Similar weight to the Enfield, similar seat height, but with double the cylinders, power and torque. Bolt on a set of crash bars, lever on some Mitas E7’s and hit the trails.
I think that the Royal Enfield Himalayan’s biggest triumph may be to demonstrate conclusively to the rest of us that you can take pretty much any bike anywhere as long as you don’t care if it gets a little beat up. It has reminded us that most off-roading is actually just gravel roads with a bit of grass; trails that do not require any of the trappings of a serious enduro machine.
There’s a chap circumnavigating the globe right now on a Ducati Scrambler – a motorcycle roundly mocked by off-road enthusiasts as a poser/hipster/city bike – and Nick Sanders has toured the length of Africa on a Yamaha R1. Charlie and Ewan took BMW R1150GS’s on their famous cross-continental adventures, but their cameraman got stuck far less on the piece-of-junk Russian motorcycle he picked up at a local market. As far as I can tell, the biggest problem the Royal Enfield Himalayan has is that we don’t actually need it.
Three wheels has always been an acquired taste, but I have never come across such a biased audience as when I said I had ridden the new Yamaha Niken, pronounced Nike-N. ‘What a load of rubbish’ – ‘who wants a trike’ – ‘it’s just like that scooter thingy’ – ‘I’d never ride such a pile of s**t’- ‘they must want their heads tested’.
Closed minds and closed attitudes. No wonder Yamaha decided to break into the market gently with advertisements in MCN for a pre-launch trial ride at 3 locations in the UK and many others abroad, aimed at the normal rider. Yes, the opportunity was there to try something different – a different experience completely!
Luckily one of the locations was at Box Hill, and is not far from me, so I applied, and was accepted. On 4th August I found myself at an inaugural event with 19 others in an hourly timeslot to see and ride the new ground-breaking machine. It looks different, it is different and thank goodness Yamaha are brave enough to bring it to market!
Firstly we had a presentation, where we learned that this concept has been decades in the making. We were shown the superb engineering under the bikini fairing which is just stunning, and told what to expect when riding. It’s like carving through a curve when skiing we were told. These 20 bikes in front of us were the only 20 production bikes in existence at the time, prior to the launch in September.
We were given a briefing of the do’s and don’ts on the ride and then got ready. The first thing you find out is that despite having 3 wheels, this bike, when stationary, does not stand up on its own. It’s just like any other 2 wheeler, and requires manual input or a side stand. Sitting on it I found the riding position to be quite upright and, being vertically challenged, I found the 820mm seat height to be about my comfortable maximum. Like any modern bike, there are various electronic riding aids, and we were asked to put them all in the medium position.
Then we were off. The route around Box Hill being varied and quite tight and twisty, it was easy to find out what the Niken was capable of. Well, it was easy to change direction – despite 2 front wheels, 4 shock absorbers and all the extra crossbars holding them together it was totally effortless. This is wrong according to my physics, because the extra mass should make it more difficult to turn but that was not the case.
Puzzled, I continued and found that in tight corners it was amazing. Slowly you start to realise and understand that the cornering ability far outstrips anything you have been used to in the normal biking world.
Two front tyres, two rubber contact patches with the road and amazing stability means you can take liberties in the corners. If you brake quite hard mid-corner, the front doesn’t try to stand up, it just carves through the bend. Neither is there any serious fork dive when braking hard – and when I came across a patch of gravel mid corner, the Niken just rode through it like it wasn’t even there. It’s all just taken care of without any cheek-clenching moments that you would normally expect in those circumstances.
Will the front ever be totally overwhelmed? I am sure it can be, but it’s moved the goal post by at least 50% of the norm, and there are going to be many R1 and Fireblade riders who are totally embarrassed when a Niken spectacularly outrides them on a bend at a trackday.
After just 20 minutes riding the Niken I was totally relaxed and knew that the front end was not going to slide, let me down or cause any reason for raised blood pressure in any circumstances. The riding position was fairly upright and the seat moved slightly rearwards to balance the 50-50 weight ratio with the increased front end weight.
With the front end being so stable, the attention goes to the rear wheel and how soon and how much throttle you can apply when exiting a bend. Possibly not exciting in an R1/Fireblade way, but this is not a sportsbike – it just behaves similarly and is probably in the sports/tourer section with an easy riding position that evokes stability and massive confidence.
The rear of the bike is borrowed from the MT09, as is the 847cc 3 cylinder motor, which has been tuned to give plenty of low down grunt and a very sporty feel with instant pick up, which is surprising considering its moderate 113bhp and the bike’s 260kg weight!
The Niken is the next evolution in motorcycling, and soon the rest of the manufacturers will have to take notice because it takes the average rider and turns then into a road riding god, taking bends in poor weather conditions like you were enjoying them on a sunny day.
So where does the Niken fit into the market? Despite other perceptions it is NOT a trike, nor a scooter. It’s a fully grown motorcycle with 3 wheels. It’s not a commuter bike either, as it’s too wide, and it’s not a sportsbike, as it will never lean to a 60 degree angle like a MotoGP bike, but it is a comfortable long distance sports tourer with a sporty flair, great fun and would give masses of confidence in those hairy Alpine bends.
So would I buy one? I got off the bike grinning ear to ear, so yes I would. £13,500, is not cheap, but for the next biking evolution, fantastic value! I look forward to seeing them in the dealers, and possibly trying one for a couple of hours to really find out what it will do!
It seems that the world is changing faster than we think. With technology in electric vehicles constantly getting better, owning an electric vehicle is becoming more viable by the day. On my daily commute, I see more and more fully electric cars. I first became aware of Zero motorcycles while I was in the Netherlands. I saw the advertisement at a local motorcycle dealer and thought “that’s cool” but like most people we still believe that electric vehicles “are just not that useful”. How wrong I was!
Going on the Zero motorcycles website, I found that they had a few authorised dealers in the UK so I thought I would give it a go. I chose to go for the Zero DSR (Duel Sport Rider), the biggest of the range.
Engine:
The Zero DSR has a 775-amp Z-force motor that utilises powerful magnets producing 67bhp and a whopping 146mn of net torque over the speed range. For comparison, a BMW R1200GS produces around 124nm of torque at 6000rpm. Compared to previous motorcycles from Zero the DSR delivers 43% more torque and 17% more power.
Ride Quality:
The Zero DSR is just so easy to ride. It takes a little bit of getting used to the power delivery and not having a clutch lever or gear lever, but it’s light and agile, and all the weight is low down with the motor and battery, but no big heavy fuel tank on the top with fuel sloshing about. It feels absolutely solid and planted in the corners. The Showa suspension really eats up the pot holes and, being a dual sport bike, would be more than capable of going down some dirt tracks. The braking is a little soft, using its large 320mm disk, and not as progressive as I like but, with Bosch ABS as standard, is perfectly adequate. The huge torque from the motor is very noticeable making overtakes a breeze and getting to national speed easy.
Build Quality:
The bike feels solid and secure and built to last. There is quite a bit of plastic but it all feels of good quality, the bike felt well thought out. There is a nice black powder-coated aluminium frame and the handlebars have a very familiar feel of Renthal bars. On the fake tank where you would have the fuel cap there is a bin with a hard neoprene box that you could store your charging cable, however it’s only held in by Velcro and really seems like they did not put much effort into this part of the bike.
Equipment:
The bike comes with Bosch anti-lock brakes and Pirelli tyres as standard but you can also have an additional power tank fitted which will add an extra 3.3kWh to the standard 13kWh. The dash is functional and easy to read even in direct sunlight, and gives you all the information you require including what riding program you are in – Sport, Eco or Custom. You can also connect to your motorcycle using your phone giving you a more in-depth insight into the motorcycle, such as the state of charge, time to a full charge, and you can even edit the motorcycle’s custom riding mode.
Conclusion:
The Zero DSR is the future that will soon be knocking on our doors, but right now the battery technology still needs to improve – the DSR has a range of about 150 miles with charge time of about 8 hours using a standard household plug. So, for a daily commute it is perfect, but for a day out around the twisties you might run out of puff before lunch. You can use extra chargers from Zero that will bring your charge time down to around 2 hours but still the technology is not there for touring. The on-the-road price is £14,000, which is quite expensive for a second motorcycle. The DSR and electric motorcycles are a taste of the future here and now, but for the average rider, it’s not quite there yet.
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