Originally published in Slipstream magazine, October 2017. While there are an increasing number of examples to the contrary, the vast majority of all motorcycles ever made have shockingly poor headlights. My indignant rage towards the pantheon of motorcycle manufacturers is tempered by the fact that most people don’t often ride at night, allowing the humble headlight…

Originally published in Slipstream magazine, July 2016. Along with power output and brakes, a motorcycle’s suspension is the component most often discussed in any new review, yet it’s the part most often ignored by riders. Suspension doesn’t work on-demand like brakes or throttle, doesn’t make any cool noises, and is usually tucked away out of sight.…

This will be the last in my recent series on horsepower, torque, and how silly they both are when trying to compare bikes. But rather than simply complain yet again about how bike manufacturers fail to provide actually useful information, I’m going to help them out by giving them a solution. You see, the bike…

If you’ve read my previous article on horsepower and torque, then you’ll understand why the whole top-trumps argument is completely irrelevant when actually choosing which motorcycle to buy. Those numbers tell you very, very little about what any given bike will actually be like to ride. If you’ve not read my article…well, you’re welcome to. But…

A lot of people get hung up on horsepower. The more a bike has, the better it supposedly is. A bike with less power than the other bike? Not as good at being a bike. Harley Davidson riders aren’t much better – they don’t know how much horsepower their bike makes (few people even know exactly…

Back in the 1980s, motorcycle manufacturers briefly tried forced induction out on production models, and then left it at that. The bikes were expensive, complicated to service and repair, suffered from turbo lag and in reality weren’t actually any quicker than their naturally aspirated stablemates. Suzuki’s GPZ750T was about as powerful as their bigger-engined GPZ900,…

Regular readers will know that I’m a relatively recent convert to the fancy-suspension club, having been thoroughly impressed by the RaceTech GoldValve cartridge emulators and springs on my Bandit’s forks, and then astonished by the difference the Nitron Sport Shock made to the rear-end’s traction and stability. I’d taken the gamble and confirmed that, annoyingly,…

So here’s a question: which motorcycle engines are the most efficient? And before you all jump up and tell me that the smaller the engine, the more economical it is, that’s not actually quite what I asked, although many perceive fuel economy and efficiency to mean the same thing. Conventional wisdom holds that because motorcycles are generally…

There are a lot of hidden costs that come with any kind of vehicle ownership. It’s very easy to be seduced by a low sticker price (or finance payment), and forget all the other things that add up to make you reconsider walking or cycling to work after all. One of the more expensive items…