Originally published in Slipstream magazine, November 2018. Remember when the Dacia Sandero first launched in the UK? It made a big splash in the automotive press and even beyond; an actual, proper car for just £6,000 brand new. With the competition priced close to three times that amount, it was no surprise that a lot of people…
Those of you who have been following this mini-series will have discovered that while mid-capacity scooters tick a lot of practical boxes, they don’t provide a visceral low-speed experience to augment a sight-seeing tour through Scandinavia. Given that a feet-forward riding position is on my checklist this time around my next area of exploration was…
Feet-forward riding position? Low-speed comfort, lockable luggage and epic fuel range? Surely there can be but one solution – a mid-capacity scooter!
Triumph‘s motorcycle range has crystallised into just three paths in recent years. When you walk into a dealership, you must first choose if you want practicality (‘Adventure‘), performance (‘Roadsters‘) or style (the ‘Modern Classics‘). Having funnelled their customers into ever-narrower pigeon-holes, there’s lately been little recourse for someone who would like to combine elements from…
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…
When Ducati’s original Diavel was revealed at the end of 2010, pretty much everyone thought the Italian firm had utterly lost the plot. It looked a bit like a cruiser, but packed a 160bhp 1200cc engine borrowed from the 1198 sportsbike and could accelerate, brake and go around corners in a way that completely surprised…
Harley-Davidson has been using just two engines and four frames to make hundreds of different motorcycles over the last few decades. The big-boned Touring, Dyna and Softail bikes have rolled along under a succession of “big twin” engines, the latest launching this week with 4-valve heads and a pair massive 900cc pistons to push their ever-increasing…
In many ways, the development and subsequent announcement of this motorcycle was an inevitability. More and more manufacturers are embracing platform sharing as a way to reduce both the costs and risks of bringing an extended range of models to market. After the tremendous critical and commercial success of the MT-09 and it’s half-faired version the Tracer 900,…
In 2009 Yamaha broke from accepted form by equipping their range-topping litre bike with a cross-plane crank, delivering the sound and power-delivery of a V4 in an inline-four package. For bikers bored with more than a decade of howling exhaust notes it was a breath of fresh air, adding a much-needed bit of aural variety. Since then, more road-oriented riders have…
So; Honda finally joined the Adventure Bike market for reals. What’s more, they’ve revived a historic name plate, the Africa Twin, to help them punch their way into the biggest, most popular, and most cut-throat competitive market motorcycling has seen in a decade. Time to see if the ADV segment has a new king, or just…
Boy Meets Bike 
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