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…
It’s been a while since I’ve ridden anything new, and that’s because I haven’t really been shopping. But the world’s motorcycle manufacturers won’t stop releasing new bikes, and while I now have my Triumph Street Triple R and Suzuki V-Strom 650 set up just the way I like them, I’m always half-heartedly scoping out…
Every now and again I’m reminded that the Crossrunner exists. Overlooked, it didn’t sell very well in it’s previous incarnation, being little more than a jacked-up VFR800, suffering from oddball styling and many of the same problems that plagued the 14-year-old design of its sport-touring cousin. But shortly after the VFR itself was overhauled, the…
As regular readers of this site will know, I rather like my Suzuki V-Strom 650. It’s comfortable, economical, practical and, most importantly, fun. Because if a motorcycle isn’t fun to ride, then we might as well all drive Toyota Priuses. But what if someone told you that there was a motorcycle that combined all the practical…
I think that Harley-Davidson might have their marketing for this bike all wrong. Sure, it’s stylish, highly fashionable amongst the young beards-and-beer set and definitely better suited to the sort of weather that you get in sunny California. But with the exception of a brief dalliance with sportiness in the 2008-2012 XR1200, Harley has been synonymous with…
