"Honey, I Spent The Aga Budget…"

Categories: Bikes Diary Reviews

Time for a new toy. My old faithful STealth – my ST4s – has served me well for four years and it's a keeper, as a supremely capable all-round machine, so I'm looking for something more specific and more focussed for play on the local roads. Which is where the first of many dilemmas kicks in – which toy for which roads? Around here there are ballistically-fast, sweeping A-roads with sudden sections of tight twisties: that'll be a Ducati 1098S then. Then there are the smaller glen roads - rising and falling, twisting and turning back on themselves as they follow the edges of the lochs: much more Monster or KTM SuperDuke territory. Finally, there are bikes that seek the best compromise for all of these, plus my kilometre of potholed Belgium-on-a-bad-day drive: possibly a Multistrada 1100S - in fact if the Multistrada had the Testastretta engine, it would have been a shoo-in - I've ridden the earlier incarnation enough to know just how good a chassis they've got. But hang on, we're not talking about looking for an all-rounder here: we're looking for the maximum of engagement, hoot-inducing fun and the ability to get from A to B, usually via C to Z, with as much flair as possible and a decent tank range, given the distance between filling stations hereabouts. So I'm off to Ducati Glasgow to sample a selection of their range.

Continue reading ""Honey, I Spent The Aga Budget…""
Posted by Richard at 06:16 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Safety Last

Categories: Rants Reviews

My mother doesn't change her car very often: her last change was in 1991, from a thirteen-year-old Fiat 128 to her still-current, Zen-basic, 1-litre Peugeot 205. So basic in fact, that it doesn't even possess a clock, let alone advanced toys like a radio. The upside of this is that it represents motoring at its most focussed and basic, with nothing to distract you from the act of driving – and with such skinny tyres, you can have huge fun at very low and genuinely legal speeds. The late James Hunt used to drive an old Austin A30 van for exactly the same reasons. The Pug also possesses supremely good all-round visibility from narrow pillars and a low waistline. Its absolutely direct handling is a delight and the only downside is its criminally heavy steering, making three-point turns an exercise in forearm-pumping and giving my mother a seriously dangerous left hook. That little Peugeot is now fifteen years old and, despite its only having 25,000 miles on the clock, is starting to show signs of incipient decreptitude.

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Posted by Richard at 12:08 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Boxer Rebellion

Categories: Reviews

I like BMWs. Or rather, I've always tried to like BMWs – they plough their own furrow (sometimes literally) and are distinctive and different in appearance, ride and attitude, offering an intriguing alternative to the ubiquity of across-the-frame four-cylinder machines. My earliest vicarious experience with the marque was in the mid-seventies, with Bike magazine's breathless review of the rip-snorting R90S, which heavily implied that only those stout of both heart and sinew could be expected to master the mighty beast – quite a heady concept to an impressionable student who was just then coming to terms with the unbridled power of a newly-restored Royal Enfield 250. The fact that the R90S actually put out something like 60bhp on a good day was neither here nor there – it was the shock and awe that counted.

In the early eighties, I occasionally knocked around on an R90/6 and on one of the first K100s to hit these shores ("What shores?" – "Mine's a gin & tonic, thank you…") – compared to my Pantah, it was like riding a fast-spin washing machine that was attached to the world by rubber bands. Slack rubber bands. Thankfully chassis and suspension have improved over the years and BMW, after a short-lived attempt to abandon the Boxer twin layout, still offer a range composed predominantly of the twins plus four-cylinder heavyweights. I've ridden several of the current generation of both and am generally of the opinion that there are some truly excellent chassis here, all however desperately in search of decent engines.

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Posted by Richard at 04:43 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Small and Perfectly Formed…

Categories: Reviews

Here's a thing: a non-Italian bike, sight of which had me screeching to a halt outside the dealer while going about my business of the day. I can't think of anything save the current R1 that's managed that before. So here's a teaser: My photoshoot of the very new, very shiny Triumph Daytona 675, in tasteful dark grey:

Click here for the Colour image gallery.
Click here for the Black & White image gallery.

All images are copyright © Richard Harris, 2006. And watch this space: There's a full road test on the Daytona 675 coming to this site, very soon indeed…

Posted by Richard at 08:19 PM | Comments (0)

The First Day of Sprint

Categories: Reviews

Just a week ago, Winter was very much with us. It was snowing in my little corner of Surrey, and had been for a fortnight. I'd had flu, and life was very much about not going anywhere beyond the warm and inherently stable confines of a motor car. Then, come Thursday morning, Spring arrived with a burst of bright and glowing sunshine – outside, the sparrows were coughing their way through the first dawn chorus of the year and inside, the cats were darkly muttering their desire to get outside of those same sparrows. And, to round out the signs and portents for this first day of Spring, Haslemere Motorcycles had also arranged to hand me the keys to their very shiny, very new Triumph Sprint ST demonstrator, for a test ride, which was definitely worth getting up for.

Now you'll notice that was spelt T-r-i-u-m-p-h, not D-u-c-a-t-i. But if you've read other stuff on this site, you'll also know that, despite being a hardened Ducatista, I'm just generally in favour of excellence in the form of good and characterful motorcycles. And it's always been a toss-up for me between the V-twin and the in-line triple as the perfect engine format. That's an opinion that hasn't changed since my motorcycling adolescence of the 1970s and my formative exposure to two of the great biking icons of the day - the Ducati 900ss and the T160V Trident.

I've ridden most current Ducatis, and not a few of the Triumphs of the last several years, and been impressed with all of them. The difference however is that I can usually manage to look at a Ducati without wincing, which hasn't always been true of the Trumpets. Worthy and thoroughly competent motorcycles certainly, but frequently with all the stylistic finesse of a lard blancmange and occasional lapses of finish that would shame a Trabant.

First Impressions

That's all been changing in the last couple of years – Triumph appearing to have adopted the very un-British view that a bike that looks good as well as working well will, funnily enough, sell well. And the latest incarnation of that thinking is the new generation Sprint ST, Triumph's sports tourer and a direct competitor to my own ST4s. So here we have the Triumph, resplendent in electric blue paintwork and triple-themed lights, clocks and pipes: matching tie, handkerchief and socks. Parts in fact seem slightly and contrivedly over-designed, giving parts like the clocks the impression of cosmetic plastic rather than alloyed engineering.

Overall though, this bike looks great - it has a spare elegance of design and line, with an aggressive and very non-lardy rearward-rising stance and a remarkable overall slimness to the package – it looks, and feels, light and lithe.

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Posted by Richard at 11:52 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack