Zen and the art of motorcycle purchases

I would like to say thank you eatcs01 and BIKEFAR for your comments about what I had to say. If I may, I would like to say that  I have as recently as last summer spent a very enjoyable week floating around The Broads. I also saw some friends from Norfolk that I haven’t seen for the best part of 10 years. All in all it was a wonderful week.

The motivation for this writing is the group test in this week’s MCN for the 600 Supersport Class. I don’t have a problem with the results. Nice to see Triumph back up at the top but lets face it the bike has been getting good reviews for awhile. From an aesthetics point of view the entire line up would give any production Supersport grid, if there was one, a sense of legitimacy.  

The only negative comment that could be voiced is the end cans on the Suzuki and Kawasaki are well a bit bulbous in my way of seeing. The Yamaha is OK but it just looks to me, unfinished. Like they ran out of ideas or money. Personally I like the under seat end cans on the Honda and Triumph. End cans can be attractive but for the most part they can look like add ons. Hiding them away is the best solution just showing the tips like in a wet t-shirt competition. Hey, hey, hey I’m not some male chauvinistic pig. It was the best I could come up with at short notice.

No, these group tests are probably very good especially for those testers, photographers and writers as well as for us, the readers and dreamers. No, the questions I’d like to ask is this- Is there someone out there in motorcycle consumer land who bases their purchase of a bike on the information provided? Does brand loyalty count anymore? What about which World Champion rides which bike?

The reason I ask, is that this test was done on a race track with testers who could flatter the bikes capabilities. As for myself I couldn’t hold a candle to try and replicate the speeds or times attained. I, myself would like to think that I am a practical, real world type of motorcyclist.

Just to prove my point I would just like to say that the last motorcycle I owned was a Ducati 900 SS of “R” reg. The purchase was a sort of an off the cuff remark that I had made to the shop owner when I was doing a photographic shoot with an MV 750 engine on a display stand. I told the owner that when Cook Neilson won the Production race at Daytona in 1972 he rode a silver with blue stripe Ducati 750 SS with high pipes and it was the most beautiful bike on the face of the earth. Living in Canada at that time it was the last bike you would consider buying because there were no dealers and service would be near on impossible. I carried that torch until the year 2001 when my dream came true.

It was passionate, emotional sheer happiness to acquire Guido as he was christened. It was because it said Ducati on the fairing. I was going to say a few things about practicality on simple things like oil changes etc. but I went back to my copy of the MCN in the reading room. Being a shutterbug I like to study the pictures.