#cruiser

When it comes to lightweight cruisers, Harley’s 883 Sportster has been the staple of the category. Around, in one form or another, since the 1950s, it has earned the term OG for the class. Fast forward to 2002 and here we have the 883R Sportster going head-to-head with the Honda Shadow Spirit 750. With 50 years to study the venerable Harley-Davidson, Honda’s Shadow presents a bare-bones, lightweight cruiser that isn’t intimidating to the (relatively) new cruiser rider – traits it shares with the Harley. So who does it better? America or Japan? Read on to find out. 

This week’s Church feature is yet another example of the early MO crew’s writing chops. The topic this time? Cruisers! The 2001 Power Cruisers, to be exact. We’re talking the Honda VTX, Yamaha V-Max, Harley-Davidson V-Rod, and Kawasaki Mean Streak, ridden by a bunch of mad men and speed junkies. Big, powerful engines stuffed into cruiser frames, this should be a slam dunk for the Harley. The results, however, might surprise you. Read on to see who won.  

The Honda Shadow has been around forever (well, 1983 if we’re being technical). How many other manufacturers, save for Harley-Davidson, can claim such lineage with one model line? Not many. Heck, the Shadow is still around today! But for this Church feature we’re going back to 2007, since that was the year the Shadow got a refresh and Pete Brissette was there to review it. After reading Pete’s take on the bike you get the sense the Shadow is showing it’s age, but it’s character, charm, and user-friendly rideability make it a perennial winner in Honda’s lineup. For more pics of the Shadow, visit the photo gallery.

Bridgestone knows a thing or two about motorcycle tires. After all, the company supplied control tires to MotoGP for seven seasons. Another thing most riders should know but may not is that Bridgestone manufactures tires across every niche in the motorcycle industry, from state-of-the-art race tires to scooter rubber. However, the product development folks realized that, while metric cruisers were covered with the Exedra Max line, the Japanese tire manufacturer had not developed tires specifically for the American-made V-Twin cruiser market. So, Bridgestone’s engineers set out to remedy this situation, and the result is: “The Battlecruise H50 tire, the first of its kind from Bridgestone, expands the company’s motorcycle tire portfolio with a performance tire offering that is specially designed for large-displacement, cruiser-style bikes, which account for 50% of motorcycles on U.S. roadways.”

If American, European or Japanese cruisers don’t hit the mark for you, there aren’t very many avenues left to turn down. However, one can still look towards Korea. As Gabe Ets-Hokin notes in his review of the 2007 Hyosung Avitar, the 650cc V-Twin borrowed from the company’s GT650 sporty bike sees some minor changes and is housed in a twin-spar frame that looks to be inspired by the Harley V-Rod. If you’re interested in the Hyosung, the bike is still around today, only its name has been changed to GV650/Aquila Pro. And it’ll set you back a reasonable $7000. As for the riding impressions, see Gabe’s take below. To see more pictures, be sure to visit the photo gallery.

Okay, get out your pitchforks! Indian’s won Best Cruiser for the second year in a row with a Scout. This year, however, the kid brother, the Scout Sixty, takes home the prize. How could that be? The Sixty is only a sleeved down version of the bigger Scout with less shiny parts, right? Well, that would be half right. The other half is that, for a MSRP of $8,999 (or $300 more for white and red color options), Scout Sixty riders get a motorcycle that twists out 95% of big brother’s torque at a 20% discount. The horsepower curves are quite close to each other up until about 5,000 rpm, in the meat of the torque curve where cruisers spend nearly all of their time.

Does the type motorcycle you ride indicate the presidential candidate for whom you’re voting?

By 2005 Victory had been around for slightly less than a decade and in that time the company knew it had (and continues to have) a big mountain to climb in order to upseat Harley-Davidson, the king of the cruiser market. From the start, however, the company has put out strong challengers centered around a 92 cubic inch V-Twin we’ve long enjoyed. By 2005, though, the muscle cruiser craze had taken shape and Victory already had an engine to bring to the table – the same one it’s always had. And in these reviews of the 2005 Victory Hammer and 8-Ball, Big Dirty Sean Alexander  explains what made (and continues to make) Victory viable alternatives for those who want more performance and attitude in their cruisers. To see more pictures of both models, be sure to visit the photo gallery.  

Peace, love and understanding is what we’re all about here at MO, man, and on this excellent junket to the great Midwest, we made some serious inroads. One dinner, after a day spent rolling along the east bank of the Mississippi through springtime Illinois and Wisconsin, Editorial Director Sean Alexander (who thinks the Aprilia Tuono is the perfect casual traveling bike) actually admitted that the bikes we were on were ideally suited to our ride. Well, hello. He also admitted it was his first time riding in “flyover country.”

A Roadster, Scout, Bobber and Octane roll into a bar…

This week’s Church feature brings you a review of the 2004 Yamaha RoadStar. More than that, however, this week’s Church feature brings you an example of Eric Bass truly soaking up a motorcycle press intro, complete with photos of the hotel room, EB making a duck face for the camera, posing in a bathrobe, talking to Brad Banister in said bathrobe, and lastly, sunbathing on top of the RoadStar. Oh, and there’s a motorcycle review in there somewhere, too. For more pics of E-Bass, be sure to check out the photo gallery. Enjoy!

Some may wonder why we’d bother to test a new motorcycle model that basically only includes stylistic changes from the one we tested previously. In the case of the 2016 Indian Chieftain Dark Horse, we last tested a Chieftain in November 2013 and felt enough time had passed that we needed to throw a leg over this Indian to remind ourselves what a great bike it is. Also, there was a battleship tour, in the form of the USS Iowa, involved as well as a chance to get out of the office for a ride.

As part of my job, I wear tons of motorcycle boots both on bikes and walking around at events or on daylong photo shoots. These Rev’It Regent H2O are the first boots in my 20 years of testing gear that have made the transition to becoming part of my everyday streetwear – boots that I choose to put on even when I’m not planning on riding.

We’ve traveled down this path before when we asked what types of bikes our readers have owned. What we learned there, frankly, didn’t surprise us too much. You’ve owned a bunch of different motorcycles. That makes you a lot like us. We like motorcycles – all motorcycles. As an industry friend once said about our profession, “All motorcycles good; we investigate.”

We’ve been following the creation of the Victory version of a bike with the Indian Scout engine with great interest. Well, it’s arrived in the form of the 2017 Victory Octane and not without a little controversy from our readers. Whether or not the Octane is the motorcycle you wanted Victory to build with its engine, we think the Octane is a very good motorcycle.