Speed Twin 1200 (DD01)

There's almost nothing to fault at everyday pace, where the brakes haul the bike down cleanly and keep quiet about it. My one complaint sits at the back. Dragging that pedal to hold the line through steep, tight downhill hairpins drew out a squeal that stuck around and got under my skin, and it wouldn't let up while I kept working it. Ride at any ordinary clip and it stays silent, so this is the cost of leaning on the rear hard and on purpose, nothing a daily commute will ever meet.

On paper the output is nothing to write home about. Leaving a bend, the torque is already there the instant I crack the throttle, so I'm never waiting for the motor to catch up before it pulls. The catch is fueling. In Sport the jump from a shut throttle to drive lands abruptly enough to break my timing on rough surfaces, and Road sits so close to Sport it barely registers. I spent a full test day landing on Rain, whose gentler pickup was the best way to ride it.

The thing I trust most is that this bike is honest about what it wants. Pinned in a straight line it stays composed and true. Turn it and composure becomes quick, precise steering. It won't tuck into a bend by itself; you push the bar deliberately, and once set it eases back toward upright on its own. A rider stepping off something smaller reads that predictability and settles in. My only real gripe is the rear shock: load preload and nothing more, a quick wall if you like to fine-tune.

Judge this one on presence and it does the work before it's even moving. I've sat on enough motorcycles that how a bike looks almost never earns a note from me, and this is the exception that forced my hand. It rolled in and the room went quiet. Set it among people who've seen it all and they still drift over to be near it. On a machine built as much for the eye as the road, that pull is the job, and it starts the second the bike arrives.

My confidence here rests on how evenly the quality is spread. Anywhere I went hunting for the cut corner that usually surfaces once a bike has been ridden hard, I came up empty; the finish holds up as well under close inspection as it does at arm's length. The other half of the story is upkeep. For a motor of this displacement the service intervals run genuinely long, real convenience for anyone stacking miles through the year rather than a line on a brochure. Nothing on it asked to be replaced.

Comfort here comes down to how the bike carries its size. Standing beside it you'd guess a big, serious machine, and the view from the rear even reads a little bulky. Climb aboard and that impression collapses; the weight sinks low under you and the reach to the ground stays easy, so a shorter rider gets settled without hesitation. Once you're rolling it behaves like something a size down. The exception is larger frames, where the bike seems to vanish beneath you instead of gathering around you over a long day.

This is where a design-led bike shows its limit. The single power socket is tucked under the seat with nowhere beside it to rest the phone you'd want to charge. Getting usable power up to the bars means routing your own extension back to that hidden spot first. A charge point that only works once you've added hardware of your own barely counts as one, and on a bike you might actually load up for a longer trip, that gap nags at you every time you reach for it.