Scrambler 1200 X (DS50)

The brakes themselves never gave me pause. My only real friction is with the ABS once grip drops away. On wet or broken surfaces the cornering system steps in too soon, and easing toward a roundabout or trailing into a bend it can grab right when you didn't ask for it, cutting your stopping power and upsetting your flow. The first few times it does this, you're genuinely caught out. Keep it on clean, dry tarmac and the whole issue disappears, the system just doing its job without a fuss.

I've got nothing to flag here, which is about the best thing I can say about a motor. Over the entire rally it simply ran, no drama through choking dust, punishing heat, or the kind of endless highway stints that grind lesser engines down. Not one mechanical hiccup the whole way. When home is days off and you're leaning on a single bike to keep covering ground, quiet that complete is worth far more to me than any figure printed on a spec sheet.

The travel here isn't for show, it does genuine work. Over rough, broken pavement the fork and rear stayed settled together, never nervous and never beating me up, and that's without much adjustment to fall back on. Lean it through wet patches, loose gravel, and switchbacks and the traction control keeps the back end honest while still letting you feel what's happening underneath. My one reservation is steering effort. It holds a line beautifully but resists turning in, so a tight bend asks for a conscious shove on the bar rather than a light flick.

For me this is the centerpiece. That 270-degree firing order hands the parallel twin a character you don't expect from the layout, gruff and honest, never sanded down for the sake of refinement, and it makes the whole bike feel alive under you. Backing that up is the fueling. Open the throttle hard on the exit of a slow corner and the drive arrives instantly and evenly, with no hesitation and no spike to manage. It's the trait that turns a twisting road into the reason you went out riding at all.

The surprise was how far its presence carries past riders. I parked it at a luxury rally surrounded by Ferraris and Porsches, and it drew eyes from people with zero interest in motorcycles. That's rare. Plenty of bikes look sharp among other bikes, but pulling a crowd that doesn't care about the category at all is something you can't fake or engineer your way into. It stands up as a piece of design on its own terms, and that pull is a real part of what your money is buying.

Taller riders get on well with this one. The upright seating and the spread of the handlebar give you proper purchase over a weighty machine, so you're working with the bike instead of wrestling it. The let-down is the saddle. Give it a few hours and the foam packs flat, leaving precious little under you on a real touring day. Sustained highway speed brings its own tax too, a vibration that settles into your arms. A single long stint passes fine, but string several back to back and the fatigue piles on.

The badge says coffee-shop poser, the bike says otherwise. I loaded it to the gills and put serious distance on it across borders, and it just kept eating up the road. The broad bar and steady manners meant it never felt unwieldy threading through village streets or cramped spots with luggage strapped on. What I'd fix is the missing cruise control. Pinning a constant throttle hour after highway hour wears you down for no good reason, and on long cross-country days it's the one piece of kit you keep wishing were there.