Daytona 675 (D67LC)

What the Daytona gives you is command over placement. It's slim between the knees and light at the rear, so flipping it from one side to the other through a run of quick esses takes almost nothing, and it stays on whatever line you choose without any argument. A poor surface doesn't change that. Bumps partway through a bend and crumbling tarmac at the road's edge don't shove it off course or make the drive out feel busy. The one honest caveat is at entry. Coming off a bike that dives for the apex the moment you ask, the Daytona feels more deliberate getting there. It still turns readily, but that first commitment is smooth rather than urgent. For most riders on most roads, that steadiness buys more speed than a sharper stab into the corner ever would.

Give it a genuinely difficult mountain route and everything the Daytona has comes out. Drive hard off a corner, feel the nose go weightless as the road humps up ahead of the next turn, all of it over torn-up surface, and the bike stays completely gathered underneath you. The part that sold me was doing this surrounded by other riders. A full group of us pressed on at that clip across bad tarmac and not one scare passed among us. Very few pointed sportbikes earn that kind of confidence this quickly.

This inline-three is what makes the bike worth owning. It carries real thrust from low revs and through the midrange, the part of the powerband a road keeps you in nearly all the time, and only at the very top do the fours pull level with it. Hold it wide open and it keeps building further than the numbers promise, past where the previous engine ran out of breath, and it eases off softly instead of dropping off a shelf. In ordinary riding that flexibility means you can be lazy with the gearbox and the motor won't complain about being asked to lug up from low speed. The single flaw shows up on the transition back to power. Shut the throttle for a corner, pick it up again, and there's a small hesitation at the very moment precision counts. Set against how forgiving the engine is otherwise, it's easy to forgive too.

One quirk stops this from being spotless. There's no mechanical slipper clutch fitted. To blunt the engine braking, Triumph holds the throttle bodies open a fraction under hard deceleration. Slow it in a straight line and everything stays clean. Brake hard with the bike laid over, though, and the rear starts to weave, a light and repeating motion that never escalates into anything worrying. On a chassis this settled everywhere else, that faint wobble is the single thing that draws attention.

Durability never became a question for me. Pushed hard and rotated lap after lap over a rough circuit for hours on end, the brakes and the suspension never went soft or lost their bite before we finished. The one asterisk is the tires. The factory compound is a true track tire, so the grip is superb, but it pays for that grip in longevity and wears through far faster than an everyday sport tire. Plan on fresh rubber well before you'd normally shop for it.

Comfort really comes down to the suspension's range. Wind the damping down from where you'd set it for hot laps and the whole bike loosens up; what was firm turns pliant enough for daily roads. Riding from a town start out toward higher ground, it dealt with the ruts and ridges without passing anything harsh up to me, and the ergonomics stayed livable right through to evening. Machines this focused rarely stretch this far outside their element, and this one manages it.

There's one small ergonomic gap worth naming. A few rivals let you adjust the instrument functions from a bar-mounted button as you ride. The Daytona offers no such shortcut; changing a setting means coming to a stop first. It reads as a minor inconvenience, not a real shortcoming, and on a bike this focused on pace I seldom wished for it. Riders used to fine-tuning things on the move will register the omission.