Anything without a real fairing starts to get “fun” around 110-115. The wind beats the shit out of you, the front end starts to get real light, you get a speed wobble, etc. You won’t find too many nakeds that do much more than 125 or so.

So is pretty much everything from here on out. Air cooled is pretty much DOA with new emissions regs.

Because they can. Brokeasses don’t buy motorcycles, guys with money that want toys do. As such, bigger, better, faster sells. It’s not like we’re saddled with the backasswards taxation and displacement based licensing that the ROW is stuck with, big displacement is the way to go.

The same cafe crowd dropping 15k on an R Nine T or 16k on the Ducati Sport Classic prior? This isn’t the kid buying a non running CB350 off craigslist.

It’s a street standard with balls that doesn’t look like it came out of a cycle world catalog circa 1998. I’ll take it.

It’s 2015. Tablets man.

“A surreal film within a film starring David Beckham as the Stranger” - Makes sense, as is he is left handed..

1100cc bonneville?

Are you being intentionally obtuse, or are you really that naive? You write about bikes for a living, right?

Why? It’s 219k, that’s less than a Ferrari 458 or a McLaren MP4-12c, which are both, frankly fairly common amongst the yacht & high end track day crowd. They made 213 of them, it’s rare. This is impulse-buy range for most of those folks.

“ A Parallel twin, an inline-3... maybe even a ubiquitous inline-4... something with some tech, “

Right. What sort of stupid company would tie its image and brand to an archaic, old design dating back to the 50s and 60s? No one would ever buy any of that shit.

Seriously, for as cheeseball as it is, there’s an “image” you can get with a HD. You can be thirty and ride a HD, even if you look like a wannabe extra on SOA. You can’t ride a goldwing without turning into a 64 year old man with a gray beard, flip up helmet, Sena bluetooth, and an aerostitch suit that may have fit 15…

Sssshhhhh. You’re talking bikes on the internet. You gotta realize your audience. For most of these “guys” a 350 lb Ninja 250 is too much for their chicken legs.

Pssst. No one pays retail on HDs either.

Do what now? The Goldwing is 24k. The Road Glide is 25k. I’m not seeing “thousands and thousands” of dollars there.

Bingo. The Metric cruisers have really creeped up in price the past 6-7 years or so, to the point where “price” is no longer a strong point versus HD. The Goldwing EN6N, the bike supposed to compete against the street glide bagger, is 21k. The Street glide, is 21k. I remember the Valkyrie being a 12k bike,…

Who’s that pray tell? My bikes are all German and Italian. If I was gonna do the cruiser thing, it certainly wouldn’t be with a budget chintzy yamaha.

Again, you’re coming off as a posuer with an el-cheapo japanese knockoff.

But they are. Your V star is trend chasing what Harley has been doing for nearly a century, at 1/3 the price. Most guys with nice harley dressers have dropped 40+k into their bikes. You dropped 10. It’s like wearing an “homage” Rolex.