Here’s something for me to celebrate: so far this year, I have posted more articles than I did in 2023, 2022, or 2021. Go me. For my commemorative ninth post of 2024 (Print it out and tape it to your wall!), I thought I’d look back on another bike that came out when I wasn’t paying a great deal of attention: the Suzuki V-Strom 800. If you want a TLDR version, it’s this: Suzuki’s back, baby.  The Great Recession of 2007 hit Suzuki particularly hard and as a result the manufacturer spent a very long time not really doing very much. New models were rarely new and even more rarely were they t ..read more

There is a part of me that is very, very tempted by this latest find: a 1994 BMW R 1100 RS with less than 32,500 miles on the clock. Equally, there is a part of me that suspects that if I let this one go I’ll be sparing myself from immeasurable frustration and financial misery. If you’re new here, What I Can Afford is a sporadically regular feature in which I trawl classifieds for a motorcycle that I could actually buy with my current savings. It’s something I do in an attempt to avoid looking at PCP deals. My motorcycle savings is in a constant state of flux because I also use it to pay for t ..read more

Somewhat unrelated: how is Morgan Gales managing to age in reverse? Morgan is a moto-journalist who served as host for this week’s video from Indian Motorcycle, launching the 2025 Scout platform (which you can buy in 2024). I’ve had the incredible good fortune to hang out with Morgan a number of times; he is the sort of person that everyone loves. Even so, I can’t help but be jealous/annoyed of his ability to look younger as time moves forward. I mean, look at the photo below of Morgan and me from almost seven years ago, when we were attending the launch of the BMW K 1600 B. Then look at him i ..read more

In its essence, motorcycling has not changed in more than 100 years. The things that might draw a person to riding is no different in 2024 than it was in, say, 1924: for example, the joy of being not just aware of, but fully living in the world. On a motorcycle, you can smell the flowers and the cow poo. You can feel minor temperature variations as you ride up hills, down glens, in shade, and out. You feel the rain. You feel the sun. The good and the not-so-good. All experienced astride a vehicle that seems to move more with thought than effort.  Since these core experiences have not chan ..read more

This is an incredibly subjective observation, which may or may not be reflective of any kind of wider truth. But in gazing at used bikes online last week, I noticed that Harley-Davidson‘s relatively new Nightster is selling for markedly less than I would expect. Is that because no one wants it? The Nightster was first introduced in 2022. Driven by a 975cc liquid-cooled V-twin (producing 89 horsepower), it was pitched as an “entry-level” machine – ostensibly a spiritual replacement for the outgoing air-cooled 883 Sportsters. Its starting price, however, was just shy of £13,000. Which prompted m ..read more

Man, I wish I had £27,000. That’s more or less my reaction to Harley-Davidson‘s overhauled Street Glide and Road Glide models. The restyled and updated bikes were revealed last week along with a handful of CVO models – which never really grab my attention. I mean, I definitely wouldn’t turn down a CVO model if you gave me one, but, you know: a really, really pretty version of an already good bike doesn’t make me want to dig even deeper into my pocket. OK, I’m oversimplifying a little there; the new CVO Road Glide ST, for example, is driven by a 1982cc Milwaukee-Eight 121 V-twin, which claims 1 ..read more

It took more than two years for me to fully share the story of riding to Britain’s furthest points. So, the decline started some time before that. When I started this blog roughly 11 years ago, I named it The Motorcycle Obsession – reflecting the intensity of my interest in motorcycling. I could not sleep at times. I spent my nights staring at the ceiling, thinking: “How do I get these things into my life?” I blogged about it constantly. These days, not so much. It’s January, so you can probably guess that one of my resolutions is to publish more. Before now, months went by without posting; in ..read more

My friend, Dale, had a Triumph Speed Four many moons ago. He was particularly influential in my journey as a motorcyclist, patiently answering the stupidest questions in the world as I made my slow return to riding more than a decade ago. He loved his Speed Four, so, although I’ve never really had interest in owning an ugly, streetfighter-styled 600cc bike that you have to rev the nuts off of to enjoy, the Speed Four has a strange place in my heart. I keep trying to make these What I Can Afford articles a monthly feature but am quite often side-tracked by the realities of life and the fact tha ..read more

You would think this sort of article could be written by AI. I mean, it’s a simple enough task: identify a number of other people’s articles on a given subject – in this case, Moto Guzzi’s stylish and niche V100 Mandello sport tourer – then have AI software collate that information to create a more well-rounded, more useful assessment of the motorcycle than a single review might offer. But, surprisingly, AI can’t pull it off. I’ve tried it. Experts may be worried that AI will destroy the world but right now it’s so ineffective that in one version that I attempted, the AI-generated article clai ..read more

The universe can be so deeply unfair at times. Evans Brasfield has died. A member of the Motorcycle.com team for roughly 10 years, he was killed in a riding accident earlier this week. I had the privilege of hanging out with Evans a number of times over the years at press events, always making sure I was sitting near him at dinners so as to be able to engage in conversation. At least a few times he and I went on morning runs together – he taking joy in recording, via his Strava app, all the different cities and countries in which he had run. I’m pretty sure that everyone who ever met him will ..read more