The Daytona has 10k Km service intervals. Not so bad considering some japs have 6k.

Also the recent Supersport Roundup I read calculated purchase and running costs on the six (Agusta F3 + 4 Ricers + Tona) and the most expensive Daytona R version came out cheapest to own because service intervals and price offset the purchase costs. And of course it topped the racetrack rating by over half a second laptime.

Can't say about the Bonneville but I assume it's not any worse considering a simpler less strained engine and chassis.

As for reliability, the early 675 engine had a bit of diva reputation but they pretty much sorted it. I've never heard such of the Tiger, Speedy or Bonny though.

BTW, one other example on attention to detail I forgot about above: The Daytona is the *only* of the six current Supersports on offer that comes default with Pirelli Supercorsa SP, the most expensive hypersport tire in the market.

I know we're talking about the Bonneville here, but the point is that this is a company which produces at a fair price (even beating japanese price tags), with high performance for the given field, and a ton of quality extras that you don't get from other factories. It's the most modern bike factory on the planet too, and not with cheap labor in Thailand either.

I really don't know how they manage the price/quality/performance ratio they are offering but it is very impressive.

The Japanese aren't particularily efficient anymore, a lot of their assembly plants are stuck in their '80s heyday and lack the degree of automation and computerized organization expected now. As well I don't think their engineering is as good as it used to be, they still design good stuff but they don't have an advantage over their competitors like they used to have.

I'm wondering if the big japanese companies may be multitasking too much. I.e. the same infrastructure and engineering knowledge being shared within a company for producing everything from motorcycle engines to robots (Honda...) Of course synergies between different braches of a Corp. help save costs but it also dillutes the efficience.

Hinckley was built to produce bikes, and bikes only, same as ppl working there are focused to design nothing but two wheel stuff.

BTW you guys heard that Audi bought Ducati? Wonder what that will bring to the brand.

Beautiful bike you've got, RS!

One day I will own a Triumph Thruxton. What a ting of beauty!

^
That's the one! ,though the cafe-racer setup wouldn't work well with my lower back problems. Regular Bonnie would make more sense for the occasional all-day ride.

Whoops! Just ordered a new brake rotor + pads for the Ninja. Guess I've committed to at least one more summer on that ugly little thing....

When I was a child, a friend of my father had a new Triumph Bonny 650 and took me for a ride on it.

As far as the new Triumphs go, nothing sounds better than a Triumph inline triple, other than an inline six like my CBX.

That Thruxton is damn pretty in the race makeup. It just doesn't have the power for circuit racing otherwise it would have been a contender for my purchase.

I remember two years ago when I first saw one of these (Bonny or Thrux, can't remember) standing in front of a laundry, I really thought these were historical bikes until the owner explained to me that this is new tech.

BTW, I know it's a shameless self-plug but I was planning in the After Action Reports section to regularly document my progress as far as getting to learn the Daytona and becoming "the least slow rookie" weekend racetrack drivers. Part 1 is already online, happy about any feedback:
http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/3556696/My_new_project_GCC_Comfy_Chair.html

My experience from 90s-era Triumphs were that if they were not leaking oil, they were empty.

However, they appeared to be well-made bikes that had some character as opposed to soulless Japanese models.

For the record I owned one of those soulless machines, a Honda Shadow. Great bike, but totally unmemorable.

I've been told the newer Triumphs are much better engineered.

My father rode a Triumph Tiger 100 and his brother rode a Triumph 3TA and my cousin rode a Tiger Cub, a few years ago the 3TA was still running and in regular use. Personally I nearly bought a Tiger 750 back in 1976 but it got sold a couple of weeks before I could afford to buy it so bought a Suzuki GT380M instead and had it for 5 years and put 115k miles on it in that time, I had also looked at a 650cc Triton, it was a big step up from my Honda CD175 but nice to ride. I also had a BSA M33 (B33 500cc engine in a M21 frame) way back then.


For PFunk not really disposable tho...

I keep hearing about "soulless" bikes, what does that term mean exactly? How do you tell if a bike has "soul"?