Australian Road Rider

Cruisers from BMW and Adventure bikes from Harley-Davidson. If it gets any crazier, nice people will stop riding Hondas. I’ve had plenty of people tell me these brands are nuts, that they should stay with what they are good at and stop trying to reac

In just its third iteration since being introduced in 1999, the new Suzuki Hayabusa has been brought up to date with new electronics, riding modes, quickshifter, combined braking, traction control, cruise control and more. The new bike will be availa

In a tiny shared workspace in an inner-Sydney suburb, half a dozen people are building one of the most high-tech safety products in the world. I couldn’t even find Forcite, hidden away deep in the bowels of a former factory, but one of the marvels of

I seek out roads that restrict my speed with their corners. Getting the pace right, exploring the cornering clearance available, feeling the lean angle under your wheels is, to many riders, what motorcycling is all about. Many cruisers aren’t built f

Maybe the Breakout would have been a better comparison bike, but the Low Rider S has mid controls, a solo seat and handles well, so it’s definitely one to consider. Indian’s range of cruisers has been shrinking, with the nearest machine to the R 18 n

It’s around a three-hour ride from Melbourne on the famed Great Ocean Road. But if you are really in tourist mode, why not cruise down the Mornington Peninsular from Melbourne? Avoid the freeways and take the slower coastal roads where you can to Sor

The blues were hitting pretty hard during lockdown. Bloody virus. Personally, I’ll be hanging around like a junkie looking for his dealer to get a hit of the vaccine. Where to go when we can travel again? My mind wanders back to when I pulled the pin

The Gippsland region stretches from Melbourne’s eastern outskirts all the way to the state border with New South Wales in Victoria’s far east. This extensive and diverse geographical area is renowned for its natural beauty with hundreds of kilometres

The 850 Sport is Triumph’s new entry-level Adventure bike with pared-back trickery. It’s aimed squarely at people like me who would never consider one of the higher-priced, high-tech new Tiger 900s; I’d never use all the riding modes, rider aids and

In issue #157, Phil James tested the new V-Strom 1050XT and came away pretty impressed, so I was very pleased when Suzuki offered to loan me one for my strop around Gippsland. The thing I remember about my first experience aboard Suzuki’s stalwart mi

Motorcyclists like leaning over in corners, in part because it counteracts all the forces trying to make you go straight – in a car the vehicle always feels like you’re fighting it to turn. A bike, when leaned over, will just keep going around in cir

A good boxer understands power and speed are simply brutal without control, so the biggest Ninja has an aluminium monocoque frame, Öhlins rear shock and big Brembo brakes - and it’s the only bike in its class to have such high-level standard equipmen

A huge 2022 update for the Hayabusa and the new model will be with us mid-year. More tech and revised ergonomics, but a higher price and the Ninja’s suspension is better, at least on paper. A high-performance V-twin, KTM’s off ering is more comfortab

EDITOR’S NOTE: Adriatic Moto Tours invited Road Rider’s editor to join a tour and review the experience, but COVID-19 shut that down in 2020, so here’s what you can expect from the perspective of a local and tour guide… Italy is one of the world’s mo

Compact, light, quick and most of all, fun. That just about sums up how I feel about the Ducati 1100 Sport Pro. Compared to many litre-plus bikes it’s compact and light - if Ducati had stuck 750cc stickers on the side I’m not sure too many people wou

Triumph has tried to ace Ducati with its own Scrambler, which has a little more capacity, a little more power, a little more fuel capacity and a 21-inch front wheel. Retro styling wrapping a modern machine, the XSR doesn’t have some of the trick comp

A little over five years ago, laid off from the mines when a downturn hit, Liam Butler, a Newcastle lad with an interest in vehicle modification and restoration, needed work and a new challenge. And so it came to pass that a new custom shop emerged…

After reading about the latest arrival to the Ducati family, the Multistrada V4, we came up with the idea of setting ourselves the task of putting this new machine to the test in extreme conditions… but what about in the hands of riders with little e

You are not supposed to ride a motorcycle when it is snowing. Everybody knows that. It’s OK to ride after it has snowed as long as there is no ice on the road and indeed it can make for a scenic ride. But when snow is actually dropping out of the sky

• Virgin snow, where there are no tyre tracks left by other vehicles, is actually better to ride on than compacted snow, the stuff under the tyre tracks left by other vehicles. The compacted stuff can turn into ice from the pressure of heavy vehicles

The lights were green and I had a huge gap to the vehicle in front – probably four or five seconds, even doing 60km/h through suburban Sydney. One of those rare, wonderful occasions where I’d made it to the front of the flow of traffic and could get

MY HEALTH has improved to the point where I wheeled my Ducati out of the shed last week, charged the battery and hit the starter button. It’s been more than a year since I last rode it or any other bike and it was time to break the drought. Nothing.

The performance of your suspension is critical to the ride experience you’ll get: handling, comfort and safety all depend on your shock absorbers and forks, but many riders don’t realise it. Put simply, if you’ve never ridden a motorcycle with well-s

I ordered my Triumph Rocket 3R several milliseconds after I laid eyes on one. I had been waiting for it, having once owned and loved the old-model Rocket, but needed to check out the ergonomics (I am rather tall) before handing over a cheque. I alrea

Yamaha, Piaggio and others have been building leaning trikes for some time, but I rode one back in 1997. At the time I was assistant editor of Two Wheels magazine. I was in Perth visiting family when I met up with a bike builder who had used a Honda