It’s the time when most bike magazines and websites will be announcing their Bike Of The Year.
I always grimace a bit when I see these pronouncements. I’m a cynic, for sure, but still, I struggle to understand how a single bike can be anointed as better than every other bike. How can that be? If my riding is mostly long-distance grinding west of the Great Dividing Range, how can the latest, multi-cylindered, mega-horsepower, crotch rocket possibly be the best bike I was offered this year? Or if most of my riding is done on the Great Ocean Road and the Oxley Highway, how could a tough, light-weight bike with a single-cylinder motor and long-travel suspension possibly get a look in? In their element both of those bikes could easily be exceptional. Even within just the adventure market we have bikes as diverse as Yamaha’s WR250R through to the big guns like BMW’s R1200GS and Triumph’s Explorer. Putting them head-to-head is plainly not sensible.