I rode the Buell home from Boston.
(well, mostly yesterday and some of today -- left boston yesterday evening and rode most of the night).
First impressions are:
Exceptionally good handling, reminds me of the hypermotard. Its bigger/heavier and not as sporting, but has a fairly similar feel.
Exceptionally good suspension
Quite comfortable, after a quick test-sit it looks like that goes for the back seat too. The seat is huge, tons of room for both rider and passenger to move around, in fact I think my wife could play a boardgame back there and fix herself a sammich while on the go
Dreadful motor, slow, slow-revving, poor throttle response (twist and it eventually starts to build up steam, feels like its got a 50lbs flywheel or something -- which it probably does) and shakes like our parts scrubber at my old workplace. They claim 103hp, but the wife's 620 feels more lively. One positive aspect though is it'll push the bike along quite quickly without feeling strained at all. Just over 80mph is its happy place and things start to smooth out by then and its just loping along, seemingly just off idle at that speed. Averaged 49.7mpg over the trip as well which isn't bad considering I was going reasonably quickly and had all three hardbags fitted. This chassis with something like the TL1000S motor would absolutely rock. I'll give it some time, maybe I'll grow to love the motor, if not it'll go on the block and I'll go back to saving pennies for an SMT or SMR990 I think (or maybe a hyper with the CA Cycleworks tank or old style 'strada).
