Tuesday 21 September 2010

New addition to the garage.....

Meet the all-new Honda VFR1200DCT



one freaky, awesome hunk of motorcycle technology. The styling takes some getting used to, but after 3 days, I think it's rather beautiful. Gear changing in both automatic and manual modes is seamless, although it does seem to change a bit too early in auto mode. But that, apparently, is to aid fuel consumption.

Is dual-clutch technology the future of motorcycling? Well, I'm not sure. The DN-01 has not grabbed everybody's interest, but I guess a lot of that is down to its more radical styling and impracticality.

The VFR is a far more practical proposition, although the luggage is not quite as spacious as it could be, and the fuel range of, at most, 150 miles, could be better on a sports-tourer.

Next to get the automatic treatment will be the venerable Gold Wing, and that, I think, could be a vast improvement over the current model.

Well, we'll see. I can't see this technology being rolled out to sports bikes yet. For one thing, the DCT adds quite a lot of weight, and for another, I think sports bike riders would prefer to remain in total manual control of their machines

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