Even if I wouldn't agree, I can intellectually understand an argument that the 2.7L TurboMax is a good fit for a Silverado LT or a Traverse but GM put that tug boat engine into the CT4-V!
In $_THE_CURRENT_YEAR? I'd say a parallel twin in the new Silverado. (This idea warrants a parody article published by an automotive lifestyle brand, later to be deleted at the request of Belle Isle's most notorious crash test dummy)
I am considering a p-twin, there are a couple of slightly older 700ish cc Hondas out there that have kind of funky lines, but I often read, that the engine is soulless, that it has no character other than it sips fuel, maybe at my age I could live with that, I have never ridden any of the other smaller bore crotch rockets, out side of my long gone XS Eleven Special, my current machine has a v twin, about 1700 cc’s… it ain’t fast, but it has all kinds of grunt. The 500 Rebel is a consideration too, and I think reasonably priced. I never considered myself emasculated, and at 145 pounds, I can handle a big Harley without dropping it, one handles an 830 pound bike with finesse.
All of the cars Jack listed are built to a formula, social media is their only difference….
I have owned a few Honda’s, including a parallel twin 400 hondamatic, the 650 custom and the Goldwing were not soulless, but the 400 was/is, I restored that bike thirty + years ago and it still runs and looks nice, but it felt utilitarian.
The Alfa guila 4 motor is the big drawback of the car. It sounds like a Mercedes diesel taxi. True there is lots of tq and it mates well with the zf box. But there is always turbo lag and the motor has zero sense of occasion or specialnes. It’s ok because the power is there and the rest of the car is so superlative. But it leaves what’s otherwise a special machine as not really a keeper, cause thee is always something missing. An Italian car without a voice
On to bikes the solution is spelt triumph
They make an excellent trident 800 triple well within the price range.
Yeah modern vehicles suck from screen to inside power plants to useless steering to fakey doo brake by wire
I just pulled the e46 m3 out of hibernation and the motor carries the car, from sound to repose that is wired to the pedal as opposed to modern mush to power to the broad reach of the power band through revs. If only the guila had that motor, if only, how complicated could that be.
"They run at the same temperature, compared to an L-twin where you have a “hot” cylinder in the back"
isnt this only a problem with air cooled engines? liquid cooling ought to reduce the temp difference
"Maybe the Redditors are right to be afraid"
im afraid becuase ive never ridden a bike before and accidentally twisting the grip means i can wind up on the concrete. also im surrounded by retarded drivers. mostly the latter. actually scratch that im most afraid of the insurance id have to pay. maybe the trick is to ride far and fast enough away from everyone and hope a pothole doesnt send me into the stratosphere
anyway these gutless ptwins bore me. im going to look up a real motorcycle. a norton commando
i mean he was pretty banged up but was only in the hospital for a few hours. all of the 8 he broke were on the right side and the top 3 are likely to never fully heal due to the nature of the break and him being 75.
not like he was moving all that fast to begin with but he didnt seem to slow down all that much
I suppose with liquid cooling a v twins it depends on the coolant flow path. Harley makes a big deal out of sending coolant to the rear cylinder first because it has the greatest need for heat removal and the temp differential is greatest that way.
I had hope for the new Hurricane 4 debuting in the Grand Cherokee, but reviews have been middling. Since they've stated that the 5.7 will be exclusive to Durango going forward, hopefully Stellantis will come to their senses and drop in the inline 6s soon.
Dammit, Baruth, your writing gets better with each passing week, and your topic selection appears to be chosen out of my synapses like a Vulcan Mind Meld.
This paragraph right here-
“The p-twins do not have the raucous character of a Suzook 998 L-twin or a gear-driven Ducati twin. They don’t even match up to the smallbore Moto Guzzi that my friend, notorious Attempted Fingerer Blake Z. Rong1, used to ride around Los Angeles. Most of them used a 270-degree crankshaft to put both power pulses in a syncopated rhythm reminiscent of a Ducati twin, but a p-twin is to a Ducati like the Fleshlight is to a 1989-era Kappa Kappa Gamma: so far away from the real thing that it’s more depressing than nothing at all. The vibe of a p-twin’s vibration isn’t Sons of Anarchy; more like Is This Thing Gonna Break?”
NOBODY else in the auto writing community gets this and expresses this as perfectly as you do, sir.
Bravo!
I am now missing my RC51 SP-2 even more.
I was very proud to tell people once that I owned three motorcycles and one had gear driven cams, one had belt driven cams, and the last one had chain driven cams. I LOVED that diversity of engineering. I am keeping my old Ducati Monster because of the Desmodromic valve train and trellis frame.
And thank you for incorporating “Fleshlight” into another post.
"To this day I’m a fairly cautious motorcyclist", the man writes, following it with, "absent the occasional episode where I outrun police planes and/or almost fall off the back of an SV1000."
Then, "As for me? Well, I just spent $710 on new tires, sprocket, and chain for my SV1000. I’m going to ride it until the engine blows up — or until someone makes another Japanese sporting twin of similar minerals"
I rode chronically under-powered lumps starting with the Z50A I was unable to purchase as a child and could not obtain until I was 13, and flowing through the MX100, which was all I could afford when I was 15. The MX was no YZ250, which was what my heart (and more tingly parts) were ready for by then.
But by far the worst was the 1975 KZ400 I bought as my first street bike when I was 18. It was as Jack describes, "The vibe of a p-twin’s vibration isn’t Sons of Anarchy; more like Is This Thing Gonna Break?" It was like riding a paint mixer on the highway, only with less vim and vigor than my MX100 had with 15 y/o me piloting it. I rode the thing to St. Louis from my home in central Illinois, and immediately bought a trader-paper to start looking for an honest-to-goodness 4 cyl UJM when I got there.
I ended up on a 1973 Z1-900, which was by no means fast (by modern standards), but which was at least comfortable and powerful enough for a 19 y/o in 1982. I was humbled by Interceptors 1000s, etc. But it would do 120+ without a lot of drama, and it was inclined to give me what I was asking for.
I had a 2-cyl 2-stroke 1984 Kenny Roberts RZ350, but this cannot be considered a P2 in the sense of the bikes Jack is writing about. It was ridiculous as a street bike, behaving as it did like a 250 motorcrosser on the street. It could not keep its front wheel on the ground, revealing the shocking lack of self-control I possessed as a 27 year-old returning missionary and father of 3. There was nothing to do but to sell it after I proved that I remained an overgrown hooligan at the core. I still miss that stupid thing, although what I'd love to find would be a gray-market RZ500.
I'm riding another kind of twin now, albeit one with entirely different intentions. This one shakes like a paint-mixer as well, but it's endearing and comforting as opposed to irritating and obnoxious. I may buy another twin someday, but it'll be a Triumph (P2) or Ducati (V2) if I do. Neither of these machines displace under 1000 cc, and either of them will shake to one degree or another, but they captivate me each in their own way.
Still, I have to agree with our distinguished author (and his creative quoting of Milton), and with the summary statement "the men who sit in McLarens hold their manhood cheap when a kid on a Kawasaki Z650 pulls up next to them".
My first bike is (I still have it) an electric blue '07 Ninja 250R. Above 80, that thing made my hands numb, like I'd been using an orbital sander for half an hour.
The Katana always struck me as a halfway point, like they hadn't quite figured out how to turn a Harley into a Gixxer yet.
The 2.0 turbo-four, in the context of the modern world, is a machine exemplary of All That Went Wrong: It's made to be as cheap & easy to assemble as possible, ONCE in a factory in some slave-labor country, it's basically disposable because as a practical matter it can't be repaired, it's made for a purpose other than the official one, it's been NVH'd into the mechanical equivalent of James Taylor's "You've Got A Friend" and it actually makes you GET why women think the worst possible thing a man can be is "boring."
I think cops love bikes. All the security guards at my job are extremely friendly to me when I ride up to the gate on a bike. Many of them ride too. I know one has an R7. Another an RC51 like the other commenter.
Honda does also make a CBR650R four cylinder. Having ridden the previous gen of that, somehow it is less fun than the p twins.
The only fun p twin I’ve tried is the triumph. My brother had a 1200 cc Bobber. Because of aero and gearing, that bike totally ran out of steam above 70 mph but it was a good if limited use bike.
I just test rode that Suzuki 8TT. I did not like it. It’s not too slow for street use but you’d never buy it for the engine alone.
If it had something other than the Kawi 650, I’d probably own a versys. Somebody has to realize that some sales are being lost because of these engine choices. Might be Suzuki because last year they announced a “new” sport touring style bike with the 650 v twin.
Truth courtesy of The NewNormal
Jack, when I first moved from New England to Nashville...
Nice people befriended me, and they tried to coach me, as to how to avoid "putting my foot in it."
They told me:
"John, there are three things you never do in the South...
"One: Never ask a woman her age...
"Two: Never ask a woman how much she weighs...
"Three: Never ask an Evangelical Youth Minister where he met his wife."
I complied, to the best of my ability.
My dear friend, I'm calling you out on comparing the weights of Sorority Sisters.
all my best,
"Spanish Johnny", or "Saint-Jean"
a/k/a John Marks
Even if I wouldn't agree, I can intellectually understand an argument that the 2.7L TurboMax is a good fit for a Silverado LT or a Traverse but GM put that tug boat engine into the CT4-V!
Sigh, what do you expect from GM?
In $_THE_CURRENT_YEAR? I'd say a parallel twin in the new Silverado. (This idea warrants a parody article published by an automotive lifestyle brand, later to be deleted at the request of Belle Isle's most notorious crash test dummy)
Heh, we need more data on KKG curb weights vs time and location.
Based on trips to my alma mater they are climbing like the stonks
I am considering a p-twin, there are a couple of slightly older 700ish cc Hondas out there that have kind of funky lines, but I often read, that the engine is soulless, that it has no character other than it sips fuel, maybe at my age I could live with that, I have never ridden any of the other smaller bore crotch rockets, out side of my long gone XS Eleven Special, my current machine has a v twin, about 1700 cc’s… it ain’t fast, but it has all kinds of grunt. The 500 Rebel is a consideration too, and I think reasonably priced. I never considered myself emasculated, and at 145 pounds, I can handle a big Harley without dropping it, one handles an 830 pound bike with finesse.
All of the cars Jack listed are built to a formula, social media is their only difference….
The rebel 500 is a nice bike. It’s not high performance except compared to a 250 or 300 rebel but for the price there’s nothing to pick on.
I can't disagree on the soullessness of Hondas, I've had a couple and still ride one. Hassle free ownership is more if a priority for me though.
I have owned a few Honda’s, including a parallel twin 400 hondamatic, the 650 custom and the Goldwing were not soulless, but the 400 was/is, I restored that bike thirty + years ago and it still runs and looks nice, but it felt utilitarian.
The Alfa guila 4 motor is the big drawback of the car. It sounds like a Mercedes diesel taxi. True there is lots of tq and it mates well with the zf box. But there is always turbo lag and the motor has zero sense of occasion or specialnes. It’s ok because the power is there and the rest of the car is so superlative. But it leaves what’s otherwise a special machine as not really a keeper, cause thee is always something missing. An Italian car without a voice
On to bikes the solution is spelt triumph
They make an excellent trident 800 triple well within the price range.
Yeah modern vehicles suck from screen to inside power plants to useless steering to fakey doo brake by wire
I just pulled the e46 m3 out of hibernation and the motor carries the car, from sound to repose that is wired to the pedal as opposed to modern mush to power to the broad reach of the power band through revs. If only the guila had that motor, if only, how complicated could that be.
e46 m3 is an outstanding ride and theres hardly anything to dislike about it
"They run at the same temperature, compared to an L-twin where you have a “hot” cylinder in the back"
isnt this only a problem with air cooled engines? liquid cooling ought to reduce the temp difference
"Maybe the Redditors are right to be afraid"
im afraid becuase ive never ridden a bike before and accidentally twisting the grip means i can wind up on the concrete. also im surrounded by retarded drivers. mostly the latter. actually scratch that im most afraid of the insurance id have to pay. maybe the trick is to ride far and fast enough away from everyone and hope a pothole doesnt send me into the stratosphere
anyway these gutless ptwins bore me. im going to look up a real motorcycle. a norton commando
Ride on dirt with some cheap used thumper that makes no power but also doesn't have a lofty seat! Your fears will soon be replaced by minor injuries.
see its the injury part im not super keen on
i saw what happened after my father broke 8 ribs and it seemed unpleasant
but yeah i think i can convince my buddy to let me rip around on his property on a 110cc. might even survive to tell about it
yeah who am i kidding i need to experience a proper bike
Your father must be tough if he made 8 broken ribs only sound “unpleasant”
i mean he was pretty banged up but was only in the hospital for a few hours. all of the 8 he broke were on the right side and the top 3 are likely to never fully heal due to the nature of the break and him being 75.
not like he was moving all that fast to begin with but he didnt seem to slow down all that much
I genuinely thought when I first got on my CBR at the dealership that it was going to rotate itself out from under me if I breathed on the throttle.
'A man's got to know his limitations.'
I suppose with liquid cooling a v twins it depends on the coolant flow path. Harley makes a big deal out of sending coolant to the rear cylinder first because it has the greatest need for heat removal and the temp differential is greatest that way.
A liter bike is properly terrifying. I have never accidentally brought up the front wheel in either of my triples and they go fast enough.
I did once and could do it again. But I won't.
I had hope for the new Hurricane 4 debuting in the Grand Cherokee, but reviews have been middling. Since they've stated that the 5.7 will be exclusive to Durango going forward, hopefully Stellantis will come to their senses and drop in the inline 6s soon.
Dammit, Baruth, your writing gets better with each passing week, and your topic selection appears to be chosen out of my synapses like a Vulcan Mind Meld.
This paragraph right here-
“The p-twins do not have the raucous character of a Suzook 998 L-twin or a gear-driven Ducati twin. They don’t even match up to the smallbore Moto Guzzi that my friend, notorious Attempted Fingerer Blake Z. Rong1, used to ride around Los Angeles. Most of them used a 270-degree crankshaft to put both power pulses in a syncopated rhythm reminiscent of a Ducati twin, but a p-twin is to a Ducati like the Fleshlight is to a 1989-era Kappa Kappa Gamma: so far away from the real thing that it’s more depressing than nothing at all. The vibe of a p-twin’s vibration isn’t Sons of Anarchy; more like Is This Thing Gonna Break?”
NOBODY else in the auto writing community gets this and expresses this as perfectly as you do, sir.
Bravo!
I am now missing my RC51 SP-2 even more.
I was very proud to tell people once that I owned three motorcycles and one had gear driven cams, one had belt driven cams, and the last one had chain driven cams. I LOVED that diversity of engineering. I am keeping my old Ducati Monster because of the Desmodromic valve train and trellis frame.
And thank you for incorporating “Fleshlight” into another post.
You Sir, are an American Treasure.
And keep the Lieberman snark coming.
There are two kinds of men; those who owned an RC51 and those who regret not owning one.
I had a Yamaha TDM 850 which was a P-Twin. Decent but a little boring. Traded it for a Triumph Daytona 900 triple. Much better!
I kind of like the Katana but it was considered an unserious squid bike.
The slang for that TDM was “Tedium”
:)
“Totally Discontinued Model” as my friends called it.
Man, that new GSX looks cool. Too bad about the drivetrain, though realistically it wouldn't bother me that much.
"To this day I’m a fairly cautious motorcyclist", the man writes, following it with, "absent the occasional episode where I outrun police planes and/or almost fall off the back of an SV1000."
Then, "As for me? Well, I just spent $710 on new tires, sprocket, and chain for my SV1000. I’m going to ride it until the engine blows up — or until someone makes another Japanese sporting twin of similar minerals"
... and so forth.
You're fooling no one, Jack
... and this was one FINE piece of writing.
I think he’s trying to fool himself.
And agreed, its great writing.
"That’s why God gave us the 1441cc motorcycle: parenting."
Gold.
"And what do you want to be when you grow up?"
"Dad says I'm gonna be a weapon when he's done with me!"
I don’t really know anything about motorcycles and don’t really care about them, but even I found this article depressing. Well done!
I rode chronically under-powered lumps starting with the Z50A I was unable to purchase as a child and could not obtain until I was 13, and flowing through the MX100, which was all I could afford when I was 15. The MX was no YZ250, which was what my heart (and more tingly parts) were ready for by then.
But by far the worst was the 1975 KZ400 I bought as my first street bike when I was 18. It was as Jack describes, "The vibe of a p-twin’s vibration isn’t Sons of Anarchy; more like Is This Thing Gonna Break?" It was like riding a paint mixer on the highway, only with less vim and vigor than my MX100 had with 15 y/o me piloting it. I rode the thing to St. Louis from my home in central Illinois, and immediately bought a trader-paper to start looking for an honest-to-goodness 4 cyl UJM when I got there.
I ended up on a 1973 Z1-900, which was by no means fast (by modern standards), but which was at least comfortable and powerful enough for a 19 y/o in 1982. I was humbled by Interceptors 1000s, etc. But it would do 120+ without a lot of drama, and it was inclined to give me what I was asking for.
I had a 2-cyl 2-stroke 1984 Kenny Roberts RZ350, but this cannot be considered a P2 in the sense of the bikes Jack is writing about. It was ridiculous as a street bike, behaving as it did like a 250 motorcrosser on the street. It could not keep its front wheel on the ground, revealing the shocking lack of self-control I possessed as a 27 year-old returning missionary and father of 3. There was nothing to do but to sell it after I proved that I remained an overgrown hooligan at the core. I still miss that stupid thing, although what I'd love to find would be a gray-market RZ500.
I'm riding another kind of twin now, albeit one with entirely different intentions. This one shakes like a paint-mixer as well, but it's endearing and comforting as opposed to irritating and obnoxious. I may buy another twin someday, but it'll be a Triumph (P2) or Ducati (V2) if I do. Neither of these machines displace under 1000 cc, and either of them will shake to one degree or another, but they captivate me each in their own way.
Still, I have to agree with our distinguished author (and his creative quoting of Milton), and with the summary statement "the men who sit in McLarens hold their manhood cheap when a kid on a Kawasaki Z650 pulls up next to them".
"Any bike is better than no bike."
Indeed.
My first bike is (I still have it) an electric blue '07 Ninja 250R. Above 80, that thing made my hands numb, like I'd been using an orbital sander for half an hour.
That's what she said.
Speaking of something ELSE that's 19 years old...
The Katana always struck me as a halfway point, like they hadn't quite figured out how to turn a Harley into a Gixxer yet.
The 2.0 turbo-four, in the context of the modern world, is a machine exemplary of All That Went Wrong: It's made to be as cheap & easy to assemble as possible, ONCE in a factory in some slave-labor country, it's basically disposable because as a practical matter it can't be repaired, it's made for a purpose other than the official one, it's been NVH'd into the mechanical equivalent of James Taylor's "You've Got A Friend" and it actually makes you GET why women think the worst possible thing a man can be is "boring."
Third day I had my CBR600F4i, I got pulled over by a Cleveland cop on 77.
"This is my first 600, officer. I honestly didn't know it was this fast."
He let me go with a warning, which was nice of him. Because I'm pretty sure I was into triple digits.
It's odd, I've been let go a few times on bikes when I don't think I would have been in a car.
I think cops love bikes. All the security guards at my job are extremely friendly to me when I ride up to the gate on a bike. Many of them ride too. I know one has an R7. Another an RC51 like the other commenter.
Unless you're being chased, the only real danger is to yourself.
When I noticed the cop, I pulled over, shut the bike off and dismounted.
I think that's why he gave me a warning.
Honda does also make a CBR650R four cylinder. Having ridden the previous gen of that, somehow it is less fun than the p twins.
The only fun p twin I’ve tried is the triumph. My brother had a 1200 cc Bobber. Because of aero and gearing, that bike totally ran out of steam above 70 mph but it was a good if limited use bike.
I just test rode that Suzuki 8TT. I did not like it. It’s not too slow for street use but you’d never buy it for the engine alone.
If it had something other than the Kawi 650, I’d probably own a versys. Somebody has to realize that some sales are being lost because of these engine choices. Might be Suzuki because last year they announced a “new” sport touring style bike with the 650 v twin.
A friend of mine got an e-clutch CB650 as his first bike then within 90 days got the M-spec literbike. Which seemed like a big jump
The BMW? That’s certainly a big jump in price.