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     Barker |
Super TT built for the hooligan at heart David Booth, CanWest News Service SANTA MONICA, Calif. -- Like punk music and baggy jeans hanging off one's behind, motorcycle stunting's main goal seems to be to annoy the establishment. Kids strip their motorcycles of bodywork, paint their gas tanks traffic-cone orange and then hang around pulling wheelies and stoppies (for the masses, that's when you roar to top speed, jam on the front brakes, have the bike flip on to its front wheel with the rear dangling feet in the air and then tiptoe all the way to a dead stop. In short, just generally annoying other motorists with wild and sometimes dangerous stunts. Motorcycle manufacturers aren't stupid and, like ski-makers who once thought snowboarding a passing evil, they are now trying to appeal to this latest motorcycling offshoot. Enter Buell's new Super TT. It makes no pretense of its purpose. Inspired by Craig Jones, Buell's in-house professional stunter -- and a madman who once held a stoppie for a near-impossible 266 metres -- the Super TT is aimed at the young or young-at-heart hooligan. Its bodywork is plain white, the better to be custom painted -- in camouflage or matte black no doubt. The wide frame even has massive bumper dampers for the outrageous stunt gone bad. Although I have to admit to being of the older mindset, the Super TT still has a lot to offer. For one thing, it's based on Buell's latest, 1,203-cubic-centimetre Lightning, sharing parts with the City-X and Ulysses version of the XB12. This means the frame is an incredibly robust aluminum beam affair, is only 1,372 millimetres between the axles -- for sportier handling -- and the suspension is set up sport-bike firm. There's a bunch of other Buell trademark innovations -- the swingarm houses the engine oil, the hollow top frame holds the gasoline and the front brake features a single disc that is only slightly smaller in diameter than the front wheel. But the most incredible technological leap remains hidden -- Erik Buell's engine isolation system. At idle, the Harley-sourced, archaic, overhead valve, 45-degree V-twin shakes like a paint mixer on crystal meth. It's a wonder its bolts don't turn into missiles. But, it calms dramatically above 1,500 r.p.m. and, even if it never quite gets Gold Wing smooth, it's nonetheless pretty amazing. Not that it makes the Super TT much of a tourer. There's absolutely no wind protection, the seat is dirt bike narrow and, as with any bike with such a short wheelbase, stiff suspension and tall seat, it's going to find every bump in the road and hobby-horse over it. It all works much better when the road gets twisty. In fact, the twistier the better. In high-speed sweepers -- i.e., the kind of corners where Ducatis excel -- the Super TT remains a little twitchy. It's one of the few modern bikes I wish had a steering damper. But when the asphalt gets as twisty as Mulholland Drive, the Super TT comes into its own. Lean off the side of the bike and it dives for apexes like a hockey forward looking to draw a penalty. It holds its line no matter how rough the pavement. Even the HD Sportster-inspired engine, which runs out of breath on wide-open roads, seems plenty capable as it muscles out buckets of low-end torque. That said, I'd still take the XB12 Lightning. The Lightning offers all the handling of the Super TT with a better ride and lower seat. http://autos.canada.com/news/story.html?id=9928dfa a-eab1-4338-8f75-46054dcc8bb2 |
