| Author | Message | ||
     Rocketman |
Ride magazine is a sister publication to MCN UK. Every year for the past several years they conducted a survey of us, the riders, about our bikes, experiences and the gear we wear. The best roads are included as are the top so many places to visit. Yorkshire Moor's and Dales, Gods own country, as it's know, won that one hands down. I know the American's are familiar with JD Power surveys, and I understand the Ride survey to be along similar lines. The questions, and the way they are annalized, are broken down to make the percentages fair across a broad range of bikes and riders alike. Some differences in how the findings are translated vary from previous years so they offer a more realistic than previous years set of results. 10000 took part in the survey. That said, I'm holding a copy up and I can see there are a couple of things that don't stack up in the real world. For a kick off, out of 213 bikes surveyed, ranging from KTM's to Honda's to buell's and to minority and now bust British firm CCM, there is not one single MV in the 213 bikes surveyed. What happened? Did not one MV owner take part seems the obvious and only answer. That in itself flaws the results by at least one position backwards for me, depending on where an MV might have come in say the 'sports bike class'. For arguments sake, assuming 13 owners of 750 F4's wrote in about how great their bikes were in handling, engine performance, reliability, comfort etc, a very high score would undoubtedly place the bike in the top three, from only 13 owners remember, which in turn would move every other bike out of the top three back another place. Other obvious oddities are like the Honda Varadero, a blinding bike I'm told by two or three people I know who own them, coming top in the 'top trailies' section. The BMW R1100GS came 2nd, the R1150GS Adventure 3rd, R1150GS 4th, Suzuki DL1000 V-Storm 5th and the R1200GS 6th. Trouble is, I would not consider the Honda, or the Suzuki for that matter the sort of machine an adventure motorcyclist would choose to ride across a barren land mass like the Sahara Desert. Other bikes in the top 20, like Suzuki's DRZ400, Honda's Transalp and Africa Twin's or BMW's F650's and Triumph Tiger's, I would consider fair game in the same category. The Varadero I simply wouldn't. No matter, I'll ignore it myself from the 'top trailies' category thus moving up all behind, one place. Yep, the R1100GS won then! So to Buell. Buell models were pitched in to the 'all-rounders' category. 38 bikes were surveyed. Remember, that's 38 models written in about by their prospective owners, so the 38 bikes makes up a weird and wonderful selection of miscreants. To name a few, Kawasaki's ZR-7 came 38th. All Moto Guzzi models came in at 36th. The Honda 900 Hornet figured only one place better at 35th. Suzuki's SV1000/S only 32nd, one place in front of Yamaha's well liked TDM850. The KTM's, retro Triumph Bonneville's and Thunderbirds, and the larger capacity model Ducati Monsters all made the top 30, as did CCM. The older modular design Triumph Speed Triple made 20th with good reports from its owners, whilst the latest version came home a fabulous 5th place. Buell's XB platform models came home 14th overall with an 81.25% score . Beaten by big bore retro Japanese bikes like the Kawasaki Z1000, Honda CB1300, Suzuki GSX14000 and Yamaha XJR1300SP, never mind the BMW R850 and R1150R, I couldn't help wondering if the number of owners ratio wasn't flooring the percentage numbers against the XB's. Then I got a big suprise. a real big one. Buell S\M\X models came home in 2nd place! They were beaten only by one bike and I'm certain that's due to the Tuono having a fantastically powerful motor for a naked style bike. The Aprilia Tuono riders loved their bikes. So to do the tube frame Buell owners. 89.2% was the score for them, against Aprilia's Tuono at 89.7% . What's even more impressive though, the tube framers came home 11th overall out of 213 bikes. Ok, to put that into perspective a little, the Tuono jumped up to 6th overall, but never the less, isn't that fantastic. The 'top superbikes' category was made up of 42 bikes. The 2004 Honda Fireblade walked the category and the survey by a mile with a 100% score given by all its owners who participated. The 04 Suzuki GSX-R750 made 2nd place and 2nd in the survey. The 02-03 Yamaha R1 made 3rd place and 5th overall. The 04 R1 made 4th but only 10th overall. The Ducati 916\996\998 made 10th, the highest Italian placed sportsbike except for the hard to find Aprilia RSV-R/Factory, which came home a remarkable 6th in the category. In case you were wondering, the Ducati 916 genre made 30th overall. With my S1W in 11th, it just goes to show what great taste I have in motorcycles  Rocket (Message edited by rocketman on September 12, 2004) | ||
| Blake |
Nice report. How many old school Buell respondents were there? | ||
| Rocketman |
That info isn't disclosed Blake. There may be more info at www.riderpower.com. I've just found that link so not yet looked myself. Interestingly though, rather than build up a bikes percentage score from the 14 star ratings asked, they allowed the overall question 'How do you rate your bike overall'to take precedence. This is to stop say sports bikes being held back in the percentage score because their owners are forced to answer poorly about certain models for certain criteria simply because they could have poor or no pillion comfort, which would hinder upon the overall results for those models. Don't ask me how they decoded the survey results with that in mind coz I don't know. It's still a fantastic survey and a huge success for Buell in the UK, I'd have to say. Rocket | ||
| Simond |
I noticed that Rocket. Buell scored pretty poorly on all of the individual categories but the overall mark was high. A definite case of the whole being greater than the sum of it's parts. | ||
| Steveshakeshaft |
FWIW, The reason such makes as MV don't figure is that they need a minimum number of entries to be included. The members of ukbeg.com made an effort to enter this years survey  Steve steve_s@ukbeg.com www.ukbeg.com | ||
| Rocketman |
That's as maybe Steve, but surely you're not suggesting CCM sold more bikes than MV in the UK. Come to think of it, they probably did. Or are you suggesting CCM owners followed the lead of Buell owners, in hijacking the survey? No, wait a minute, you knew that by scoring the individual categories low, yet overriding the categories with that 'I love my Buell too much because......' question, the category score would be unimportant. UKBEG doctored that survey? You're kidding right? Rocket |
