Bigger Bikes Have Their Advantages Too

With the arrival of the Gunbus motorcycle, you might wonder if we have now gone about as far as we can go with bigger and bigger bikes. "The Lost Motorcyclist" has the feeling that no, we have not. Because no matter what we say about small motorcycles, there are some real advantages to bigger bikes.

I have gone over the advantages of small motorcycles. Cycle Canada's latest issue was devoted to small motorcycles. Now is the time to get real about the advantages of bigger bikes.

The advantages of bigger bikes may fall into two groups. The imaginary advantages and the real advantages. Lets start with imaginary, just to clear the way. Big bikes attract chicks, carry more weight, are not affected by side winds, are safer, go faster, run over dogs without crashing, and are as cheap and as easy to handle as small bikes. I'm going to stop here, even though there are hundreds more BS reasons why big bikes are better than small. All those reasons are crap, and are only useful to convince your wife that you need a bigger (and newer) bike.

Now for the real reasons big bikes are better. They are harder to lift into the back of a pickup truck, and are therefore harder to steal. They can go farther on highways without needed maintenance. They have more crankshaft torque at low engine speeds, and because of that, are easier to start rolling using the clutch, and without a super low first gear. They are less twitchy on the road, so you can spend more time looking at scenery while the bike goes more or less straight. They often have higher top speeds, and can travel at high speeds more safely (mainly due to larger tires).

Although the Gunbus does manage to look good in pictures from some angles, I'm not sure if these reasons are quite enough to make me want to buy a Gunbus, with its 410 cubic inch (6728 cc I believe) motor. But I would be interested to see one riding down a street sometime during my life.