Guilty Pleasures – Question of the Day
What motorcycle do you like that everyone seems to hate?
I’ve got a secret that I’m a little – no, ashamed is too strong a word. Maybe “sheepish”. Yeah, let’s go with that. I’ve got a secret that I’m a little sheepish to admit: I like the band Train.
Yes, I’m willing to concede that Train is cheesy pop-rock with dreadfully saccharine lyrics, including the crime of rhyming “Hey Soul Sister” with “Mr. Mister”, and still managing to up the cringe level by slipping in the words “so gangsta, I’m so thug” into the same damn song. Not great. But I still bob my head and mouth the words every time it comes on.
I admit this, because I, like everyone else out there, have guilty pleasures, things that I like that general consensus considers to be utterly awful.
The same goes for motorcycles. Case in point: the Suzuki Gladius. Once positioned as the successor to the venerable SV650, the Gladius was almost doomed to fail to meet the lofty expectations set by its predecessor (having a name that sounds like “Gladys” certainly didn’t do it any favors). Sure enough, after a few years on the market, the Gladius was replaced by… another SV650.
Despite all this, I always liked the Gladius. I liked the brightly colored frame that replaced the older SV’s more industrial-looking chassis, and the engine was largely the same 645cc 90° V-Twin. The name, I could do without, but overall, I don’t think it deserves the disdain it receives. I concede that the SV650 that replaced it was an improvement, but I generally liked the Gladius more than others seem to.
I’m willing to bet there are others that liked it too. Just like I think there are other bikes that people like that were generally considered unpopular (I’m looking at you, Pacific Coast fans). So, for our Question of the Day, I ask: what motorcycles did you like that nobody else seems to?
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Dennis has been a part of the Motorcycle.com team since 2008, and through his tenure, has developed a firm grasp of industry trends, and a solid sense of what's to come. A bloodhound when it comes to tracking information on new motorcycles, if there's a new model on the horizon, you'll probably hear about it from him first.
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Harley-Davidson ELW LiveWire. More smiles per mile than any bike I've owned since I started riding in 1983.
The Katana gets a great deal of hate; I am old enough to remember the original; had the hots for it then and (despite the consensus that the 2024 iteration is overpriced for what is on offer) have the hots for it now.