The effortless overtake

Dad’s ahead doing a fuel-saving 40mph in his family wagon. Leave the ’box alone, just twist that wrist

IF THE WORLD were a simple place you’d hope that how much horsepower a bike makes gives a good indication of how eager the engine feels, how quickly it gathers speed when you crack the throttle open, and therefore how easy it makes passing a car trundling along on a B-road. The more power it has, the faster it goes, right? Wrong – at least when it comes to Triumph’s Thruxton R. Its parallel twin has less than half the power of Kawasaki’s ZX-10R, yet the café racer leaves the racereplica behind in our third gear, 40-80mph

roll-on test. How? Well acceleration depends on thrust, which is a product of torque and gearing. And while the ZX-10R might have more peak torque than the Thruxton, it doesn’t make it until a peaky 11,500rpm. At the engine speed needed for this test the Thruxton makes more torque, and that force is multiplied by the R’s extremely short gearing. Even the unassuming MT-07 comes within a few tenths of a second of the chest-beating ZX-10R. The 689cc Yamaha might be a long way down on torque, but

being geared for just 130mph – rather than almost 200mph – gives the modest motor giant-rivalling flexibility. For this test we restricted our automatic Africa Twin to third gear by employing its Manual mode. The trailie’s performance doesn’t live up to the engine’s torquey feel, as the bike’s weight and aerodynamics count against it. But the outright winner, and by quite a margin, is BMW’S S1000R. Massive torque, delivered instantly at roadrelevant speeds, means no other machine here makes instant overtakes so safe or quite so effortless.