The verdict

With the tests finished, the numbers crunched and the scores totted up, your real world winner is…

FITTINGLY, THE THREE bikes topping our Real World Performance Test are the three with a pure road focus. BMW’S S1000R, Yamaha’s MT-07 and Triumph’s Thruxton R may be built for different reasons and riders, but they all have road riding firmly in mind. That can’t be said of Kawasaki’s ZX-10R, which has one eye on the race track, nor Honda’s Africa Twin, which has one on a dirt trail. Not that compromises are a bad thing – they are at the heart of what makes the Honda and Kawasaki the incredible machines they are. The Africa Twin needs to be tall and hefty to excel as a heavily-laden adventure bike; the Ninja needs to be high-revving, highly geared and focused on the front-end to tear round a race track. But these are also the same traits that leave this pair filling our bottom two spots. The Thruxton R is a surprise to those who dismiss it as style over substance. Our tests show Triumph didn’t skimp when it came to its dynamic development – it’s a proper road bike, with a great mix of usable speed, accessibility and agility. Proof that good things come in small packages is Yamaha’s MT-07. For a bike that costs half as much as any other here, and one many will overlook because of its perceived junior status, this runner-up position shows how accomplished and credible it actually is. But the runaway winner is BMW’S S1000R. It has the straight-line speed to match a superbike, yet it’s almost as deft and agile as a two-cylinder middleweight weighing 25kg less. It’s flexible, predictable, approachable, reassuring and easy – it’s everything a bike built to perform in the real world should be.

‘Runner-up position shows just how accomplished the MT 07 is, but the runaway winner is the easy and predictable S1000R’