Little or large?

I’ve ridden a lot of bikes in my life, some big and some small. Ask me what my preference is and I’ll almost certainly say the bigger, the better. Who doesn’t want more power, excitement and clever bits of tech at the end of their fingertips? But that’s not to say I’m not a fan of the little stuff, too. Some of my best biking memories were made on the little stuff, pushing them to their limits in a way you simply can’t on larger-capacity machines.

I was reminded of this a few weeks back when testing KTM’s new RC390 in Italy. I had such a laugh on that bike, pushing my luck and squeezing it for all it had to give. Just a few days before, I’d been testing the RC’s big brother in this month’s Naked Sportsbike of the Year test and it was a wholly different experience.

On KTM’s 1290 Super Duke R, I was just a passenger – giving it my best but merely tickling its potential. The 1290 is a beast, and a brilliant beast at that, with ludicrous levels of potency and presence. It put a smile on my face in a wholly different way to the little RC, but the point is that both bikes made my day and reminded me that bikes are just awesome, whatever their capacity. The RC also highlighted how much tech has moved on since I was a nipper, blasting around on my first little-big bikes that didn’t feature so much as a gear indicator, never mind cornering ABS, traction control and a home moviescreen sized TFT dash.

As the old saying goes, ‘we’ve never had it so good’, and long may that evolution continue.

Despite the challenges or legislation, global economies and everything else going on in the world, motorcycling’s in a good place, I think. When you flick forward to the news pages, you’ll see another raft of new models that are destined to arrive on the market, and there are loads more propositions on the cards that we can’t talk about just yet. Big ones and little ones, for that matter... so wherever you’re at with your motorcycling journey, there’s sure to be something to tickle your fancy.