Car and Motorcycle

How To Choosing the Right Motorcycle ?

You are about to enter into a relationship with a mechanical object unlike any you have had before. Owning a motorcycle is a much more intimate experience than owning a car or pickup truck, perhaps because you meld into the machine when you ride, your body encasing the mechanical heart of the bike. You become part of the machine. You ride just inches away from the engine, the source of your bike’s power, and you feel and hear the internal-combustion event more directly than is possible in an enclosed vehicle.

And you control the direction in which you travel with your body, leading the bike down the road with your own movements just as you would lead a dance partner. This provides a much more immediate experience than sitting inside a glass bubble, turning a steering wheel vaguely connected to some invisible mechanism. Given the nature of this intimate relationship, it is vital that you choose the right partner. With the dizzying array of motorcycles available, choosing that partner might seem daunting at this stage, but it’s really not as confusing as it might seem. You don’t have to know every detail of every bike ever made - you only need to know yourself and your own needs.

What Do You Want to Do?

Before you select a type of bike, first you need to determine what kind of riding you want to do. If you have no interest in riding on public roads, if you just want a bike to ride through the swamps and forests, you should probably consider getting a strictly off-road dirtbike.

But you will probably want something you can ride on the road. Riding off-road is great fun, but by getting a bike that is not street-legal, you cut off a lot of your future options. Unless you already have friends who are into serious off-road riding, you’ll probably want a machine you can legally ride to the local hangout to visit old friends and make new ones.

Or maybe you don’t give a rip about riding off-road. You might have visions of riding through corners on a high-performance sportbike, leaned over so far your knees skim the surface of the asphalt. Or perhaps you envision yourself making epic road trips aboard the biggest touring rig available. Maybe you dream of conquering the jungles on a dual-sport machine.

On the other hand, you may not even know what you want out of a bike just yet. Whether you know exactly what you want out of the sport or you are still trying to figure that out, it’s best to keep your options open. Just because you want to see the world doesn’t mean you have to buy an ultimate-behemoth luxo-tourer. And just because you want to be the next speed racer doesn’t mean you have to buy the bike that won at Daytona this year.

While bikes have grown increasingly more specialized over the last 15 years, they still remain remarkably versatile machines.

Any bike can be a tourer if you take it on a trip. I’ve put 1,000-mile days on a hardedged sportbike. I’ve traveled the entire United States on a big V-twin cruiser. My wife once rode a 500cc thumper from the Canadian border to Mexico and back.

And in the right hands, any bike can be a sportbike. While riding an 18-year-old, 650cc Japanese bike, I’ve shown my tail to testosterone-crazed squids (sportbike racers) on the latest sporting hardware. And while riding a modern sportbike, I’ve been embarrassed on a twisty road by an old dude on a Harley that was older than I was. While any bike can be used for nearly any purpose, there is a reason certain types of motorcycles are used for certain tasks more frequently than others. I still suffer from wrist problems from touring on a sportbike, and my wife bought a larger bike within weeks of returning from her trip on the thumper. And that guy who smoked me on his old Harley would probably love riding a modern sportbike, if he ever tried one.

Choosing a Versatile Motorcycle

You might think you know what you want to do before you start riding, but after you’ve been at it a while, you might discover an interest in an entirely different form of riding. You might get a Harley Sportster thinking you’ll only use it to ride to the lake on the weekends, for example, and then develop an itch to ride to the farthest corners of North America.

That’s why it’s a good idea to get as versatile a motorcycle as possible for your first bike. The big dual sports are about as versatile as a bike can get. They can handle unpaved roads and worse, and they can be set up for touring. However, you might not be interested in this type of bike. You might be turned off by the looks of the machine. Another disadvantage of the dual-sport bikes is their height: They are tall machines. While sitting up high is an advantage, because it lets you see over traffic (and, more important, helps other drivers see you), it presents some challenges to those with shorter inseams. To fit on one, you need to be of at least average height, or you may find these bikes a bit of a handful in stop-and-go traffic.

If dual sports aren’t your thing, that doesn’t mean you’re out of luck. There are many versatile pure-street bikes to choose from, too.

Getting a Good Fit

A big factor in versatility is comfort. If you are comfortable on a bike, you can ride it harder and farther. And different bodies fit on different bikes. You can’t really tell by looking at it if a bike is going to fit you, either. For example, I fit nicely on Yamaha’s YZF 600 and could ride one from coast to coast without needing wrist surgery. But Honda’s CBR600F3 puts my hands to sleep within minutes. Yet a new rider would be hard-pressed to see a noticeable difference between the two bikes if they were parked side by side, and many other riders find the Honda just as comfortable as the Yamaha.


Motorcycle ergonomics - the science of designing motorcycles that conform to the human body - receives much attention in the motorcycling press these days. Ergonomic considerations influence all aspects of motorcycle design, from the riding position to the placement of the controls, which in turn contributes to the overall versatility of a motorcycle. The better a motorcycle fits you, the more comfortable you will be. The more comfortable you are, the more useful your motorcycle will be.

Because choosing a motorcycle is as much an emotional process as it is an intellectual one, in the end, only you will know what type of motorcycle will be right for you. But once you’ve selected a type of bike, getting a versatile bike that fits your body will make your entire motorcycle experience much more rewarding.