Personally, I really like it. The frame, swinging arm, wheels, tank & bodywork is a work of art.
But that headlight will no doubt polarise opinion!
As for the engine - it looks a beauty. I appreciate some folk have said "it looks a bit wide" but...
"to optimise heat reduction on the air/oil-cooled Métisse 8V by placing the cam drive on the right side of the engine in order to create a gap between the cylinders to fully cool them all the way round, and also wrapping an oil jacket around each piston to help achieve this. This entails placing the twin counterbalancers inboard, centrally located at the front and rear of the horizontally-split crankcases, and gear-driven directly off the centre of the crankshaft."
So they've splayed the cylinders out slightly for better cooling and hence managed to fit some gubbins in there as a result. So yes, it is a bit wider. But it's not like it's going to restrict our cornering clearance really as 1) We're not Phil Read and 2) despite the cylinders being splayed fairly wide it doesn't look like the bottom end cases are any wider for it because they've fitted the gubbins in the middle rather than on the end of the crank.
At the end of the day, I like an engine that looks like it's chiseled from rock. It's reassuring if it...I don't know..."looks solid".
Mind you I ride an older Guzzi, so large-ish air cooled twins with a wide engine presence that offer old-style, torquey, road/sports performance is where it's at for me. So I can understand the appeal. And, for about $50k NZD it's something of a "bargain", being a handbuilt machine in limited numbers in Britain. Cheaper than a Brough, more personal than a Norton, and not a Bitsa bike like the Hesketh...and sits somewhere inbetween in that weird, limited appeal, rich boy market.
(Not to be derogatory to rich boys. I merely resent them because I'm jealous).
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
Bookmarks