Wow! Sex on a stick.

The new Triumph Daytona 675

I;ve not been a rider for very long. It will be a year in November. However, because I've a NSW license and over 30, i've been able to get whatever I damned well want for about 9 months.

At present, i'm riding the rather wonderful little Suzuki GS500. A Melbourne mate has a Daytona 600, and for a supersports, its pretty damned liveable from day-to-day. The riding position isn't severe as, say, a Honda CBR600.

One thing i've noticed is that I'm not so keen on 4 cylinder bikes. They are too smooth, too sewing machine. Twins are great, but they don't produce the power like a 4. A triple.... a perfect compromise?

Lets look at the Daytona 675. Its all new. Its quite narrow, being 11cms narrower than the Daytona 600/650. Its small even by Honda & Kawasaki supersports standards.

125ps @ 12,500
72Nm @ 11,750

Good numbers. The other good number is better when its small: weight. Dry, Triumph claim 165kgs. A fair bit lighter than its predecessor.
Suzuki's GSX-600R holds 120ps
Kawasaki Ninja 600 ZX-6R (i'm not including the ZX-6RR cos that doesn't comply with supersports sizes being a 636cc 4 cylinder)
123ps @ 14,000
67Nm @ 14,000

Basically, the new Daytona is right up there in terms of outright power and torque. What you'd naturally expect, and what some of the early reports back up is that torque thoughtout the powerband is a revelation for supersports class bikes.

Looks are always going to be subjective. I reckon the new Daytona looks the business front-on, loosing some of the wonderful shapes and lines on the tank from the last model. Frankly, I liked most of the previous Daytona look except for the whole smiling bumble-bee thang it had up front.
Many claim the new Daytona looks a lot like the Kawasaki, and i agree to a point. There are only so many bits of plastic to play with on a bike to set it out from the crowd. It would be rather difficult NOT to have some styling queues from of the 4 Jap manufacturers.

Ok, figures... looks. What about the ride?


Early rides in MotorCycle USA and Aussie Motorcycle News(not online) suggest that it's pretty damned good by any measure. So far, so good. Sadly, I'll have to wait til proper testing is done on the bike itself, and back-to-back with the competition.

Basically, if Triumph can manage the ease-of-use that the previous Daytona 600/650 had with the mumbo and handling to keep up with the Jap 4, then i'm down for one.
The worst this is having to wait til March '06.