How to buy a motorcycle

First up, you need to decide what kind of bike you want. This should be determined partly by the way you’d like to use it, but mostly by what gives you the shivery tingles every time you look at it. After all, anyone convincing themselves that motorcycles represent practical transport is kidding themselves. The amount of faff associated with simply getting on the bike renders that argument moot before key ever meets ignition.

To make life a bit easier I’m going to smoosh a few sub-breeds together, casually ignore some of the others and present to you four primary types of bi-rotal animal for your consideration.

Firstly, the classic, quintessential motorcycle. Think of the villains’ steeds in Indiana Jones movies. A headlight or two up front, an engine and chassis on display, upright handlebars and seating position. Nowadays, us bikers call these ‘nakeds’, due to their absence of fairings. Still hugely popular, and can be very sporting indeed. Examples include a Ducati Monster, Triumph Trident 660 and Kawasaki Z900.

If you were to attempt to force motorcycle categories to line up with car segments, like a particularly demented toddler attempting to stuff a star through a square hole in a shape-sorter, then the naked bike might just be equivalent to the hatchback or saloon. Little runabouts at one end of the spectrum (Honda Jazz / CB125F), but fire breathing monsters at the other (BMW M5 CS / M1000R).

You buy a naked bike if you don’t fancy the uncomfortable compromises of a sports bike (read: sports car/supercar), but want something more chuckable than an adventure bike (read: SUV).

So, to the adventure bike – which has grown to dominate the sales charts the same way the SUV obliterated Vectras, Mondeos and Primeras the world over. Last year 20,032 adventure bikes were sold in the UK, versus 18,392 nakeds.

Six years earlier these numbers were 18,914 and 34,505 respectively. So whilst the market as a whole has shrivelled like Indy villain Donovan after drinking from the wrong cup, the dominant march of the adventure bike continues, led by the Daddy of them all – the BMW GS. Top of the ‘big bike’ sales charts for 13 of the last 15 years for a reason – think of the motorcycling equivalent of a new Land Rover Defender and you won’t be far wrong.

But more sporting SUVs are available – if you like your Porsche Cayennes to come with a Turbo S badge and big wheels, then perhaps sir would fancy a Ducati Multistrada on Pirelli Diablo Rosso IV rubber? But if you like your utility vehicles to actually do the off-road rough and tumble they pretend to be able to, then perhaps old-school-Defender types would be more tempted by a Honda Africa Twin or Yamaha Ténéré.

Many people use their adventure bikes for European touring, two up with their significant (and by implication, extremely low-maintenance) others. Some use them for commuting, the creature comforts adventure bikes offer (a high screen to reduce wind blast, heated grips, a cushy ride and armchair-esque seating position) trumping the impact of size and weight upon performance and slow speed manoeuvring. Others just like riding them. There are some bikers out there who are simply GS through and through, and you can spot them a mile off. I’d wager there will be dozens of them in the comments, ready to flame me for completely misunderstanding the breed. Please go ahead, I insist.

And then there’s the critically endangered species – the sports bike. In the late 1990s and 2000s they reigned supreme, with no adventure bikes or retro modern classics to compete against, accessible insurance and an absolutely bargain price point – £8799 would scoop you a brand new Honda Fireblade in 2005.

You can still walk into a dealership today and leave with a ‘Blade, but it’ll cost you £23,699. Squint and you might just say it’s the biking equivalent of an NSX for Dacia money. Want the equivalent of a Ferrari 296GTB? Well that will be the Ducati Panigale V4 S, at £30,695.

The current generation of superbikes are now priced out of the equation for most new bikers, and changing regulation, tastes and the place of sports bikes in popular culture have led to a catastrophic dwindling of the segment. Will the legendary crotch-rocket of yore ever recapture its former glories? Sadly, it’s hard to see how. So if you like your mechanical contraptions spanking new, grab one while you can.

There is one more category I shall address, and that is the cruiser. It’s not something we tend to get hot under the collar for in Europe, and when we do, we tend to prefer a Ducati Diavel (think Lamborghini Urus) to a Harley Davidson Fat Boy (Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat). But should you expect to be leaping off overpasses into LA’s concrete flood drains whilst chasing rogue Freightliner rigs, well, there’s only one way to go.

I have of course omitted bobbers, supermotos, sports-tourers, enduros, scramblers and cafe racers, and conveniently not included the burgeoning sector of retro bikes in my sales figures above, but we have to draw the line somewhere. If it’s the romance of motorcycling that feels appealing to you, then this last group, packed with BMW R nineTs, Suzuki Katanas and Royal Enfields might be the way you want to go.

Or, you could just buy an older bike. Because much like it is with cars, peak motorcycle exists at some point in the past. I would argue that exactly how far in the past depends on the category. If you want a reliable but classic looking bike to look cool on your commute, then you could still reasonably buy a brand new, 800cc air cooled Ducati Scrambler ‘Nightshift’ for £11,495 (think Porsche 964 restomod).

But for just about everything else, you’ll find the talkative, unfiltered, throbbing soul of the motorbike – the reason after all, for wanting one in the first place – increases with age. Just as computers have corrupted the relationship between our right foot, our fingertips and our car’s road wheels, so too they have on bikes, while regulations have muted engines and bamboozled fuelling maps.

That fuelling, as described by David Twohig in his recent KTM 890 Duke piece, is utterly fundamental to your relationship with your steed. The connection between your right wrist and the back wheel is even more important on a bike than the equivalent in a car, which as you will know, is very important indeed.

So if you want to emulate the adventure romance of Ewan McGregor and Charlie Boorman’s Long Way Round, then the air/oil-cooled and cable-throttled BMW 1200GS of 2004-12 is the one to go for. If you want some more modern creature comforts, then you could argue the GS peaked in 2019 with the 1250 and its ShiftCam technology (think VTEC), before the latest ASA-equipped 1300 GS finally did away altogether with the clutch lever and thus a key interaction with the machine.

Call me old fashioned, but if a naked bike is the purest expression of the breed, then it is even more important that a naked should know what it is for. Super-nakeds (modern technology-infused monsters with 180+bhp) make no sense to me; too much power for the road, and too upright to make the most of the power on the track.

So instead I give you the Suzuki SV650 – the meat and two veg of motorcycles, and the two wheeled equivalent of the Mazda MX-5. Largely unchanged since 1999, and you can choose your year based on a preference for carbs (1999-2002), fuel injection and aluminium chassis (2003-2008) or twin spark 75bhp goodness (2016 on). Just whatever you do, avoid the godawful Gladius styling experiment in the middle.

Everything that is good about a naked is present and correct in an SV650. Punchy v-twin engine, bags of character and good, honest handling. Despite the model recently being murdered by emissions regs, you can still pick up brand new 26-plate bikes for £6,499.

When peak bike occurred for sports bikes is an argument that now rages without end on social media. I’m going to stick my neck out and say they peaked in the mid 2000s. Superbikes of that era have way more power than you will ever need (170-180bhp, for a power to weight ratio 40% greater than a McLaren P1), and an unfettered connection between rider and machine that is about as pure as it gets.

Widely accepted to be the finest of the breed is the Suzuki GSX-R1000 (K5) of 2005 (think: 997-generation Porsche 911 GT3 RS). Everything came together to produce an icon that was as good on the racetrack as the road, and the race wins backed up the incredible coherence of the package. People still get off their latest 2026 Ducati Panigale V4s and back onto a K5 and can’t work out why the old bike is so much better.

I’ll tell you why: because feel is everything. The bike tells you exactly what it’s doing, through the reaction to every single input you make. Every fractional twist of the wrist creates immediate sensory feedback through your palm, seat, eyes and ears. The tiniest of counter-steering nudges on the bars initiates the most delicious of steering arcs. The brake lever tells you through your fingertips exactly what the front tyre is doing.

Get it wrong, however, and you will crash. This much is guaranteed. Sadly, this is the price you pay for absolute feel and connection. The bacon-saving electronics that the last twenty years have cooked up also happen to interfere in every input, output and morsel of feedback. Yes, the superbikes of today clock faster lap times, but sap much of the joy out of the process. Sound familiar?

It’s why the only bike in my shed is now a quarter of a century old Ducati 996S (think: Ferrari 355). A thumping V-twin that snorts out almost a hundred fewer horsepower than my previous (modern) superbike, but does so with so much more character that personality literally drips out of the 50mm Termignoni pipes. You have to stand and nurse the throttle for the first four minutes after cold starting – don’t even think about riding away. It coughs and splutters and curses you for waking it from its slumbers.

But that only serves to make the honey-like rumble of its desmoquattro twin even sweeter, when ten minutes later you open it up for the first time and your whole body trembles, not just with adrenaline, but the low frequency bass that shakes its way up through the cylinders, to the frame, the exhaust and your seat.

This is why we get on the bike. Because in those moments when the road opens up, the bike surges towards the horizon and we slide across the seat in anticipation of tipping into the first corner… there is absolutely nothing else that matters.

So perhaps you now know where your biking future lies, and the kind of the machine that would make opening the door to your garage approximately 84 per cent more satisfying. The brilliance of buying motorbikes is that there is no escalating ordeal or gauntlet to run to find your way to the cave of truth. No hidden scythes or collapsing floors to navigate. Although admittedly the leap of faith still requires a little sand to be thrown first.

Test riding, outside of main dealers, isn’t really a thing. So it comes down to a physical inspection, history assessment and a cursory engine start. All of this can be done effectively with a combination of video tours and photos. I have bought, and had delivered, several bikes from main dealers without ever seeing them in person. Those I’ve bought privately, the sense-check upon collection was all that was required, the deal having been agreed in advance.

All of those hidden nasties that can only be discovered when viewing a car in person – corrosion under a wheel arch, an interior that reeks of smoke or a graunching gearbox – simply aren’t a thing with motorbikes. And what’s more, once you pop, you can’t stop. You can fit at least 5 motorbikes in the space of one car in the garage.

Should Man Maths be a consideration, older bikes are depreciation-free, whilst being relatively trivial to insure and tax – let alone buy. Because three or four grand is all you need to put a mint SV650 or 2000s superbike into your life. So what are you waiting for?

But before you jump, I will just offer one piece of advice. When you do meet the crusty old knight in the two thousand year old cave, choose wisely.

Photography by Gez Medinger