Victory Hard-Ball

All bullshit aside Rocca, this latest offering from Victory is an absolute nonsense.

There must be some some very deep pockets backing the Victory brand. How long will these clowns continue to perpetuate the acid casualty mythology of the deeply flawed "Easy Rider" / Road Pirate mentality.

For Fu#k sake Victory, stop pissing money against the wall and design bikes that have real commercial and current engineering relevance.

Lenz - I think you will find that they may well have their finger on the pulse a whole lot firmer that we would imagine. The 'custom' scene is significant and at this years EICMA show in Milan the stand of Headbanger Motorcycles was considerably bigger than the last couple and this is exactly the sort of thing that they turn out too.

The financial muscle behind them is considerable and the people there are not daft. I am not sure what you mean about the bike having to have current engineering relevance. I don't believe that every new machine that is launched has to introduce some new technology, never seen before or indeed employ the latest trend. Surely if it is made today then it is using current engineering? I have no doubt at all that it shall be very well put together and employ the latest of manufacturing technology in doing so.

No question that this bike is not my personal cup of tea and the Victory I rode in the summer just past actually disappointed me a bit. There will however be a good number around the world who shall disagree. I do think the publicity shots are complete and utter clichéd nonsense.

The bike is actually based on the Cross 'Roads' (cue appropriate music and Meg Richardson entrance, for those of you old enough to remember). They were probably slack to produce power figures as like Harley they use a generic modular mill.

Polaris are indeed the very deep pocketed owners, who not only own ski-do, ATV and other off-road companies, but also Can-am Spyder thingamy (which sells relatively well in filtering not allowed Statesville) along with a telematics company who supply Mercedes Benz and half of the American Idol franchise, to name but two none motor-bicycle ventures.

Considering they have the absolute godfather of custom (the customisers connoisseurs choice of champions) Arlen Ness, his elder son Corey and now his younger son Zak too, all on the payroll, this bike is very lazy work frankly. Taking a Cross Roads, painting it Halford's matt black and sticking some High-Ball ape-hangers on it is actually lazier than the archetypical changes that most custom owners would make to the bike themselves!

Victory of course are the only 'other' properly American V-twin cruiser marque. Plus the wonderful charismatic Indian - which they also recently acquired of course, which does at least give them some credibility with their intended target audience; who are very obviously American's.

Victory's market continues to grow in Americashire, and in group tests they usually have the bettering of their Harley equivalents. For instance the Cross Country usually beats the Street Glide in head-to-head tests.

However, I recently went to a open days for both Harley and Victory and despite very convincing video's on Victory's web site, about their 'clear' advantages over the Harley (which personally I only see as being fitted with metric nuts and bolts!) I really hated the Victory's compared with their direct peer Harley's. I actually felt quite gutted as I 'wanted' to like them much more and make comments of 'that's how to make a cruiser' etc.

I guess Harley have been at it a good while now. And their latest 103 ci engine is a very smooth and pretty torque stuffed mill. I think their build quality and cohesiveness of their design really works much better than Victory and I can't see many of the Hognescenti selling their Milwaukee Iron's to buy an inferior to ride product that's not that much cheaper in all reality.

Victory owners do love them though and in terms of customer satisfaction they top all marques in the surveys in the US. That kind of surprises me really as most Victory dealers are multi-franchise and Harley are all solus.

I quite like cruisers. Well some, like the Rocket 3, Street Glide, Road King Classic and Wide-Glide; they're fun to ride, don't take themselves too seriously and are actually quite capable within reason. But I couldn't wait to step of the Victory Cross Country (their reputedly best model) and leap back on my Diavel again - boy it felt good to!

"it's nevertheless a big market and Victory does seem to understand it"
... they do. Baggers (cruiser with panniers) are where it's at in the States particularly right now, there are whole monthly magazines dedicated to the things. And their saddlebags hold much more than their Harley's counterparts, look better and easily operate with a single hand, again unlike the establishment.

Adding 'ape-hangers' to any bike seems like complete folly dynamically speaking, but again their high-ball model is their biggest seller in the US where street riders often buy bikes like the Nightster or Forty-eight and then fit mini or full-ape's to them, for that breeze in the sweaty pits feel that's not so needed back in Blighty.

Black is the new, erm... black too. HD started it all with their dark range. But everyone's jumped on that particular bandwagon, even BMW are now at it with their triple blacks! :-D Matt finish is a pain though, it does mark easily and you can't polish it.

Build quality is good and one thing that I really do like about them is that if you say plug in an iPod (which has it's own pouch in the Cross Country pannier), then the available options on the computer change to enable you to operate it. Plug and play if you like. When you remove it, the options to operate the unplugged device no longer exist to confuse or unnecessarily delay you. Attention to detail like that shows that it was the rider they were thinking about instead of ease of solution.

Yet other aspects which you would expect them to have comprehensively sorted are not. For instance, I nearly dropped the CC at the first set of lights because the gear shift was set so low that it actually trapped my size tens between the lever and running board. The screen was also so low that the buffeting it created physically caused my vision to blur; although to be fair HD low screens are not much better in this respect either.

The engine has plenty of grunt, but only when you rev it hard and high and basically treat it like a swift street bike rather than a cruiser. At low to mid-range revs it can't live with the HD 103 for smoothness. Of course the HD engines have become progressively smoother, except at a standstill where they still look like a slowly quivering pogo-stick. And many HD owners don't like the improved smoothness, believing character has been lost. The same owners prefer the five speed box in preference to the sixth overdrive on the current machines. I guess it was the same for those who liked their 4-speed ironheads and knuckles over the evo's which effectively saved the whole company. My own preference is for progress and smoothness, so the 103 and 110 ci's seemed far easier to live with to me.

I totally agree that, generalising, most HD riders would rather give up motorcycling than consider owning another brand. And this bigoted view means they potentially lose out on life's rich tapestry of motorcycle diversity. It does seem strange that Victory can top the satisfaction polls and yet Harley will still comfortably outsell them ten to one. I guess the same could be said of Lexus ISF versus BMW 3 series. And maybe the CrossTourer / eXplorer will offer the same against the, almost certain to continue the mass seller, GS come next year?

Whilst a bit cheezy, I do get the marketing shots. Anyone who buys a matt black cruiser with ape-hangers is very unlikely to wear a Stoner rep lid with red and white Dainese jacket and spine protector. They're much more likely to be ex, or even current, HD owners who perhaps are either unhappy with their current ride, have had some nasty recent bills (my next door neighbours Road King and V-Rod have both let him down in the last month) and basically want a more reliable, yet credible alternative to what they already have/have had?

Either way and with all this gesticulation, like Triumph, their market shared continues to grow and I don't see them disappearing anywhere fast...

Gentlemen - you too Kevin ...

The prime directives of motorcycling ie simplicity, functionality, versatility, efficiency, FUN have been so subverted by 'Kulture' and 'Form' that the 7th Day Road Pirate Image is a laughable parody - so are their bikes.

If you want a refresher on elegant simplicity in motorcycle design and the REAL hard men that live and breathe the balance of power, torque, drive and sudden impact trauma, go revisit motorcycle speedway.

Speed wobbling road-pigs carefully adorned with ape hangers and apes are such a welcome blessing for the Darwin Awards.

Of course! That explains why they hired Benny's slightly-more-hirsute West Coast cousin for the photos. But I suppose even an outlaw won't risk his bonce in a woolly tea cosy hat these days.

Rocca, they probably should have used 'Miss Diane' for the photo shoot! ;-D