The New Can-Am Motorbikes- Can They Work in the Real World? 

PS Freddie, there's three Monkeys on ebay for less than that but pricing is very strange it doesn't seem to match either the year or the mileage with Monkeys, so you can have a lower mileage 2022 model priced for less than a 2020. It seems to be a bit of a postcode lottery. PPS if you find a yellow or black model in London, you're not allowed to buy it without letting me know first, I'm so tempted.

Amen to that! By the end of the 80s the sports bike market had changed so much that I figured it was time to trade my 6-year-old example for something newer and faster. I took a few test rides but all they served to do was convince me - due to how easy they were to ride stupid-fast - that I'd either hurt myself or lose my licence within a month. After a lot of brow beating I actually decided to keep the bike I'd got and (to satisfy the urge to buy something new)... buy a 883 Sportster to go with it. The result was that, in late 1989, I rode over to Warr's in Chelsea to take a look at one. They still had the 'small' shop back then and still closed for lunch, and so I got talking with another guy outside, while we waited for them to reopen. He had even more certainty of why he was there than I did, and told me he was there to buy a new 'big' Harley. He was going to be spending some serious money that day! I asked him what bikes he'd had before and he replied: "None: I borrowed a bike to do my test, and now I'm here to buy the bike I've always wanted!" I had to admire his reasoning, which seemed to make as much sense if not more, than mine. Inside, I looked at the 883, liked what I saw, and placed an order there and then. It's gone now, but I actually had many good years out of that bike. But here's a point of note. In 1989 I was able to buy that Sportster for something like £4,500, give or take £100. Just a little while back (maybe a year or two ago), it was a friend, who had also got into Harleys, who was reminiscing about how, back then, the company's philosophy had been to sell the 883 at a genuine "entry level" sort of price, as a machine that would draw buyers to the brand, with the intention to create a loyalty that would hopefully attract them back to trade up to a bigger (/more expensive) one in the future. It was, however, the next thing he said that blew me away. By the 2020s, apparently, the cheapest Sportster was about £14,000. Gulp! Gotta say, I was pretty gobsmacked. It was him who pointed out the anomaly; the contradiction to the earlier philosophy. If you do cease to provide an "entry level" model, it seems a fair chance that people won't buy a first one, let alone a second or a third.

TBF, I guess everything’s gone up a bit since 1989, the average house price in London then was £80,000,,,, now it’s £550,000…

And that's nice when buying a big Japs cruiser. But bad when trying to sell them. It took me 4 months to sell my 1999 Suzuki Intruder VL1500 with 20.000km on it this year. (In Sweden)

Which ones?

I love the sound of this! And no off roading, I promise😆 Ic you’re happy to do so, could you ping me an email to dob.bs@outlook.com , or you can contact me through my website (www.freddiedobbs.com)- so I can save your details:)

@@tuesdayatdobbs sent you a message through the website. Cheers, Richard

I took one for a one hour test ride here in Australia , loved the engine ,overall balance and relatively low seat height. The windscreen is great also on motorway. Enjoy .

I hope you enjoy it, Sean!

I hope you enjoy it!:)

Same here, on my airpods

@@Gurra_Gforce Thank you! So it's not my earphones.

He doesn't use the phone to record sound though, he's wearing a mic.

Yeah it doesn't seem to be the phone mixing in the recording but there's some offset towards the left side for sure.

Hmmmm, thanks for the heads up- I’ll look into this now

I like the design too- it’s a good looking bike, and an excellent looking electric bike!⚡️

Looks really similar to the Husqvarna Norden 901

Fantastic story!

The manufacturers are probably getting a massive grant no doubt.

🙄

@@ChrisJ-ru6ek🙄

Hello Andrew👋 Thank you, it is my pleasure!

Affordable motorcycles, not necessary small capacity. Speed 400 and RE wouldn't sell a 100 units at £7k+

For £20K plus I'd hope so...

Freddie hopes that they succeed soon.

@@Snoozzzzzze 😉

@@dannyhampshire2825😀

😆

What you're describing is already available and for less than your £5000 price point, from the likes of Niu and SuperSoco, not to mention hundreds of other brands in their native China. Cheap, easy to ride, easy to charge with removable batteries, and enough performance for commuting into or round town. But, in the UK, with its over complex licencing system, terrible urban congestion and high risk of theft if you want to commute on two wheels you're probably better off spending £1500-2000 on a decent e-bike, which doesn't need insurance, licencing, and all the bike gear, can use any available cycling infrastructure and can be stored in your home. As an example looking at cross-town journey times in London, a bicycle (not even an ebike) will get you most places quicker than a motorcycle. And you'll feel far less guilty leaving it behind when you hop on public transport or take the car because it's raining.

I heard that too. 😂

Yep, 'wilderness' bikes need to be hybrids, a small capacity i/c generator running the electric drive through a 'safety' bank of low weight pixie loving capacitors! : )

Marc travels (YT)...would love to join him on his "shitty ride"😂...rtw on a 2017 zero road bike. Problem is the manufacturing...too greedy to give us what we want.

Totally agree, an electric motorbike for adventure is as much use as a chocolate spoon! 😂🤣😂 ps the price is totally ridiculous.

Correction manchester harley dealership has reopened! Still lost quite a few though!

Where I live there isn’t any off-road within 40 miles

@@slakk5093 So you need a pickup or a trailer....LOL

Unfortunately I agree on all points

You can't have poor customer service if it doesn't exist.

The problem with Harley is the U.S. is the company, (so the board of directors, not the workers), started to cater to only folks with more money then average. Not just by making expensive bikes but by turning their less expensive bikes into ones that are marketed to those people as well. I know they make good bikes but good and desirable are not the same thing. I think most of the bikes they make now look like something from an early 2000s children's cartoon, (which is the nostalgia they are looking to capture instead of the nostalgia of their actual past, selling bikes to people that were never actually around one when they were younger and only feel nostalgic about them thinking about those cartoons). Maybe that is just an American problem since most people here were raised by the television for a couple of generations, but Harley seems to not be selling elsewhere so their design choices definitely aren't hitting the right marks. I'm thinking about getting a cruiser type bike as my interceptor isn't that practical, although completely capable, for long trip vacation touring, (it's a luggage issue and the type of seat, a saddle type is definitely more comfortable for riding hundreds of miles in a day). So I'm weighing my options and really looking at getting a shotgun 650 and boring it to 865 while lowering the final gearing to get it to run 80mph at 3500 to 4100rpms and still pull. Not sure if I can get those mph at those rpms but it can't hurt to try. Anyway, my point is that the shotgun looks like a bike, an actual motorcycle. It of course doesn't look like a Harley, (it actually reminds me of the older Honda rebels), but it looks like a bike. There is also the absence of all the driving aids that I want nothing to do with.

@@willernst2721 had a seat on the Rebel 1100, the cruiser one with the big fairing at the front and the panniers already fitted. Cracking looking thing,and not overly expensive.

@@scobeno1911 if you mean the new ones those 1100 sound nice, I live a few miles down a dirt road though and they sit a bit low for all of that. I was looking at buying one before I got my interceptor though.Nice bikes and fast.

@willernst. Instead of undertaking all those mods on a RE 650,,, why not just buy a Triumph 900 or 1200?

@@longjonwhite older ones haves carbs that I don't want to spend the time maintaining and newer ones have electronics that I can't maintain. From what I know the newer triumphs aren't as customizable either, but I might be wrong about that. It comes down to do I want to spend more money for a bike that has some better build bits just to take some of those bits off in exchange for others anyway, or pay less money for a bike with some slightly less well made bits that I am going to take off and exchange for better build bits anyway. Other tings like do the triumphs have better paint, yeah slightly, but although I'm probably not going to repaint my interceptor mk2, (when I bought it I was going to strip the red stripe and do a British racing green instead with 24K gold leaf strips and add polished stainless fenders and paint them the same but the red kinda grew on me), if I get a shotgun I am definitely gonna custom paint it, so why pay more for a bike I am gonna paint anyway. Really the engine quality is the only reason I would choose a triumph over the Enfield and I'm not completely sure there is much of a difference if any. The way they come from the factory I will not be surprised at all if the re650 would outlast any newer triumph because of how underbuilt they are, (those engines are meant to be 865cc but were built 650 for both emissions laws and to purposely keep HP under 47 for the license laws in Europe), which means they stay cooler and should wear less, (of course time will tell). The question with the engines really comes down to how long the Enfield engine will last at 865cc and that is a very good question that I don't have an answer for. Considering the engine was designed to be that bore in the first place though it should last as long as anything else, of course should and will are two different things. Oh, last thing, the gearing on the Enfield 650s is crazy because they are so underpowered. They are basically geared like a 400cc sport bike with a top speed of 100mph. Bore the engine out to 865cc and you gain almost 20hp but you pretty much double the torque. So you go from something around just over 30 foot pounds to 60 foot pounds while still being geared for no more then 100mph. That makes for a lot of pull on a very tight gearbox which would make for some real fun riding at the cost of how relaxed the bikes are stock. That is why I am not sure if I want to do that. If I buy a second 650 though then why wouldn't I try it with one of the bikes.

Can Am, is it not Canadian American? Electric bikes will never catch on

I agree- it just doesn’t make any sense with a 79 mile range and a 60% charge takes 50 minutes

Imagine setting your own paid for motorcycle on fire because of a diversity policy at the company Absolutely insane

@@thisisabsolutelystup Except it's false. That nonsense about Harley and DEI was debunked by Snopes on their article titled "Harley-Davidson Sales Dropped 40% After Motorcycle Maker Announced DEI Initiatives?" @ranty1150gs forgot to take his meds and it's past his bedtime, that's why he's writing nonsense dug from facebook troll farms that ate The Onion.

​@@thisisabsolutelystupthe same people who donate money to a "billionaire"

Go Woke Go Broke !

​@@thisisabsolutelystupI am all for a boycott on buying new bikes but setting light to something that the company has already been paid for probably isn't the widest of decisions