Honda Crossrunner

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First seen at the 2010 EICMA show, the bike is in production and looking better with its Givi luggage.

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It seems like lately Honda has been trying to merge their motorcycles & scooters into one entity, i.e. the NT700 line (especially the upcoming Integra), Crosstourer, DN-01, etc. Would those be a called a "Motoscooter" or a "Scootercycle"? I don't know. The only thing I do know is that I will always ride a real motorcycle: manual transmission with a clutch lever, sitting on the bike instead of in it, fuel tank between your knees where it belongs, only 2 wheels (although sidecars are kind of neat) & a petrol burning engine that goes vroom, vroom (not an electric motor that only goes "hmmmm")! I guess I'm old school, but technology is killing the traditional motorcycle.
 
Had a chance to use a Crossrunner for a week in the dolomites. The bike just made no sense to me.

Riding posture: Nutzoid. To know what it feels like to sit on a CR do the following: Put a full-on supersport (R1, R6, Gixxer, etc.) on stands and hop on. Now that your heels are buried firmly in your ass, replace the clip-ons with mini apehangers that are set 9” back from, and 9” above, the fork head and are extremely close together. There now. Isn’t that just dandy sitting there like a begging puppy? The point of this escapes me completely.

The low speed handling of the CR is hands-down the worst I’ve ever experienced since I started riding in 1967. The total lack of leverage from the handlebars and their tiller-like movement, combined with a binary clutch and a viciously abrupt throttle led me to more low speed near drops in one week than throughout my prior 44 years of two-wheeling.

Underway, the rig felt OK but absolutely nothing stood out as being in any way preferable to competing models. The way the V-Tec motor comes on is interesting but accomplishes nothing in terms of getting the motorcycle where you want it to be. I spent the whole week aboard the vehicle wondering “Why did they build this thing? What is it’s mission profile? What exactly does it do that several dozen other existing bikes don’t already do much better?”. As a sport-tourer, it’s comfort limitations leave it hopelessly inferior to the FJR/Concourse/ST genre. If you attempt to fling it about like a sportbike you’re guaranteeing yourself an appearance on Youtube. As a commuter, it’s unpleasant low speed characteristics turn the process into a totally unnecessary ordeal. So why then did Honda build this machine? Who exactly is their target market? What mission profile(s) does it fill?

I will stipulate that my contempt for the design may say more about my own intellectual limits than it does about the bike itself. If someone can explain to me just what the purpose of the vehicle is, I’m all ears.
 
It looks like a mix of KTM Adventure from the front, Ducati Divali the middle and a FJR in the back with the bags. Just plain fugly and a chain with no center stand? Dumb.
 
Its things like this that puts honda one step back while yamaha takes 2 steps foward....the day is near :D

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It seems like lately Honda has been trying to merge their motorcycles & scooters into one entity, i.e. the NT700 line (especially the upcoming Integra), Crosstourer, DN-01, etc. Would those be a called a "Motoscooter" or a "Scootercycle"? I don't know. The only thing I do know is that I will always ride a real motorcycle: manual transmission with a clutch lever, sitting on the bike instead of in it, fuel tank between your knees where it belongs, only 2 wheels (although sidecars are kind of neat) & a petrol burning engine that goes vroom, vroom (not an electric motor that only goes "hmmmm")! I guess I'm old school, but technology is killing the traditional motorcycle.

Totally lame. NT700V - scooter? With all this: "manual transmission with a clutch lever, sitting on the bike instead of in it, fuel tank between your knees where it belongs, only 2 wheels"? And you others with your foolish "thumbs up" about this. Totally lame.
 
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