Julie with police liveried 675 at BMF GEMS

Photo: Ian Pocock

I had been hoping for Triumph to build a decent new sportsbike since the first T595 Daytona for so long I was beginning to give up, to the point were I was even contemplating putting upside down forks and an underseat exhaust on my bike. In the meantime Triumph, after several failures, had finally managed to develop an extremely good 600, the 675. I was already contemplating buying one when some clown in a private hire u-turned in front of me on Blackheath Common writing off my old Daytona in the process - leaving me in need of a new bike. I had booked a test ride on the new Daytona at Boyers for 2 hours and on a Saturday morning, the bike had been ridden in that morning and was already warmed up. I could now go on to describe the excellent handling and performance of the 675, but you can read all about that in the glossies or even in June's Nacelle., I took these as givens - no, what I was interested in was what the bike did badly.
Anyway, on moving off the lack of weight soon becomes apparent and within 5 miles I had the opportunity to test one of the potential problems - Dartford council had very conveniently turned Erith into one big building site with standing traffic everywhere. The bike handled it all with no problems and after having fuelled up I was out into the countryside. A run round Edenbridge and Westerham was followed by a 30 mile motorway section - the aim was to test the bike in all road conditions. The motorway part gave me the opportunity to view the bike; there were some neat fairing inserts either side of the instrument binnacle, the radiator was curved, the binnacle itself had 3 buttons to play with but I never bothered to find out what they do and finally there are wing mirrors that you can actually use. (And if you own an old Daytona, you'll know what I mean!)
The 2½ hours were over far too quickly and it was time to hand the bike back. So what were the bad points? Well nothing really: the riding position was just right with minimal weight being put on the wrists in slow traffic and a screen that puts the wind on your chest rather than buffeting round your helmet on the motorway. The pegs were a similar height to my Daytona and allowed my knees to grip the sides of the petrol tank, the other fear of suffering crushed nuts against the petrol tank on braking was completely unfounded.
I had been in the saddle continuously for 2 hours and was suffering virtually no aches and pains whatsoever; there was even plenty of room to move about on the seat (which was also very comfortable). The bike was as happy doing 30 mph as it was doing much higher speeds (!), and what really surprised me was the low amount of gear changes I did during the 2 hours; the bike will pull from 4000 rpm in top gear - no problem. I did find that the brakes did not have quite the same feel as my old Daytona when it was new and the pegs do vibrate a bit on the motorway but this is really just nit-picking - this is an excellent bike and I thoroughly recommend it. In fact there was just one thing left to do when I got back to Boyer's - order one. So by the time you read this it should be in the Pied Bull car park.