Abhik Das

In the automotive world, reliability and excitement don’t quite go hand-in-hand. The former is a compliment to any motorcycle, but it’s also a tag that kills the latter on contact. Call a bike reliable, and you've basically called it boring, a machine built to be forgotten between the oil changes. This would stand true for most motorcycles, because anything with a high-strung sport bike engine is operating mostly at the threshold of its performance ceiling, leaving very little room to spare.

Loyalty is a polarizing concept. It’s the kind of stuff that builds a good relationship, one where trust runs both ways. On the other hand, loyalty can even translate to blind faith. In the context of motorcycles, loyalty is what mentally transforms a mere badge on the tank into something more than the metal that makes it up. It’s a customer’s inherent belief in the manufacturer’s values as one’s own or, at least, agreeable enough to relate to.

Today’s tech-led motorcycling world is so fast-paced that model progression year-on-year can not just be quick, but also jump forward substantially. Honda proved as much with a single-generation swap where the 2019 CRF1000L Africa Twin was replaced by the CRF1100L in 2020, which was leaps and bounds forward in tech. It came with a higher 1,084cc displacement, a six-axis IMU, and a touchscreen.