Rider Power Survey - comments
 

I quite like RiDE magazine these days and when allowed like to sit down and read it cover to cover on a nightshift, not that I'm saying its ALL of interest to me.

However, the rider power survey is noteworthy - seems they have changed the way the data is analysed to bias "real-world" bikes and the the overall placings are an average of the individual rankings supplied by each owner.

8915 completed the form on-line, while 1134 did it via paper = 10049 replies.

In this particular analysis with the top 150 bikes detailed in a listing - Ducati didnt do very well at all, even the tourer range which I found curious:

Position 87 - ST4s
Position 90 - 999
Position 113 - 749
Position 139 - M600 / M620
Position 144 - 916 / 996 / 998*
Position 149 - 748

The 916/996/998 series comes in for particular mention as having the WORST running costs of any bike in the survey (the fact that they also had one of the BEST handling & suspension scores only got a passing mention).

Any other Ducati was outside of the top 150 because the individual bike scored less than replies 20 each!

I find this a bit curious when the 916/996/998 bikes were listed together and yet the 900ss/750ss were listed individually???

Other bikes with LESS THAN 20 votes:
Multistrada :confused:
620 Multistrada
1000DS
M750
Monster S2R

I can only imagine we are too busy riding our bikes instead of writing about them ;)

What started sounding alarm bells a little for me is that the R1 which won overall in 2005 only placed 27th this year.

If the Survey was ranked purely on 'Overall Impression' BDG would of been pleased with the KTM adventure 950 voted 2nd (was actually 4th anyways) and the 999 boosted from 90th place to 6th with only the top 10 listed for the alternative rankings.

Also there was an interesting 'Mythbuster' section relating to the perceptions of the riders surveyed:

Best Engine performance:
Most of the Japs equal, Aprillia won - Ducati rated average?

Best Gearbox:
Suzuki by a reasonable margin over the Japs but - Ducati only just behind.

Best Brakes:
Aprillia by a tiny margin from Ducati.

Best Build Quality:
Honda by quite a margin overall - Ducati some way back.

Best Reliability:
Honda again - Ducati worst overall.

Easiest to Maintain:
Honda by a huge margin over the average - Ducati, last a little way behind Aprillia.

Not too many shocks there in the perception but, I cant help wondering how much of it actually driven by magazine and newspapers - on the message board here there are surprisingly few posts on reliability, totally outnumbered by those fine tuning suspension and making mods of their own.

Cheers - Frank

Does this mean that I must sell my under powered under braked expensive to service, poorly built, very unreliable wop machine...............................coz I ain`t.

Have a really nice day chaps & chapesses.

TBH Frank I wouldn't lend any weight to surveys like this. My own personal experience clearly shows that the bikes are not particularly expensive to run or unreliable - no more so than any other bike I've owned so, I'm not gonna listen to some rag tell me otherwise. I think surveys like this are pretty much unscientific and the numbers that they get for sample sizes are statistically irrelevant.

Also, what is there to say that people don't vote several times over for their own bikes? Added to that all the self-interest that may come from manufacturers reps or those dissing other brands.

surveys spleen letting
 

I think your find that some of the riders who vote have had bad experience with their bikes or dealers and want to vent some venom especially if its their first experience of non jap machinery.
anyway if you want an easylife its got to be a jap bike but thats why they dont bring out much passion.

I will jinx myself by sayin this but I have only had 2 things go wrong with my Ducati in the 4 years that I have owned it.

1 was the alarm packing in. ( Fixed by AA to get me home)

The other was an uprated clutch slave cylinder letting me down when its seals failed. ( Went back to the old original one which his still on the bike.)

More than happy with my Ducati.

DC.

What's this "real world weighting" bobbins? Sounds like a fix to push the expensive bikes down the list. But what if the expensive bikes really are better built, give better performance, don't break down etc??????