Perplexed from my Monster demo ride I wandered around looking at Speed and Street Triples. I saw a lonely Sprint ST and decided to sit on it, see how it feels comparing to my Futura. They belong to the same bike class after all - sport tourers. In a blink of an eye Scott, the salesman I was making a conversation with a bit earlier had offered me a demo ride on it. I honestly admitted that the only purpose of this demo ride would be to feed my curiosity about the competitor of my bike. “It’s ok”, - he said. I did not object.

We went outside where they had a demo Sprint ST in tornado red. It did not have the saddle bags attached to it which was great. I could do more fun stuff with the bike this way. I went on to the same route I took when I demo-ed both Ducatis some 20 minutes earlier.

The first thing that popped in my head was the engine sound. It sounded electric. Unlike the BMW R1100S’s engine it did sound louder with more rpms though. Long story short the bike did feel good but fell a little short in the sport section of the sport touring comparing to the Futura. I mean it was not bad. But when I got on my Futura and took exactly the same route it did feel tighter. And weaving around cars was more crisp.

Another thing I noticed was the Sprint’s saddle bag mounting system. It had a plastic rail running on the side of the motorcycle. And it looked really toy-ish. Did not have an expensive stylish feel to it. I guess it is hard to beat the Italians in the styling department.

Overall I did like the Sprint. After all I was considering it as on of the “next” bikes after my SV650S. But I am really happy that I own the Futura. Would not trade it for the Sprint.

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 17th, 2008 at 4:20 pm and is filed under Motorcycles, Street, Riding. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.