Honda Transalp 1st Ride Reviews

[Endopotential]

OK, I didn't actually get to test it out myself, bummer.  But the guy at MCN seemed pretty breathless in praising everything, especially the new engine.  He seemed to indicate that maybe it was a bit tall and top heavy, but he also admitted that he's not the greatest offroader.  

 

Doesn't look like us Yanks will ever get our hands on it in the foreseeable future, so you guys in Europe will have to let us know what it's like in person.  Will be interesting to hear the upcoming shootouts between this and the Tenere, Suzuki 800, 790/890 etc...

 

HONDA XL750 TRANSALP (2023 - on) Review | MCN

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Read our expert, in-depth Honda Transalp review on MCN - a classy, affordable all-rounder with the easy manners of the original but with added fire in its belly.

 

[Ray Ride4life]

 

[Hibobb]

I too saw a bunch of new test videos out this week.

From what I saw, they are not trying to challenge Yamaha's T7.

Sure, they ride it down a few gravel roads but mostly it is being marketed as a road biased  ADV Bike.

Honda didn't "fail" on the off road ability, they just chose not to persue the hard core riders.

 

They sure praise the engine on this Transalp. Truthfully, I am more than happy with the T7's 74ish hp, but that is just me.

It will give them a bit of bragging rights but using 90hp off road is kind of ridiculous... there again, Honda is more street biased.

I am sure they will draw away some of their Africa Twin buyers with this new smaller model, as their price is more in line with the T7.

Suzuki will have their work cut out for them, this Honda is pretty darn nice....

Edited March 11, 2023 by Hibobb

[Wintersdark]

That was the look of things from the initial announcement too - a more adventure touring bike, not really competing with the T7 at all.  

 

Which is fair enough, really - I suspect there's a lot more "adventure touring" people who are mostly road riding with a couple well maintained dirt roads than people looking for adventure bikes to ride trails with.  

 

And frankly it sounds objectively superior for long distance road riding, particularly two up where the T7's CP2 starts to show its limits, and electronics like cruise control become increasingly valuable. 

 

But personally, I don't need less offroad capable.  I need a machine that can compensate for my lack of skill as much as possible.  

 

Always good to have options for different people, but this one isn't for me. 

 

Regardless, it's a market segment I definitely think is going to grow.  Bikes like this are dramatically superior (imho) to the traditional sport touring bike, and much more flexible.  They're a really ideal Jack Of All Trades ride.

[smd3]

It took a while for people to start criticizing the T7, too. Give it a while for the honeymoon phase to end. 
 

It’s going to be a good bike, but I think the suspension might be a low point. 

[Wintersdark]

3 hours ago, smd3 said:

It took a while for people to start criticizing the T7, too. Give it a while for the honeymoon phase to end. 
 

It’s going to be a good bike, but I think the suspension might be a low point. 

I'm genuinely surprised they went so budget on the suspension.  Really surprised.  I mean, I get that it's a bike made to compete on a budget for sure, but today a non-adjustable (rather rebound only) suspension is practically unheard of on any major bike that's not extremely low-budget... And absolutely bizzare on a bike like this. 

 

I mean, the KLR also has incredibly basic suspension, but it's also going to be like half the price.

[Alf Meister]

11 hours ago, Wintersdark said:

That was the look of things from the initial announcement too - a more adventure touring bike, not really competing with the T7 at all.  

 

Which is fair enough, really - I suspect there's a lot more "adventure touring" people who are mostly road riding with a couple well maintained dirt roads than people looking for adventure bikes to ride trails with.  

 

And frankly it sounds objectively superior for long distance road riding, particularly two up where the T7's CP2 starts to show its limits, and electronics like cruise control become increasingly valuable. 

 

 

It doesn’t have cruise control. Honda could’ve easily added it (unlike Yamaha), which I can never fathom why, seeing as many riders want cc along with tubeless rims. 

[winddown]

15 hours ago, Ray Ride4life said:

 

 

I don't like the look of the nose, looks like a scooter to be honest.  That's the problem I have always had with hondas, I never found one I liked the look of.  I know they are great bikes, but looks count, you have to love the look of it I believe.  I didn't mind the look of the VFR 800, even test rode one, but it lacked the power I was after in a street bike so I passed.   The old geezer in this vid was sort of riding it like a GP bike, nothing wrong with that, I'll post a thread up on my feeling about these adv bikes on the road later tonight.

[Ray Ride4life]

I think Honda lost the passion, they now aim at the high volume low cost light bikes in Asia and give us blend and useless bikes.
The times of the original Africa Twin, VFR, Blackbird etc. are over. Even though i love my Crosstourer and keep it along the T7 it was just roadbike with allroad looks and Honda never meant it to be anything other than that.
I took it offroad but it's heavy and lacks suspension travel.

[Alf Meister]

I’m sure it will be a great bike, especially for those wanting an adventure touring bike, to go touring mainly on tarmac roads and the odd gravel road, but looking at the ground clearance (it looks like a middle aged bloke with a big belly) with that oem bash plate, just looks like an afterthought to me. I know the reason why it is like it is, but seeing as honda started from a clean sheet, why on earth did they design an oil sump like that. 

Edited March 12, 2023 by Alf Meister

[winddown]

1 hour ago, Ray Ride4life said:

I think Honda lost the passion, they now aim at the high volume low cost light bikes in Asia and give us blend and useless bikes.

 

Well i didn't want to say it,   But there it is. 

 

Gravel mode?  Modes Modes everywhere a Mode, Blockin' out the scenery, spoiling my road.  Do this, don't do that, better pick the right Mode.   I don't want a gravel mode,  I like it when the back wheel lets go and shifts sideways a half a foot.  Weeeeee.

[Ray Ride4life]

My latest blog i mentioned people getting dumber every day and "modes" is one of the things that contribute to that.
We are not allowed to think for ourselves anymore, we are not allowed to get hurt by mistakes and learn from that and worst of all is that we're even not allowed to to believe what we see with those filters that makes everybody pretty and handsome.

But it doesn't keep me from doing stupid things, sometimes i get hurt but instead of crying i'll laugh because i know it was my own fault and fail in a different way next time.

[Tenerider]

4 minutes ago, Ray Ride4life said:

My latest blog i mentioned people getting dumber every day and "modes" is one of the things that contribute to that.
We are not allowed to think for ourselves anymore, we are not allowed to get hurt by mistakes and learn from that and worst of all is that we're even not allowed to to believe what we see with those filters that makes everybody pretty and handsome.

But it doesn't keep me from doing stupid things, sometimes i get hurt but instead of crying i'll laugh because i know it was my own fault and fail in a different way next time.

Well said Ray!

[AZJW]

1 hour ago, winddown said:

 

Well i didn't want to say it,   But there it is. 

 

Gravel mode?  Modes Modes everywhere a Mode, Blockin' out the scenery, spoiling my road.  Do this, don't do that, better pick the right Mode.   I don't want a gravel mode,  I like it when the back wheel lets go and shifts sideways a half a foot.  Weeeeee.

Good one there. I picked up on your " signs" reference,  guessing a number of those on this board will also.

[Hibobb]

48 minutes ago, AZJW said:

" signs" reference,  guessing a number of those on this board will also

Winddown must be an old goat!

[AZJW]

9 minutes ago, Hibobb said:

Winddown A number of us must be an old goat!

Fixed it for ya!

[Hibobb]

@AZJW Guilty as charged!

[motonap]

The Transalp was never ever considered an off roader in all its iterations! A friend once referred to it as an easy going soft roader with crazy reliability to outlast a generation of riders!

 

Honda got lazy with design, which seems to be their model for success, reuse parts from existing stable to make new bikes! The entire CB line up used the same headlight, console, suspension, frame, headlight, tail light, indicator, electronics, engine, footpegs etc etc etc 

The new Hornet & Transalp are not different, headlight from the CB, tail light from the AT. Design cues for both bikes from existing models. Only thing new - that engine!!! Which sounds cool on paper and has crazy reviews. The motor is Honda's version of Yamaha's CP2.

 

I was excited to hear the Transalp was making a comeback, I had always dreamed of owning one, then I bought a T7 and lost interest. Only to further lose interest when I saw the new Transalp 

[Wintersdark]

10 hours ago, Alf Meister said:

It doesn’t have cruise control. Honda could’ve easily added it (unlike Yamaha), which I can never fathom why, seeing as many riders want cc along with tubeless rims. 

Well I'll be damned.  I assumed they'd include cruise control because *of course you do* when you've got all the other electronic tomfoolery, it literally costs nothing to include - there's no additional hardware, and the software obviously already exists.

 

This leads me to believe that the absence of CC and the super budget suspension are the way they are in a half-assed way to prevent cannibalization of the Africa Twin market.  That's a real concern of course, but deliberately and pointlessly making another bike worse is the wrong way to approach it.

 

Frankly, without CC that severely degrades the road-touring advantages the Transalp has. 

 

8 hours ago, winddown said:

 

Well i didn't want to say it,   But there it is. 

 

Gravel mode?  Modes Modes everywhere a Mode, Blockin' out the scenery, spoiling my road.  Do this, don't do that, better pick the right Mode.   I don't want a gravel mode,  I like it when the back wheel lets go and shifts sideways a half a foot.  Weeeeee.

I'm going to pretend I'm young enough to not pick up what you're laying down there.

 

But for real: While I often come from a different place than @Ray Ride4life in these discussions (though I hope he understands that while I often disagree I absolutely respect his position and where he's coming from) and indeed absolutely love tech, I have to agree that having swafts of ride modes at least for me isn't a great thing: People almost always in my experience simply pick the ride mode they like best and leave it there; maybe pick an alternate for really bad conditions and kick it down to that when things are really sketchy.  I've literally NEVER met anyone who regularly uses their ride modes on any bike. Never. 

 

From an offroad perspective, I have to agree that it's going to retard the learning process, or halt it entirely.  Maybe that's fine; if you're buying the Transalp as a pavement-biased adventure tourer that only occassionally sees gravel roads, never actually learning to ride off pavement is probably not a huge problem.  But it does work to further shoehorn the Transalp into a kind of weird place where they're fighting price and capability constraints from multiple directions. 

 

I honestly feel they'd have been better served making it more T7-esque and that frankly they could have come to the table with a T7 killer, but where afraid to do that.  The Africa Twin is a much stronger tarmac tourer where it's weight, power, and features are more advantageous... but they cheaped out on the parts that would have made it better offroad... while holding back from making it better onroad due to the AT problem. 

 

I'd suggest that a better approach, if I may don my Honda Hat for a moment, would have been aiming the Transalp more at the T7, and leaning the Africa Twin more towards the high end big adventure space.   But, I guess we'll see how it plays out. 

 

I dunno.  I'm honestly disappointed with Honda.  Not surprised - as Ray said, it feels like Honda has really just lost the engineering passion they once had and are just making mass-market machines, not really willing to take any kind of risk and make something that truly stands out.  Not that I think the Transalp is bad at all, it's just not exciting from any perspective really. 

 

[Ray Ride4life]

6 minutes ago, Wintersdark said:

though I hope he understands that while I often disagree I absolutely respect his position and where he's coming from

Everybody has the right of their own opinion, that's also why a perfect bike don't exist en never will because they're build to an average to please as many people.
I do like to argue sometimes because that leads often to unexpected insights and answers you otherwise never had thought of.
I also know that i can come across less likeable but that's mainly due to the lack of expression in writing plus i'm Dutch and we're known as very direct (especially the part where i was born and raised) and that is doubled because i'm slightly autistic but i made a lot of progress with the side effects from that.

[winddown]

6 hours ago, Hibobb said:

Winddown must be an old goat!

 

Old coot if you don't mind

[Ray Ride4life]

My ex send me this last week with the text "you?"

[Hammerhead]

16 hours ago, winddown said:

 

Well i didn't want to say it,   But there it is. 

 

Gravel mode?  Modes Modes everywhere a Mode, Blockin' out the scenery, spoiling my road.  Do this, don't do that, better pick the right Mode.   I don't want a gravel mode,  I like it when the back wheel lets go and shifts sideways a half a foot.  Weeeeee.

And the mode said ya gotta pay subscription fees to go & ride…uughh!

[thepointchris]

8 hours ago, Ray Ride4life said:

Everybody has the right of their own opinion, that's also why a perfect bike don't exist en never will because they're build to an average to please as many people.
I do like to argue sometimes because that leads often to unexpected insights and answers you otherwise never had thought of.
I also know that i can come across less likeable but that's mainly due to the lack of expression in writing plus i'm Dutch and we're known as very direct (especially the part where i was born and raised) and that is doubled because i'm slightly autistic but i made a lot of progress with the side effects from that.

hey, Ray: if it ain't Dutch  it ain't much!

[winddown]

21 hours ago, Wintersdark said:

 

I honestly feel they'd have been better served making it more T7-esque and that frankly they could have come to the table with a T7 killer, but where afraid to do that.  The Africa Twin is a much stronger tarmac tourer where it's weight, power, and features are more advantageous...

 

 

I guess from their perspective they are serving the market, or at least the bean counters would have convinced the board they were.  That doesn't mean the bike wont be a flop sales-wise.  Into their decision making must come the 'China factor'.   The chinese "Rubbish" is not in Oz in a big way but there are people who have convinced themselves that they are great bikes   The starting point is $$$, I'll save a packet, and then to justify their decision I see these buyers saying outlandish things about the quality and reliability of Chinese bikes. 

 

Well what other people ride is their business, but I wouldn't even park up beside one just in case the sidestand failed and it fell over onto my bike.  We used to buy Japanese and German solar panels, 100% quality they were.  Then the China price drove them all out of business.   And No Louise, generic Chinese  panels are not as good, they have a high failure rate unless they are the ones made their under license and strict supervision.  Perhaps bike manufacturers are just trying to keep ahead of the curve and maintain market share so they aren't pushed out the back door too.  Most of us here understand the value of quality but young riders coming into the market, what do they know?  They know Shet!  Just like we all knew Shet when we were 17 years old.  Their life experience boils down to purchasing computers and smart phones and they are all a much of a muchness, not so with motorcycles.

 

How's that for a grumpy old man's opinion