Sport tourers share many elements with their sport bike counterparts. Creature comforts aside, are they able to compete when it comes to raw speed?
Sometimes, it can be tough to spot the difference between a sport bike and a sport tourer. From a distance, all you see is a wind-cheating body fairing and some slick LED headlights, but then you notice the taller windscreen for less buffeting and the hard-sided saddlebags for carrying a week’s worth of clothing. Yep, it’s actually a sport touring bike coming at you.
Like their sport bike counterparts, sport tourers are designed to provide good road handling, ample power, and an exhilarating riding experience overall, but with more creature comforts than superbikes, which are often little more than street-legal versions of racing machines. Sport tourers typically provide such niceties as a larger fuel tank for increased range, a comfort-oriented seat, a quiet shaft drive, and heated handlebar grips.
Sport touring drivetrains don’t escape the comfort treatment either, with engine tuning and gearing that emphasizes a wide, useful powerband rather than finicky peak horsepower. We’ve clearly set the tone that sport tourers are configured more for cargo capacity and reducing fatigue over long distances, but can they trade blows with their sport bike siblings at the racetrack? Or might they be even faster? In an epic comparison, motorsports retailer RevZilla’s Common Tread blog set out to uncover the truth.
