Looking at new bikes.

Had a 2008 BMW X-Country 650 single that I bought new. Sold it in December. Wouldn't you know it, now I'm being transferred to a different work site and will need a bike. Liked the look of the Ducatti Scrambler Icon. Took it out for a spin at my local Dealer. Was surprised that it didn't seem to have much more power than my BMW. Felt like it was reaching top end at 85. Here in California people are doing 80 on a regular basis. I need to be able to keep up, and have little in reserve in case I need to get away from tards. So, maybe the Ducatti is out. That and the high price of service. Went to the local Yamaha Dealer today. Sorry. No test rides. WTF? I hadn't bought a bike since that 2008, and after the Ducatti dealer let me ride anything I wanted, I figured that was the case everywhere. How the hell are you going to know if you like the bike if all you can do is sit on it? Sheesh.

 

Wow that’s crap about the Yamaha dealer. Find another one if you can and check out the FZ-09, and even FZ-07 while you’re there. I had an FZ-07 and it was adequate for SoCal freeways

 

I've had a few motorcyle dealers tell me no test rides. A secret to test driving a certain bike is to negotiate price, submit an app for financing. Try to go all in on the bike and more times than not they will let you test it out. Should we have to go through that, no but some dealers just don't let people test drive unless they know they are serious about that bike. You can also try and go when they have demo days, they have a bunch of bikes for you to test ride.

 

Yamaha has demo days. Check out their web page under Demo Events, they have two upcoming.
https://www.yamahamotorsports.com/motorsports/pages/try-a-yamaha

I had a FZ-07 which was great, but I found it a little small for me. But I see many on freeway. I upgraded to a FJ-09 which is much better for me on the freeway. Of course more money than the 07.