Super nakeds

[nick crisp]

I think you're right Positron...it is said that we all have less and less time for recreation nowadays and for most it is the chance of maybe 1 day a week during the summer pending family commitments....these super nakeds tap into that to give as much fun as possible over a short time.......& looking at tank ranges on modern bikes confirms that as although biking forums will tend to have lots of guys that do mega mileage i think the trend is for guys to be only doing short local blasts of 50-100 miles and calling it a day.

This is all dependant on the age perspective  :lol
I don't think anything has changed in this regard in last 10-20 years. Young folks starting families have less time. But older folks whose kids have flown the nest, perhaps approaching or at retirement have more time and disposable income. The so-called born-agains.

I think maybe people have just started to realise there's more to bikes than just outright performance ( :eek  :lol), I myself started to get bored with seeing so many sports bikes everywhere, and I think the manufacturers have reacted to people with this view - thank God, as we now have much more variety to look at than, say, 10 years ago, and older folks often don't bend to fit so well  :\  These are the folks, as said, with the disposable income, so the manufacturers need to consider their opinions/buying trends. Look how many BMW GSs there are around - comfort, I would guess, is a big factor in their sales success as it's only a small proportion, surely, that actually end up circumnavigating the globe!

But I think you are right in that there are many who only want something for a Sunday blast and not to tour on. But I don't see anything much still to replace the early Fazers, 600 and 1000 gen 1. I don't think the MT-09 is the uber-competent all-rounder that these are (not arguing that it's not a good bike!), and aside from the Z1000SX, I don't know what else that's new fits that gap.