2018 Honda Gold Wing Tour | Favorites & Fails

When you ride as many different motorcycles as we do it gives you good perspective on a given bike’s strengths and weaknesses. And whether you’re shopping for your next bike or just want to be in the know, it’s helpful to get an experienced rider’s opinion. So as a quick way to convey the highs and lows of the bikes we’ve been riding we came up with this new video series. Favorites & Fails is exactly what the name suggests, a concise list of the good and bad of the bikes we’re riding.

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My riding preferences lean heavily toward smaller, lighter, more lively naked bikes like the Suzuki SV650 and Yamaha FZ-07 or Aprilia's fire-breathing Tuono V4 1100, but even as a diehard performance guy there are still aspects of the 2018 Gold Wing Tour that I appreciate. After all, I spent six months and 20,000 miles touring the US as an alternative to college, so I know what matters when you're on the road. With all that in mind, here are my favorite and least-favorite features on the new G-Wing based on my first-ride experience in Texas.

FAVES

That adjustable windscreen and the bike's awesome aerodynamics.
If you’ve never maneuvered the sail of a windscreen on the previous-generation Goldy, let me outline the process. First, ya gotta pull over. Then flip the levers on either side of the dash, grasp the top of the screen, and either shimmy that giant sheet of polycarbonate up or down, depending on what you’re after. Thank goodness all that manual manipulation is in the past! The 2018 bike has an electrically adjustable screen that’s controlled by a rocker switch near the left grip. And no matter where you position the new, narrower windscreen, the airflow over you and your passenger is going to be smoother and cleaner than on the outgoing bike. We've got wind-tunnel testing to thank for that. Back-to-back rides confirm the new Gold Wing has better aero, and now that you can adjust the windscreen with the push of a button while in motion, the convenience and comfort factors are through the roof.

Next-gen linked brakes.
The crude functionality of early linked-braking systems left plenty of us with a bad taste in our mouths (I'm thinking of the setup that Kawasaki put on the Concours 14 a number of years ago), but the combined brakes on the Gold Wing are totally transparent and help slow the big rig down quickly while keeping the chassis perfectly level. Pressing the rear-brake pedal squeezes the rear disc and seamlessly feeds some pressure to the front calipers (specifically the center two pistons on each of the new radially mounted six-piston calipers) to ensure smooth, strong deceleration. It works so effectively that I rarely used the front-brake lever while riding around the back roads of Texas.

That new dash.
There’s no way to put it subtly—the outgoing bike’s instrumentation was a disaster. So. Many. Buttons. Over the years Honda kept adding features to the Wing until the entire cockpit was carpeted in buttons, knobs, and switches. The gauge faces and LCD screen were also looking pretty dated, so I was happy to see that Honda totally overhauled the dash on the 2018 bike. It’s not only functional, it’s attractive and thoroughly modern and really helps distance the new bike from the old one. A new menu system (that you navigate via the new 7-inch TFT display) eliminates dozens of buttons, and overall the cockpit appears more streamlined and sophisticated.

As always, that flat-six engine!
There’s something special about the way six cylinders turn gas into forward motion. The smoothness is unparalleled, the sound is inspiring, and the torque is phenomenal. The King Wing’s 1,833cc produce more than 100 pound-feet of torque right off idle, so there’s never a shortage of thrust, at least in the first few gears. Speaking of gears, there are now six (instead of five), and you can even get the Wing in a seven-speed DCT version. Ride-by-wire throttle, a slipper clutch, and four valves per cylinder are all new features for the reworked engine and only serve to make it more adaptable and better than ever.

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2018 Honda Gold Wing Tour by the numbers:

Base Price: $26,700
Displacement: 1833cc
Claimed Wet Weight: 838 lbs. (380.11 kg)
Fuel Capacity: 5.55 gal. (21.09L)
Measured Horsepower: 97.85 @ 5,550 rpm
Measured Torque: 108.4 lb.-ft. @ 1,210 rpm

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