2008 Victory Vision Tour Premium - Full Test

If you want to make a motorcycle tester nervous about your new touring bike, tell him that your highest priority when designing the bike was styling. It's not that we have anything against good looks, but full-dress tourers require truckloads of engineering. They need to be comfortable, carry substantial amounts of gear, offer great range, provide enough power to make it all work at speed, still be manageable at low speed and in corners, and offer a raft of amenities. The problem is that style often gets in the way of all those functional requirements.

It isn't easy to make a successful touring bike even when you aren't focusing on style; consider that kawasaki and suzuki have been unable to produce a full-dresser. When you compare those companies' engineering chops to victory's experience, which essentially amounts to two cruiser platforms, you might understand why red flags went up when victory said its first new platform since the vegas (the basis for its current cruisers) was built to be eye-catching.

You don't have to ride far to discover that victory's stylists did their job well. In 35 years of testing motorcycles I have never had a touring bike of any sort, much less a full-dresser, get anything like the reaction the vision gets. People hang out of car windows to take photos, follow you into gas stations to say how great it looks and accost you at almost every stop to ask questions. And that's during the day. At night when the big V of the led taillights and glow of the lighted side logos are evident, the reaction only increases. Victory reps say they don't care if people love or hate it, they just want people to notice the vision. They definitely notice, and the dozens of people we talked to were universally thrilled by the styling to boot. We can quibble about some of the details, but there is no question that the overall lines and execution are stunning.

The engine is the only component here that isn't all-new. The Freedom 106/6 is a 1731cc (instead of 1634cc) stroked version of the 50-degree, air/ oil-cooled v-twin used in all of victory's cruisers. Victory says the 106 makes about 8 percent more horsepower (92) and 3 percent more torque (109 lb-ft) than the 100/6 engine in the cruisers. It retains the overdrive six-speed gearbox and belt final drive but has a more powerful 50-amp alternator. This year all victory engines received a number of changes to improve driveability and noise, including a new sixth-gear ratio to lower highway rpm by 3 percent, a lower first gear, reconfigured oil-flow paths in the heads and a redesigned airbox. The 106ci displacement is available as a hop-up option for the other cruisers.

Though the vision weighs about 200 pounds more than victory's lightest bikes and 100 pounds more than the heaviest, the kingpin Tour, the engine has more than enough drive for the job at hand. Although it doesn't charge quite as hard as some multicylinder dressers, it accelerates better than other v-twin tourers. Thanks to a very controllable clutch it is easy to gun hard from a stop, and response is strong when you grab a handful in the overdrive sixth gear on the highway with a full load.

Our only complaint about engine performance concerns a hiccup when we tried to accelerate hard from a stop with a lot of throttle. The engine bogged for a fraction of a second, as if fuel flow couldn't keep up with the sudden increase in airflow. The ECU was remapped after our testing was done, so this may have been addressed in production bikes. Otherwise it worked well with good throttle response, quick starting and an average fuel mileage of 37.4 mpg. (I once got 42 mpg on the highway.)

In any event, you can expect better than 200 miles from the 6-gallon tank. Heel-toe shifting is the norm on bikes with floorboards, but the vision has just a toe-shift lever, though you could adapt the kingpin's heel-toe shifter. Victory felt that the heel lever would limit space on those roomy floorboards.