but thats it exactly. the short comings. you way up what you want from a bike and find a bike that suits as many as you can.
for me its good handling, fun, different, nice sound, conversation starter, as different as i can get without compromising too much on reliability and issues. top speed of 200 is fine as long as it gets off hte mark well.
see... for me the buell xb is hands down teh choice.
great example. police up one of our local roads over hte weekend, pulling over everybike as they headed that way to inspect and breath test. the lady and i on our buells. obvously non compliant with noise, blinker mods, reflector removal, short tail, wrong angle license plate, me with no rego label, and so forth... yet all they wanted to do was enquire about hte bike. the more we talked up their specialty and quirks, the more they liked them. they even commented on the nice sound. as it was out of hte 9 bikes lined up with us, only us and one standard scooter got away with no fines. the R1s, gsxr750 and ducatis x 3 and a s1000rr all got pinged. they didnt like us, and once we got to the halfway joint, even more were surprised by our get away, and still intrigued and looking over hte bikes.
our two buells get more looks than almost all the bikes on regular occasions! [smirk] and saying all that, yeah i like the quality of a s1000rr and even more the grunt and noise of a rsv4, but i know that i will be riding them too fast to enjoy them and bored of their look before hte first week was over. at least with oompah... she has 11 outfits and i change as i please. she was red on black yesterday, now blue, by next week she will be very different with her new transformation.