Would I choose?

[Data]

Yes the Burgman is 710mm seat height from 2007+. It's low. But I'm 6'2" with longs legs and I find it just fine. I can ride with feet/legs in the normal sit up and beg bolt upright position, or adopt the cruiser style ride with my feet right forward. It's very very comfortable. There is plenty of knee room in whatever position you adopt. I don't find the low seat height a disadvantage for seeing above traffic or across bends. And I came from a Vstrom 1000 with seat height of 860mm! You do adapt easily in most cases. I guess if someone is verticaly challenged it might be different. Although my bro in law manages just fine on it and he is 5'7". The rider adjustable seat backrest is also a godsend allowing shorter people to find exactly the right seating position. How's the GTS for comfort?

[Bluebottle]

......apart from weather protection "proper" bikes do everything better in every way in every situation.

I disagree. Some stuff better, some stuff worse.

I can carry a full load of shopping inside my burger, no need for ruckdacks or luggage and it is less of a handful in stop start traffic.
OK, plenty of bikes will beat it in a race but they have to go well outside the law to do it, Middleweight bikes usually hold me up in the 0-30-0mph stuff because they are fiddling around with gears.

I had a great experience with a bloke on a bandit (I think) who was showing off by timing runs on a slalom circuit during a boring wait.
"Of course scooters are no good for this type of stuff, power, wheelbase, blah,blah " he says, louder than he needed to
He should have challenged me to a drag race instead 'cos my scooter wiped the floor with him on that slalom.
Best to pick your battles according to your advantage and he didn't.

a chap came in with a burgman 400 56 plate ...and i noticed the seat height was very low

The seat height was raised in 2007 for the later model.
Low seat heights should give lower drag (as Irev says about very low seats) but I prefer the advantage of seeing over cars, being easier to see and the better ergonomics for your legs if you need some leverage against the ground. I wouldn't want to be lower than my late 400

[irev]

If the world were flat and cars were all the same size the taler seat argument might hace some merit.

But it isn't, and they aren't, so for every situation where the taller seat gives you an advantage there is another where the lower seat has the edge - looking through car windows and not having your vision blocked by rooflines, looking around obstacles , less impediment to filtering as hands and handlebars pass under wing mirrors. Also, as an instructor I can tell you one key advantages of a low seat height is to let me see the fingers of my students hands on the levers - I get a much clearer picture of how they're doing what they're doing than when I ride a company one-lunger sat-up and begging looking only at the tops of their hands.

The other advantage of the low seat is one that has yet to be properly adopted - to enable better aerodynamics and reduce the pitching moment about the CG. and with it the frequency and amplitude of the changes of co-efficient of friction of the front and rear tyre contact patches.

Dan Gurney, Formula One Legend and someone who understands CG and aerodynamics placed his rider low in the Alligator


This 70hp single regularly trounced bikes of twice the horsepower on the track precisely because of those advantages - later, harder braking (using both wheels as the fundamental truism remains to brake harder or later you need more rubber in contact with the road), earlier acceleration (less propensity for pitch-induced loss of traction or `highside` and lower overall CG meaning less offset to the centre of thrust when power is applied whilst cranked over).
What always appealed to me was these advantages were with a halfway-house development as Gurney retained neanderthal forks and that performance limiting high-headstock and didn't use full enclosure or flow breakaway management at the rear but Eddie Lawson endorsed this. So it's not only a concept, proven but another opportunity, missed by the industry.

The Burger carries its weight low, and it carries its 62 litres of storage not only between the wheels, low down, but also much closer the centreline. None of these are possible with CBR's or any motorcycle - not even the NC700's as the helmet box/tank maybe between the wheels, but it's positioned high above the CG (which Honda brags about being so low for inherent balance advantage) so dding to roll inertia in the same way as putting a six-stoner on a see-saw at double the distance from the fulcrum means they balance a 12-stoner so the impact of that smaller storage space is also larger than that of the Burgers, even when the Burger is carrying two or three times the weight...

[Gerard C]

Nicely put view point.

[Bluebottle]

You still doing CBTs then Simon? Thought you'd stopped

The low seating definitely has advantages - I was trying to give a nod to that and to your evangelism of it.

I like the idea for the track or long distances (US highway maybe) less so for commuting
I've only ridden prototypes, nothing fully sorted.

Mainly I felt harder to spot because of the smaller frontal area and being easily obscured. Instead of being head and shoulders above and was really aware of not getting clear observations at junctions and to what was happening on the near side when filtering, it felt like every vehicle was a truck. I'm not at all sure it is 50/50 on the visibility.

I found it hard on my back/thighs to do any sort of duck-walk when somebody else parked it carelessly.

As you said, the front end needs to be looked at at the same time because with forks your hands are so high the blood runs out of them and they quickly go numb

There are pros and cons in the safety too - one will throw you over a bonnet, the other will put you under a wagon, which to choose? I like the idea of the extra protection you can add to a low seat but not the idea of taking a Calibra to the chest instead of the legs

[Data]

I agree with ridinhigh apart from weather protection "proper" bikes do everything better in every way in every situation. Don't get me wrong I love maxi scoots & they do what they're designed for admirably but I do really miss the power & lightness of a "proper" bike.

Yes...I can see that is your view, but I too would disagree. I've had too many bikes over the last 43 years. Big and small. Every type except cruisers. My GSX would go 0-62mph in 2.57secs, lovely but totally impractical and thirsty into the bargain. What a useless bike that was. No luggage space, heavy on maintenance, and very costly to run. They've all been fun but very limited in many ways when you compare them to a modern maxi scooter, or even some of the midrange scooters that are not necessarily classed as maxi's. I've often used my bikes as work machines...I was a full time motorcycle instructor in the 80's for quite some time and did other jobs too where I used the bike all the time. The bikes were good. But, with my first maxi, I can see the often severe shortcomings of modern motorcycles. Yes, modern bigger bikes will leave my Burgman standing when it gets to silly speeds, but the handling and roadholding of the Burgman is tremendous and certainly comparable to most midrange bikes. But I have all the advantages BlueBottle speaks of and much more. I do believe though, that you have to be 'ready' to take on a scooter. That often means riding bikes first and then moving up to a scooter like I did. Otherwise, you think you are missing something! I will not go back to big bikes again. There is just no appeal for me in that, and the impracticality of most bikes is a major headache. But it's a choice thing I know.

[Deeping]

here's another one

[Deeping]

here's another one

roast nuts?

[Bluebottle]

here's another one

There are loads. It's a very old idea............like 1900's old

there was a rash of them in the 20's and '30's with the birth of what was then called "streamlining"
This is the Ro-monocar and the the Neracar

[Deeping]

I like that 1927 monocar, does that mean I am a bit weird?