Is It Really THAT Good? Honda Goldwing In-Depth Review

[Music] welcome back to long way home everyone today's topic of fun will be the new generation honda goldwing and oh boy what an amazing week it has been i've spent a lot of time in the past week getting to know the gold wing it's pins it's out it's little quirks so if this is something that interests you stick around now the first thing that really impressed me on the gold wing is its engine it's massive more than 1.8 liters engine a six cylinder boxer it doesn't sound like anything i've heard so far on a motorcycle it doesn't have that motorcycling angry exhaust note it's more like a like a jet engine spooling up its power gathering it somewhere and then all of a sudden shooting you off the face of the planet like a rocket for its huge size it only makes 125 horsepower but that's not where the fun is the fun is in the 170 newton meters of torque that it produces most of it at really low rpms where you're going to be spending most of your time i mean this thing cruises at 120 k's an hour at 2 and a half 000 rpm it's a very laid back confident engine because it knows it has the power and that's in tour mode where again you're going to be spending most of your time but if you want to have fun sport mode is where it's all at now it's switched to sport mode look at that it's already downshifted oh oh okay that's a completely different beast okay tour is for when you touring sport is for man this is agile with the push of a button the gold wink gets completely transformed and by transformed i mean it's a completely different beast the engine makes more of a ruckus there's no more lag all of that power is instantly available no matter what speed you're going at and all in all this was way more fun than i was expecting when i first got the bike [Music] but that's only half of the equation great engine on a bike is useless if the rest of the bike is uh bad this one i'm glad to say it's exactly the opposite if you look at the gold wing at its sheer size you would be forgiven thinking that this was a straight line only machine a drag racer of sorts but no this thing is agile the boxer engine helps it keep its center of gravity very low and that makes it extremely flickable in the twisties a lot more than again i was expecting when i first got it and apart from the low center of gravity the japanese did quite a bit of magic when it comes to balancing this bike again i think that would be the the correct way of saying it and by balancing i mean how little effort it takes from you the rider to keep it straight and i'm not talking about straight when you're riding straight when even when you're standing still or when you're going really really low speeds like 5ks an hour it is extremely well balanced okay we're on tour now let me show you exactly how well balanced this bike is okay so we're idling and i'm keeping the break in so we can go slower than idling what are we doing we're doing like five here it's turning circle isn't that great isn't that bad either but it is extremely maneuverable at very very low speeds and i mean this should be physically impossible on a bike that is this heavy it shouldn't how have they done this what sort of ninja magic is this riding at slow speeds in parking lots in the city anywhere making maneuvers moving this bike left and right at slow speeds it is a breeze it's not supposed to be like that i mean the laws of physics apply to everyone honda when i first got on this bike i was expecting absolute perfection no excuses on any part of it because at the end of the day you are looking at 33 000 or around 33 000 us dollars of motorcycle that is a lot the base model starts at about 23 this one is 33 it's the tour version with the dct everything put on it so uh no excuses was my motto and uh the japanese delivered there are very few things that i can nitpick around but all in all their attention to detail was amazing i mean look at the key even this thing is is beautiful to just take a look at there is a there is a goldwing logo motif on uh you pretty much stare at it the whole time you're riding that is beautiful as well that's a nice little touch the thing even has an airbag i mean what other motorcycle do you know with an airbag so in the end amazing attention to detail you can see that honda tries to get it right before putting the new generation out into the market and not you know working year over year over here to improve it it's right straight out of the factory [Music] [Applause] gate [Music] the suspension is another integral part of why the gold wing is the gold wing and why it's such a great piece of machinery unlike fork suspension on most bikes the gold wing comes equipped with something very similar to a car suspension it's got dual wishbones in the front which pretty much disconnects the top of the bike to the road surface and i know this doesn't sound good in motorcycling but it really is like basically flying it's it's like riding on as i said in the first review and i haven't changed my mind since then aladdin's carpet this thing just floats over absolutely everything the top of the bike is i'm not feeling anything that's coming from the road and you can see it here work actually quite a bit and this is uh this is a smooth road surface and it's still working quite a bit so that i'm not feeling anything and that's why i say i'm i'm feeling like aladdin right now so add those three things together an amazing engine a beautifully balanced bike and that great suspension and you've got something really unique over here something that you don't really find on any other motorcycle [Music] [Applause] the brakes are absolutely huge i was stupid and made a stupid mistake and had to emergency brake it looks humongous it weighs again 400 almost 400 kilograms but it stops on a dime the brake dive on this bike is actually engineered in there honda could have gotten it so that when you're braking there was no brake dive all together because again of the clever suspension but they decided to engineer a little bit of brake dive because we as riders know to gauge the amount of braking force that we were exerting on the bike on the on the lever actually by how much it dives that's again amazing engineering [Music] [Applause] [Music] and unlike on the africa twin i really love the way the buttons are arranged on the gold wing both the right and the left clusters are very logically lined up and i appreciate the fact that honda put huge physical buttons right in front of the rider including buttons for the heated grips and physical buttons for the heated seats i mean that's just great you don't have to faff around in some sort of menu submenu sub menu to turn on your heated grips or your heated seats so well done on that the side cases and the top case i love this little feature they've got electric buttons now you just press it it also has a shock so it slowly goes down you close it back up and you just walk away as long as the key is in your pocket and you're far away from the bike all of those are closed amazing functionality for riding in the city for for stopping many times you don't have to worry about have i locked everything is somebody going to open my cases and take my stuff just a lot of thinking came from honda when designing all of these systems and they are spot on it also has a reverse gear and a forward gear well it has seven forward gears but uh i'm talking about the walking mode ones on the dct version you can put it into snail mode walking mode and with the pedals forward and reverse the bike will creep along so you don't have to you know exert yourself while moving it in tight spaces and here's this other party piece for uh for riding in the city again 400 kilos almost but put it in neutral press this little gray button here next to the next to the pedals now you're gonna have to keep the brake in and then with the with the pedals with the minus one and the plus one you can go forward at like walking pace i think it's called walking mode or a snail mode and uh more useful than that you can reverse again walking speed walking pace like a snail the other good part is that you don't have to keep changing gears you can just go forward backwards forward again i think for uh for maneuvering this in in tight spaces this is a an amazing implementation of uh of how forward and reverse walking modes and motorcycles uh should be so i'm glad and i like the fact that they put a forward gear on there i mean a reverse gear we all understand why that is necessary but a forward gear helps as well because if you have to maneuver it in tight spaces you don't have to sit and change gears anymore you can just go reverse forward reverse forward it works it works brilliantly audio system i have had a chance to play with it it is a lot louder than i was expecting i mean even at about 150 i was able to enjoy some music over there you can play it from your bluetooth you can play it from uh from apple carplay or google auto you can listen to either normal radio or satellite radio and it's got an auxiliary input as well so uh music from anywhere the dct the automatic gearbox on this is is probably the definition of why it was invented i cannot imagine riding a goldwing with a manual transmission and it's not because i'm terribly lazy to change gears but the dct allows me so much more time to take in the views especially at slower speeds i don't my brain doesn't have to concern itself anymore with what gear am i in let's go work the clutch all of that no just tour grand tour this should be called the luxurious grand touring motorcycle its own segment oh and also add sporty in there now because you've got a an amazing sport mode in my one week of riding the dct worked beautifully there are no different modes to change it in like on the africa twin there's no sports or drive modes but the drive mode works amazingly and it's also sort of self-learning as well because it sees the way you're riding and it will try and change gears according to to what it thinks you wanted to change gears and it gets it right pretty much all of the time so i have no complaints on the dct and i've become a major fan of this technology oh and it comes with an airbag as well because why not i mean i don't have a single other motorcycle that comes with an airbag none it's the only one i think but if i was to complain a little bit which of course i am uh electronic damping suspension there is electronic preload suspension but there's no damping suspension and the preload i wish for a bike of this nature for it to actually be automatic i mean that technology already exists on other bikes if i'm getting on it with luggage if i'm getting on it with a passenger and luggage i wanted to automatically sense that weight and set it for me because i might forget to do it and if i forget to do it we're gonna have a bad ride sweating like a pig and two other complaints when it comes to the infotainment system as well the base on the speakers is non-existent it's like my ability to do calculus it's not there i mean there are base controls and i've put everything up played with the equalizers nothing it's not it's not fun and as of now a week later since i got it i still have no idea how to play music through my headset it'll play fine through the speakers but i've navigated that menu over and over again and i don't know how to route the music from from the carplay app to my headset which is embarrassing but i'm tired of looking so i think that little infotainment menu needs a bit of a refresh it needs to be more human usable [Music] all right so in conclusion in my opinion this is the most luxurious cruiser it's not a cruiser it's a tourer the goldwing is pretty much the most luxurious tourer is beeping the gold wings beeping alright so in conclusion in my opinion the gold wing the most luxurious tourer on the market except in this new generation it's not really only a tourer anymore it's gotten younger it's now i would put this now in the category of a sports tourer because that sports mode it just it brings out the youth in you which is exactly what you want on a tourer so yeah great bike amazing piece of kit if you're interested in long distance comfortable touring then the gold wing is definitely a must for you to take a look at if there's anything else that you want to know about it that i haven't mentioned in the video the comment section below is the right place for you if you've enjoyed this video give it a big thumbs up if you think you've learned something new consider subscribing or becoming one of our patrons to help us make more of these shows cheers and i'll see you on the next one you

Channel: Long Way Home

Views: 101,493

Rating: 4.9226842 out of 5

Keywords: motorbike, motorvlog, motorcycle news, long way home, long way home news, long way home motorcycle, motorcycle, honda goldwing, gold wing review, honda gold wing, honda gold wing review, gold wing, honda gl1800, best touring motorcycle, honda goldwing review, goldwing review, gl1800 review, 2021 goldwing, honda goldwing dct, honda goldwing 2021 review, 2021 goldwing review, goldwing 2021, goldwing exhaust

Id: CLfMhTOc8wI

Length: 15min 56sec (956 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 27 2021