2008 Victory Vision Tour and Street

2008 Victory Vision Tour and Street

Advertisers contact for details

2008 Victory Vision Tour and Street launch-Cruisin’ with the alien

In 1998 Polaris launched Victory motorcycles and 6 years ago work started on the Vision luxury tourers. Six years and 20 million dollars later the Vision Tour and Street is a finished product. We were granted 450 miles in the seat of the Vision touring bike in Minnesota, USA.

Words: Tor Sagen/Photography: Tor Sagen/Wayne Davies

I am outside of a posh hotel in the city centre of Minneapolis and have just entered the cockpit of this alien looking piece of American design. The first and most important thing that I do is to connect the iPod Nano Victory gave us as a launch gift to make use of the stereo system.

Victory chose to launch the Vision in Minnesota as the factory and the whole Victory team are based here. Not only would we get to ride the new leviathan, we would also get to see it being built at the factory.

The Vision Tour sails straight into a scarcely populated part of the motorcycle market called luxury touring. This is where we find the Honda Gold Wing, Harley-Davidson Ultra Classic and BMW K1200LT full-on touring bikes. The Vision Tour is all about comfort and design to make touring as effortlessly and stylish as possible. Lower and longer than the rest has also been Victory’s motto during the development period.

After the correct map is loaded on to my onboard GPS I am ready to tackle the morning rush hour out of Minneapolis and towards the endless corn fields in this rural part of America. We have got about 300 miles to cover in the states of Minnesota and Iowa following the Mississippi river.

The frame is as innovative as the overall design and it doubles as the air box. The new design helps stability at high speed, but also improves both horsepower and torque due to a larger volume (11L) than on any other Victory motorcycle. Both the frame and swingarm are made of cast aluminium to save weight. Another Vision innovation are the double 22.7 (total combined volume) litre fuel tanks also made from aluminium.

The new fuel injected Freedom 50 degree V-twin engine is based on existing engine architecture and the 106 S&S version. However, no part has been left untouched and this new 1731cc twin is more efficient than ever. The air/oil cooled set up is due to improved internal parts and better direction of the air flow very efficient. This has allowed Victory to shrink the oil-cooler and tuck it away neater than before. The 106 produces 92bhp @5.000rpm and 109ft-lbs torque @3.500rpm. Compared to the 100ci engine the stroke is up from 102mm to 108mm where bore remains at the same 101mm.

Out on the road the new 106 feels great. It is quiet when you want it too and wakes up with a roar if you tease it. Past 3.000 rpm there’s some real power coming to life and the air-box induction noise is great! This will be a proper beast with a stage 1 kit! Rolling on and off the throttle all happens smooth but there’s a noise somewhere that I can’t locate exactly. Somewhere in the running gear it sounds like, but the noise is actually due to the belt final drive. There’s been some sort of issue with either the sprockets or belts on the initial production run. The noise is only noticeable at low speeds and the engineers are working on getting rid of this unwanted noise for the next production run. Victory quote: "Any final drive noise will be corrected on all production machines, including these early test run machines"

To test the pillion comfort I had to be a pillion. So what I did on a clear stretch of road was to activate cruise control and then I jumped back into the pillion seat for a while on the Tour. Sitting back there was even better than in the rider’s seat! Really comfortable it was. It felt like riding the Vision Tour with remote control and I really enjoyed myself back there. To steer properly, brake and accelerate I obviously needed to get back in the rider’s seat, but it amazed me how stable and easy the bike cruised along even without any riding inputs. Since the bike doesn’t either wheelie or stoppie this was about the craziest thing that we could do on the Vision touring bikes. Did a shoot as well to get the pictures I needed of this. To my dismay, Victory motorcycles decided to sensor my riding images and removed these shots from my disc. -A great shame that a grown up corporation makes such a decision limiting my freedom of expression. It might say freedom twin on the side of the Victory Tour, but some of my freedom was just taken away. More words coming...