2017 Bikesales Bike of the Year Awards: in summary

In 2016, Bikesales launched its first Bike of the Year Award, won by Honda’s excellent Africa Twin adventure bike.

In 2017, we’ve now taken the excellent platform provided by the inaugural awards to make it a bigger, better and bolder affair.

While we had no limits on price, performance or capacity to be included in the 2017 Bikesales Bike of the Year Awards, to be eligible each bike must be a volume production machine and had been on sale in Australia as of September 1, 2017.

Massive road test
After selecting 11 category winners across all the key two-wheel segments in the Aussie market, we hit the road with eight of them – the Motocross (Yamaha YZ450F), Enduro (KTM 350 EXC-F) and Scooter (Vespa Primavera iGET 150) winners were left at home – in a four-day mega test across the Snowy Mountains.

After 1500km of riding across the roof of Australia, our reports cards for the eight bikes were as follows:

• Aprilia Tuono V4 1100 RR
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The three finalists
After returning from the ride, the really vexing part began: picking three Bike of the Year finalists to battle it out for the overall award. It was anything but easy, however using a broad range of criteria, including all-round excellence, innovation, safety, performance and value for money – the very same fields that play a core part of sister site Carsales.com.au's annual Car of the Year awards – we selected the three finalists.

The winner
And then another layer of mental anguish: selecting the winner! And that honour in 2017 goes to the Aprilia Tuono V4 1100 RR. A mighty machine on so many levels: fast, furious, tactile and beautifully engineered. And an engine that’s so punchy, powerful and intoxicating, supported by superb electronics.

Congratulations to Aprilia, as well as the finalists, category winners, honorable mentions and best LAMS bikes.

See you again in 2018, in what is shaping as another stellar year for the latest and greatest motorcycles.