2018 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 took the platform provided by the inaugural awards to make it a bigger, better and bolder affair, culminating with a ride through the Snowy Mountains.

In 2018, we again set out to find the best motorcycle on Aussie soil. While we had no limits on price, performance or capacity to be included in the 2018 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, 2018.

After selecting 11 category winners across all the key two-wheel segments in the Aussie market, we hit the road with nine of them – the Motocross (Kawasaki KX450) and Enduro (Gas Gas EC300) winners were left at home, for obvious reasons – in a three-day mega test in Tasmania.

After 900km of riding, our reports cards – including official scoring for the first time – were as follows:

• BMW S 1000 XR HP
• BMW K 1600 Grand America
• Ducati Panigale V4 S
• Harley-Davidson Fat Bob 114
• Honda Africa Twin Adventure Sports
• Kawasaki Z900RS Cafe
• KTM 1290 Super Duke GT
• Kymco AK 550
• Yamaha MT-09SP

After returning from the ride, we crunched the numbers to arrive at our top three in the 2018 BOTY. In 2017 that was quite a vexing process, but with our newly introduced bike ratings that process was much easier this year. There are five separate ratings categories, each marked out of 20 to give an overall total out of 100.

The honour in 2018 goes to the Kawasaki Z900RS Cafe. A beautiful machine on so many levels, with a huge amount of fun factor as well.

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

See you again in 2019, in what is shaping as another stellar year for the latest and greatest motorcycles.