2019 bikesales Bike of the Year: how the awards process works

The 2019 bikesales Bike of the Year has now been named following a rigorous process that saw the nine judges complete five days of road testing in the valleys and peaks of north-east Victoria.

As the most prestigious award under the bikesales umbrella, in 2019 we again assembled nine category winners – excluding enduro and motocross – and placed them under the critical eye of our strongest-ever judging panel.

Judging was based on five main criteria: engine and drivetrain; brakes and handling; build quality; value for money; and the degree to which it is fit for purpose. All five were marked out of 20 for an overall score out of 100.

Here are the details behind the choice of finalists and the testing stage of what we believe is the most rigorous bike award Down Under.

The finalists were shortlisted by the bikesales editorial team, from literally dozens of new motorcycles released in 2019.

Basic eligibility requires that all motorcycles must be series-production models available via dealers or a wholesale distribution chain by September 1 of a particular year.

Unlike our sister site, carsales.com.au, which only considers substantially updated or new variants each year, Bikesales still factors pre-existing models into our deliberations – and some still came up trumps this year, like the BMW K 1600 Grand America (Touring) and Kawasaki KX450 (Motocross).

If a motorcycle is not available for evaluation, we reserve the right to include it in the subsequent year's testing. This ensures that motorcycles that have been launched but are not available for our test timetable can be included in later year(s). That hasn't happened yet, but there's always the possibility that a new model will generate such massive interest that shipments head straight from the docks to customers before we can get our hands on a test unit.

Bikesales doesn't have key eligibility requirements in a mechanical or technical sense for a bike to be included in the Bike of the Year calculations.

An essential element of the judging process is, of course, the bikesales road-test team, whose combined experience assessed the nine finalists against predetermined criteria to decide an overall victor.

This year, the judging panel comprised bikesales editor, Mark Fattore, and senior journalist, Rod Chapman, along with a strong cast of long-standing Bikesales contributors. Click here for a full rundown on the riding background of each.

Over a week of testing, the judges assessed the nine finalists across all sorts of roads: from straight and flat to twisty and undulating as we took maximum advantage of our base in Bright, nestled between a number of beautiful mountain peaks.

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2019 Bikesales Bike of the Year: BMW K 1600 Grand America
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2019 Bikesales Bike of the Year: in summary
2019 Bikesales Bike of the Year winner: KTM 790 Adventure R
2019 Bikesales Bike of the Year: the full story
2019 Bikesales Bike of the Year: how the awards process works
2019 Bikesales Bike of the Year: the crew