2019 bikesales Bike of the Year: the full story

We lay bare our multi-stage judging process to show how we determine the winner of the bikesales Bike of the Year Awards.

Imagine a perfect day's ride: blues skies and sunshine; not too warm, not too hot; empty roads and bends – lots and lot of bends. Then put yourself on any of the best nine motorcycles the Australian market has to offer, add in a group of mates, and multiply that one day by five. Welcome to the 2019 bikesales Bike of the Year Awards…

The preliminary selection process for our bikesales Bike of the Year Awards begins months in advance, with previous bikesales reviews and much discussion between our in-house and contributing testers resulting in the announcement of finalists across 11 individual categories.

Excluding our Enduro and Motocross winners, our top Supersport, Sportstouring, Touring, Adventure Touring, Adventure Sport, Naked, Cruiser, Retro and Scooter models are then subjected to our gruelling five-day, bikesales Bike of the Year road test.

Best of the best

Crowning an ultimate winner is anything but clear cut, especially because every model that makes it through to our bikesales Bike of the Year mega-test is, we think, the best available in its respective field. So, how to determine a victor when you have a supersport bike next to a tourer, an adventure sport side by side with a scooter?

As the bikesales Bike of the Year Awards aren't a direct head-to-head comparison, it's a process that taps into the heart as much as it does the head. After all, riding bikes is, for many, about as passionate a pursuit as you can get…

For our judges, coming to a decision is then often informed by those fleeting moments of unadulterated riding bliss – those all-too-brief snatches of pure joy on two wheels, when the world seems somehow brighter, when nothing else matters save for the visceral connection shared with that symphony of engineering beneath you.

The bikesales Bike of the Year Awards bring many of those moments together in the one action-packed week, as our veteran judges cycle from one machine to the next over a hand-picked selection of truly scintillating roads.

Now in its fourth year, these awards have evolved yet again, with a fresh format that gives our judges their best opportunity yet to cut to the very heart of each and every model.

While previous years saw the bikesales team rack up big miles on circuitous multi-day routes through the motorcycling Meccas that are Tasmania and New South Wales' Snowy Mountains, for 2019 we headed to the picture-postcard township of Bright, nestled within the surrounding peaks of Victoria's magnificent High Country.

Bright was our headquarters for the full five days of this test and, with a smorgasbord of first-rate blacktop just minutes away, we were spoilt for choice. Using Bright as a base also gave us some flexibility with the weather, should those notoriously fickle gods choose to incur their wrath. If the weather closed in at altitude – as indeed it did during our recce run two weeks earlier – we'd stick to the valleys and leave the peaks for another day.

Fortunately, as fate would have it, this year's Bike of the Year Awards coincided with a climatic sweet spot – we enjoyed sunshine and warmth over all five days.

Mountain high

The route over nearby Mount Hotham, at an elevation of 1861 metres, was a highlight (pardon the pun), while the serpentine roads around Tawonga Gap, Anglers Rest and Falls Creek provided all we needed to gain a solid appreciation of each bike's character, strengths and nuances.

By the test's end we'd put around 1500km under the wheels of each of our nine contenders – more than enough for personal favourites to emerge.

Our judges, with an average riding career of over 35 years, rode each bike for around 30km before switching to the next model on the alphabetic list – BMW to Ducati, Ducati to KTM and so on.

The regular swaps gave everyone a good run on each of the nine participating models over a variety of roads, as well as a chance for regular discussion about the bikes in general, before we switched handlebars and dived back into the fray.

Each bike, meanwhile, was assessed over five fields – engine and drivetrain; brakes and handling; build quality; value for money; and the degree to which it is fit for purpose – with points awarded across multiple sub-criteria in each to give up to a maximum score of 20 for each field, and a grand total out of 100 for each bike.

Crunching the numbers

Of course one rider's personal favourites don't necessarily intersect with another's, especially when individual riding styles and preferred riding environs are taken into account, and that's where the bikesales Bike of the Year Awards judging process boils down to the numbers.

From eight motorcycles and one scooter, a solid four models emerged at the pointy end of proceedings: the KTM 790 Adventure R; the BMW S 1000 RR M Sport; the BMW K 1600 Grand America; and the Ducati Diavel 1260.

And with the numbers duly tallied, the final results underlined the comments we'd been hearing from Bike of the Year judges all week: KTM's 790 Adventure R was simply a sublime bit of gear, and a marvel both off-road and on.

KTM's new 790 Adventure R is one very impressive package on both road or trail.

Half of our judges selected the KTM as their top choice, while it was never far away in the points chase for the remainder. That this Austrian manufacturer, with its proud off-road heritage, should make another adventure bike that excels in the bush should come as no surprise, but to produce a machine that is so thrilling, capable and engaging on sealed roads as well took many of our judges by surprise.

It simply inspires confidence, whatever the situation or conditions, repaying its pilot's efforts 10-fold with pure riding pleasure.

Not far adrift, it was the boys across the border in Bavaria who rounded out the podium, with that masterpiece of sporting prowess, the BMW S 1000 RR M Sport, just a solitary point ahead of its behemoth of a stablemate, the K 1600 Grand America.

For pure, unadulterated sporting prowess, BMW's S 1000 RR M Sport is a powerhouse in every sense.

That BMW should come so close to top honours with two machines at totally opposite ends of the riding spectrum says it all about the German manufacturer's current breadth and depth of engineering talent. Like KTM, BMW is operating at full throttle these days, with products that nail everything wanted by modern riders.

BMW's K 1600 Grand America is a luxury liner on the long haul, but amazingly capable through the bends too.

And word should also be made of Ducati's Diavel 1260, the Italian manufacturer's power cruiser par excellence. Just one point back from third, the Diavel amazed us all with a level of performance that just doesn't seem possible for a fat-tyred bike of this weight and geometry.

Ducati's Diavel 1260 is a power cruiser par excellence.

But that reveals the underlying contradiction of the bikesales Bike of the Year Awards. Every year we think motorcycles (and scooters) can't get any better. And then every year, they do. But, right now, we reckon you just can't do better than KTM's new middleweight magician of road and trail, the 790 Adventure R – our 2019 bikesales Bike of the Year.

2019 bikesales Bike of the Year: the full story

Best of the best

Mountain high

Crunching the numbers

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