If ever a name gave a false impression to a motorcycle then the Triumph Speedmaster is it, though to be fair, the Triumph Speedmaster name dates back to the 60s; this is what the US importers of Triumph called the T120R of the day, when parallel twins rules the road. Back then, the Triumph Speedmaster genuinely was fast. But back then it wasn't a cruiser. And today there aren't many cruisers that do the speed thing especially well; they're generally too heavy, lack the raw power of sportsbikes and push to much air.

Speed has no great bearing on how a cruiser functions on a daily basis. And on that score the Triumph Speedmaster challenges for the title of the easiest in the middleweight cruiser class. The Triumph Speedmaster looks great with its 865cc air-cooled 270º parallel twin engine sitting upright and proud complete with shiny slash-cut silencers gloss black headlamp surround, smooth 19 liters fuel tank finished in matte grey, asymmetrical spoked wheels and low curved seat. The only downside of the Triumph Speedmaster is probably the 730,000 THB asking price.

The Yamaha Tricity, is a three-wheeler and is primarily orientated for urban transport. The Yamaha Tricity is a 125cc scooter with two wheels at the front and one at the rear. So it's like the Piaggio MP3 but a bit smaller, lighter and most of all cheaper.

The front wheels are independently suspended but connected by a parallelogram link enabling them to lean in corners. Yet when you ride the Yamaha Tricity, you're rarely conscious of the extra front wheel. That's quite an achievement in engineering terms, although it might make you question why you'd bother having an extra wheel when you can get a conventional two-wheel scooter from Yamaha for a lot less.

The answer came on our test ride in downtown Bangkok, where the weather obliged our research by getting very wet. Coping with cobbles, bumping up kerbs and dodging other regular two-wheeled “out-of-control” scooters, motorcycles and a multitude of cars owners that had as only wish to try to hit me with their vehicle in one thing when it is dry, but potentially much trickier in wet weather. The Yamaha Tricity dealt with it all really well, giving a lot more confidence than I'd have helt in those conditions on a two-wheeled scooter.

The concept of the Yamaha Bolt is a little like that of the Yamaha MT line; value that's hard to ignore. The stripped-back cruiser has a decent engine to impart a degree of displacement credibility, and it also has a few more positive features than the obvious competition, that being the Harley Davidson 883 and the Kawasaki Vulcan 900.

Yamaha describes the Bolt as an 'urban performance cruiser', a mix of old school and new technology, though if we're honest we don't see a whole heap of the latter. For there's no ABS, no selectable engine maps and nothing much in the way of electronics. There are wavy discs which lower unsprung weight a bit, but mainly look more cool.

Even the Yamaha engine us not exactly new; it is borrowed from the V-Star 950, a custom cruiser, though in this new application it gets a revised intake and exhaust, and different engine tune for enhanced torque production at low revs. It's a little hard to know exactly how enhanced it is, given there's no tachometer but Yamaha quotes 51 horsepower at 5,500rpm and 80Nm of torque at 3,000rpm. You can short-shift through the five gears for effortless 100km/h cruising, and you can also ease about the burbs in fourth gear, though fifth is marginally too tall. By comparison, the Harley-Davidson 883 delivers 50 horsepower and 70Nm, and weighs around 30 kilograms more.

While car racing has had its fair share of hero franchises, motorcycles, which are arguably more exiting, don't have much to boast about when it comes to video games. The ones around are undone by half-baked production values and we are yet to see a video game built around serious motorcycle racing. But, the MotoGP 14 could change all that.

The biggest change over last year's iteration is the overall presentation of the game. Everything looks better and is presented in a format that we can easily relate to. The motorcycles look sharp and crisp, and the replays are almost photo-realistic. The tracks are still quite static, but the game gets away with its with great lighting and weather effects.

As a beginner, you're eased into the gameplay mechanics via a simple but effective test-drive mode that allows you to experiment with Standard, Semi-Pro and Pro play-styles. Standard is best suited for beginners, as it has all assists on, including turning and braking. But, as you get the hang of the game, you'll find the latter two modes more exciting, as they offer you complete control of the motorcycle.

While big bikes introduced in Thailand take all the attention we should not forget where the real money is made, the Honda CBR150R was for years Honda's major cash cow, and in the past Suzuki tried to tap into that success with the Suzuki Raider 150R. But the tension really started to get serious when Yamaha introduced the Yamaha YZF-15R a few years ago in India. Yamaha, after a very successful launch of the Yamaha YZF-R15, a fine tune was needed and with the second release called the Yamaha YZF-0R15 R2.0, in India, Yamaha figured it was ready to take on the Honda CBR150R at its home market (Thailand).

Nobody, even at Yamaha, will deny that the Yamaha YZF-R15 design was based with the Honda CBR150R as a starting point. If we compare the recently launched Yamaha YZF-R15 to the latest Honda CBR150R we simple have to agree that the Yamaha 150cc sportsbike has the better specifications.

Yamaha basically looked at anything that Honda did wrong and improved on it... But, most of this improvements on a very similar design is not that obvious for the average teenage sportsbike rider. You really need to push the Honda CBR150R and the Yamaha YZF-R15 to the limits to really appreciate the benefits of the Yamaha YZF-R15. The Yamaha has probably the better suspension when you're racing a track... The Honda is simply said more orientated to average road use...

The Stallion Mini Gio is tiny machine with a regular four-stroke 125cc engine. Of course, the engine is not that sophisticated it's just a two-valve, air-cooled engine fed by a carburetor producing around 10 horsepower. Mind you, the Stallion Mini Gio is just 66 kilogram.

Well, it's a monkey bike, isn't it, which you'll either love or not. The Stallion Mini Gio does come with extra bling, in the form of a high-level exhaust and alloy wheels. Riding the Stallion Mini Gio will certainly get you noticed.

The Stallion Mini Gio has not much space for a passenger, no helmet lock and not much of a instrument panel. It has a tiny rear rack for some luggage but with that size it's probably more for the show.

If you find the Ducati Monster 1200 a bit too monstrous and the Monster 795 too weak for your tastes then the Ducati Monster 821 is the friendly neighborhood monster for you. On the dimensions front, the Ducati Monster 821 is identical to the Monster 1200. The only visual differences are the double-sided swingarm, which the Ducati Monster 821 gets to keep cost low, and a differently-shaped exhaust.

The Ducati Monster 821 is powered by a tweaked version of the Ducati Hypoermotard's 821cc engine, which makes slightly more power at 11 horsepower and 89Nm of torque. There is also a lot of hand-me-down tech from the Monster 1200. This includes an eight-level traction control system, ABS and ride-by-wire throttle, both with three selectable modes accessible via Ducati's user-friendly toggle switch.

When you for the first time ride the MV Agusta F3 800 you would be surprised how comfortable it is for an Italian sportsbike. Moreover, it seemed relatively unruffled tooling around at low to middling revs. Perhaps someone in the complaints department of this rapidly expanding company has been listening to customer feedback about oddball fueling, rock hard suspension and the like.

The MV Agusta F3 800 retains the wonderful features of the MV Agusta F3 675, like its inspired handling and steering, and moves the entire game on by adding a solid helping of midrange grunt and more than a hint of velvet to the by-wire fueling process. Meaning you don't have to ride the F3 800 at high revs to understand what all the fuss is about.

And that genuinely mean an MV Agusta that you can ride at 110km/h without it feeling like it wants to spit you off and wail away towards the horizon by itself. It eve a motorcycle deserved a most improved award compared with its 675cc cousin, this is it. The particular bright red MV Agusta F3 800 we rode would pull without any difficulty from 5,000rpm in top gear, something the MV Agusta F3 675 would only have done when you went downhill. The MV Agusta F3 800 also feels happy to cruise around town in fourth gear at 50km/h, without snatching or complaining.

Think about the sort of riding you do. Is it all in town through heavy traffic? Or does it include some open road with hills, bends and overtaking opportunities? If the world was a logical place, everyone would choose an automatic for the first scenario, and a geared motorcycle for the second.

But the world isn't any such thing, and a lot of personal preference comes into the decision to take an automatic scooter or a geared motorcycle. Not only that, but some motorcycles are semi-automatics, and are neither one nor the other.

The pros and cons of the automatic transmission are as follows. First and most obvious is convenience. There's no clutch to worry about, no gear to select, and consequently less to think about all-round. Maintenance is simpler, as the drive-belt doesn't need lubrication and adjusting.

The Yamaha Tricity, was seen as a concept not so long ago, fast forward and the Yamaha Tricity is now reality. The liquid-cooled 125cc is a slim scooter with two wheels at the front and one wheel at the rear, and that leans in corners.

The idea behind the Yamaha Tricity is pretty simple, but also pretty clever – of course we seen this before with the Piaggio MP3, but was in the end not launched in Thailand as the distributor found it to high risk. The idea of a 3-wheel scooter is to give the city-crossing benefits of a motorcycle but with greater stability and minimal risk of toppling over.

The Yamaha Tricity is powered by a 124.8cc, single-cylinder, liquid-cooled, 2-valve SOHC, 4-stroke engine. Yamaha claims that the 125cc engine gives you a bit less than 11 horsepower (10.86 HP) at 9,000rpm and a good torque of 10.4Nm at 5,500rpm. The engine is equipped with a electronic fuel injection and the final drive is by V-Belt./>