BMW is full of surprises recently. A few years ago there were only really two motorcycles in its entire range that we'd have chosen to ride in preference to covering them in rags and petrol, before flicking sharp corners at them until they went up in smoke. And now look at the range. BMW is littered with an impressive spread of great motorcycles, and in every category of riding interest.

Having spent a fair bit of time with the BMW F800GS, we were intrigued to see if the BMW F800GS would work. It was a hard one to second guess, but the good news is that the F800GS is a little blinder – what a great motorcycle. It feels light and aggressive from the off, with short gearing and a raspy thump from the exhaust helping to draw you quickly into the riding experience.

It's a tall motorcycle, and anyone under 1.8 meter is likely to struggle at traffic lights (there is a low seat option), but if you've got the legs, so has the BMW F800GS. The BMW F800GS feels like it could take you anywhere, and probably would. After five minutes on the Tarmac you'll be looking at the grass verges and alternative direction signs with an increasingly hard to ignore urge to get your rims dirty.

Think scooters are lame, slow, or just not your thing? Well, think again. Sym's Maxsym 400i will not only surprise you, it may just freshen up your ideas as well! The Sym Maxsym 400i is a real inner city hero – all you need do is twist the throttle and go. That's courtesy of a continuously variable transmission (CVT) with a centrifugal clutch.

Unlike some scooters, this twist of the grip feels directly connected to the single-cylinder, liquid-cooled, 399cc engine, with advanced electronic fuel-injection, one of scootering's smoothest, that thrusts the Sym Maxsym 400i easily away from standstill. The initial response is a bit soft, due in part to its weight, allowing well-coordinated drivers to keep with you off the line. But never fear, the big single-cylinder soon reaches its torque peak and begins to tow the Sym Maxsym 400i with real urgency, so much so that it will keep up with many bigger than 250cc motorcycles up to about 80km/h.

As with most scooters with electronic fuel-injection, fuel consumption is good, in combination with the 14.7 liter fuel tank, makes the Sym Maxsym 400i a good big-distance ride.

The 2012 updates for the Kawasaki Ninja 650R. Kawasaki's 650cc sports-tourer, sold in some countries around the world as the Kawasaki ER6F, for Thailand it's just the Kawasaki Ninja 650R, has been given the most detailed makeover for the new year since its launch.

The new Kawasaki Ninja 650R retains the basic front-biased design and the 649cc parallel twin engine, but has many other significant changes worthy of note. To start with, the 2012 Ninja 650R looks much sharper than the 2011 model. It has a new fairing with re-shaped headlights and a three-step, height adjustable windscreen. The new two-piece tank shell looks muscular while the tail section is sleeker and has stepped seats. The Kawasaki Ninja 650R instrument panel gets an analogue tachnometer dial with a white, backlit LCD screen below.

The 2012 Triumph Street Triple. Yes, hold on to your hats because Triumph has built a new one. The Triumph Street Triple has been surgically enhanced by the Hinckley designers and will be available at the local Triumph dealer very soon!

So what's changed. Well, for a start, the price hasn't. So that means the new 2012 Triumph Street Triple come in 'likely' at 690,000 THB and 720,000 THB for the R model. Another thing to not change is the engine as mechanically everything stays as it. The chassis stays the same, too. So what exactly has Triumph done? It's all in the styling, as the Triumph Street Triple follows the Speed Triple's lead and gets a new set of specs at the front.

The new headlights look even better on the Triumph Street Triple than they do on the Speed Triple. Yes, replacing the bug eyes of before was a controversial move, but we think it's paid off. The new model gets 'dechromed' with brushed steel headers, heel guards and silencers now appearing instead of the previously polished parts. The stock model also gets the aluminum handlebars as fitted to the R, while both motorcycles get a new set of instruments.

Some people compare the new Honda CBR250R with the CB250RS from the early '80s. But the new Honda CBR250R shares absolutely no components with the CB250RS of the '80s, but it does have a similar spirit and hopefully, for Honda, a similar commercial appeal.

The old Honda CB250RS made 26 horsepower at 8,500rpm and weighed just 125 kilograms dry, while the new Honda CBR250R makes 26 horsepower at 8,500rpm and weighs 162 kilograms with all fluid and a full tank of fuel (which probably equates to around 140 kilograms dry). The old Honda CB250RS had a 1359, wheelbase, where the new Honda CBR250R is 1369mm. Old Honda CB250RS's castor angle, 63.5 degrees, new one, 65 degrees.

It looks like Triumph will have a fight on its hands. Having monopolized the triple-cylinder supersport market since 2006 with its Daytona 675, a three cylinder rival has finally emerged in the form of the rather sexual MV Agusta F3.

The MV Agusta F3, just launched worldwide, is the first big bike to be announced by the newly owned Italian factory. American money may have paid the development of the MV Agusta F3 and new production facilities, but the dollars won't be flowing back to Milwaukee once the new MV Agusta F3 is being sold in the showrooms around the world.

Using the silhouette of the MV Agusta F4 series as its obvious inspiration, the F3 won the second place of the 'Most Beautiful Bike of Show' at the 69th EICMA motorcycle show.

The Honda CBR250R has been around for some months now and we have done all sorts of tests on it – within cities, on highways and at the race-track. While comparing the Honda CBR250R with its own segment competitors, it became apparent that the CBR250R's single-cylinder engine suffers a little in outright performance as compared to its twin-cylinder competitor. Furthermore, the Honda CBR250R has not been very strong in the lower rev range. With these factors in mind from the time the Honda CBR250R came in, we had been on the lookout for some sort of a performance upgrade to extract more out of it.

The Honda CBR250R has started getting customized special parts and accessories from well-known performance titles now and it was time we equipped our Honda CBR250R with one of those to check if its performance could be pumped up. We laid our hands on the Two Brother Racing exhaust system and did a complete performance test of the Honda CBR250R to gauge all possible gains.

To start with, the Two Brother Racing exhaust system for the Honda CBR250R comes only in the slip-on configuration and does not include the bend pipe from the header. It is a straight-through canister without the catalytic converter and weights just about 2.5kg as against the 7.5kg of the Honda CBR250R stock exhaust. Two Brother Racing claims a 1.45 PS hike in peakpower and a 1.11 Nm increase in maximum torque. However these are the figures claimed by the company based on the run done on a dynometer.

If you think back, BMW took advantage of a perfect moment to bring the S1000RR on the market, it was a moment that would define a special moment in time. Japanese motorcycle manufacturers refused to push the game forward by too much while new technologies were coming main stream.

It was a revolution, emerging as it did from the Bayerische Motoren Werke factory was the last place anyone was expecting. BMW was becoming sportier, what with a toe in the MotoGP water and the radical HP series, but the introduction of the BMW Straight Shortener, or S1000RR as most people know it now, has had epic repercussions throughout the industry – much like the original Honda Fireblade did in 1992.

BMW, and project leader Stefan Zeit, did something that not even Suzuki seemed to do when revising its top model, and based its new machine on the who wheeled perfection that is the GSX-R1000 K5 – the project began not long after the Suzuki's release. Many engine configurations were considered, but Zeit's team concluded that an inline four is the proven product. Well, if it ain't broke.

The BMW certainly has that 600 feel that the Suzuki K5 does – and then some. It feels small, looks tiny, but it packs a mighty punch. The old, tired adage has been reversed over time and now control is nothing without power. The fresh face in the class took the standard inline four architecture and turned it into an absolute monster – not even the latest tight exhaust emission regulations could constrain the BMW S1000RR on its relentless charge to infinity and beyond – 193 horsepower, and more with a bit of fettling.

If you look at the 2012 Triumph Thunderbird, you understand that there has certainly been a market for a motorcycle just like the Triumph Thunderbird, sure it will not be the Thailand best seller for Triumph. The Triumph Thunderbird styling looks clean but also conservative. The Thunderbird is intentional designed to be a recognizable cruiser motorcycle and compete in the big engine cruiser market. Triumph is not trying to create a new category or a new class of motorcycles. They wanted to make something that will go head-on in the cruiser market.

The Triumph Thunderbird engine is a 1597cc, fuel-injected, water-cooled parallel twin gives a swept volume of 798.5cc with 103.8mm bore and 94.3mm stroke. The Triumph Thunderbird has the same stroke and 2.2mm more bore than a Triumph Rocket III, but the engine is more than 'just' a Rocket with a cylinder lopped off and spun 90 degree in the frame. Common parts are the eight valves; the rest is pure Triumph Thunderbird.

The Royal Enfield Bullet Electra EFI has proved itself to be perhaps the perfect machine for touring the Thai country side. As we where riding through Khao Yai National park the Royal Enfield Bullet Electra EFI and I almost forgot about the arguments we had been having over the gearbox and enjoyed a delightful outing together. Unlike what I wanted, we could not 'go on for ever' but we carried on over the Khorat Plateau to explore a bit more rural Northeast Thailand.

Away from main roads, fuel stations are not a regular sight in this part of Thailand, but this is no problem for the Royal Enfield Bullet Electra EFI. The manufacturers suggest that the Bullet Electra EFI uses 2.9 liter fuel per 100 kilometers from this new 'green' fuel-injection engine and I have no reason whatsoever to disbelieve them. The fuel tank holds 14.5 liters fuel so fuel consumption becomes almost an irrelevance on a motorcycle which, I might suggest, would not be one's automatic choice for long-haul trans-continental operations.

Comparison of the Royal Enfield Bullet Electra EFI with my own more traditional 500 Bullet has always been much in my mind. After all, it is difficult to make a meaningful comparison of the idiosyncratic Royal Enfield with anything else available in Thailand. Over the years the Royal Enfield engineers have worked hard to develop a classic traditional machine, very much a practical 'workhorse', into one which can be enjoyed by the modern motorcycle market.