Motorcycle engines, unlike car engines, have a lot of personality… and there are many different ones. And knowing what you have under there will help you to be a better driver and get more out of your motorcycle. If we talk about power, what is better? Quantity or quality? I propose an exercise, ask the same question to car and motorcycle owners: Do you know what your vehicle's engine is like? And I'll make you a bet: The car owners will get it right at most, 10 percent, and the motorcycle owners will get it wrong at most, 10 percent. Because if the car owner says: “Of course! A four-cylinder engine” you can reply: But does it have a turbo or not, 2 or 4 valves per cylinder, single or double camshaft… and you'll see the face they make. And the fact is that in motorcycles the engine is not only seen, it is felt and is largely responsible for the personality of the motorcycle. And the engine is so responsible for a motorcycle that many times the motorcycle is “built” around an engine. I could tell you a thousand cases, but in reality it is always like that. There are motorcycle brands in which it is obvious, as in the case of Harley and its peculiar 45-degree V engine or the BMW Boxer… but, I insist, in all cases, especially in real motorcycles, much less in Scooters, the chassis and the bodywork are designed around the engine. There are motorcycles that even in their official name the configuration of the engine appears, such as the Ducati Twin or the entire Triumph “Triple” range, without forgetting motorcycles that have V2 or V4 in their name… and there are many. How do you differentiate, simplifying a lot, the character of the engines? By displacement or by power? If you say by displacement, you are wrong. And if you say by power, you are wrong, less so, but you are wrong. And you have to consider the combination of the two things to know the personality of an engine. I could give you many, many examples, but to keep it short I have only brought you three bikes with very similar power and two, three and four cylinders… I am going to give you, as they say now, the “coordinates” of these bikes: Number of cylinders, displacement, power and rpm and maximum torque and rpm. Here we have it: BMW GS1250: 2 boxer cylinders, 1,254 cm3, 136 hp at 7,750 rpm, 143 Nm at 6,250 rpm. MV Agusta Superveloce 800: 3 inline cylinders, 798 cm3, 148 hp at 10,600 rpm, 88 Nm at 10,600 rpm. Yamaha YZF-R6: 4-cylinder inline, 599 cm3, 118 hp at 14,500 rpm, 66 Nm at 10,500 rpm There is a difference of 30 hp between the least and the most powerful, around 15 percent. But if we talk about maximum torque, the difference rises to… 216 percent! And on top of that at a much lower speed. Power matters, but so does displacement… How does this affect driving? We have titled the video “Driving, do you know your motorcycle’s engine?” because I want to focus on this topic, on driving… but first, I apologize to many of you, those who already know all this. Well, but I think that those who don’t know it, have to know it… not only to drive well, but to choose the bike that best suits them and adapts best to their driving style… We will see this clearly with the power curves, but for that you will have to see our “HERMETIC TABLE” A good driver adapts his driving to the bike he rides. It is not my case, because I always like to go in high gears, accelerating early and very progressively in high gears… I need a bike with a lot of torque. And a good buyer, buys the bike that best suits his driving style. I am not a good driver, but I am a good buyer, that is why I have: -For day to day a BMW GS 1250 Adventure, 136 hp at 7,750 rpm. -For the track a Suzuki GSX1000RR from 2007 prepared, that gave 197 hp on the bench… oh! For 3 it doesn't go over the magic figure of 200 HP!, at 12,000 rpm. -And for Enduro a Husaberg FE450 of 48 HP, which in the field is a lot, at only 6,400 rpm. There are two conclusions. The first: I am lucky with the three bikes I have! True gems. There are more modern and better ones, not the BMW at the moment, but the other two. But, how much I enjoy them! The second is to answer the question I asked you at the beginning: What is better? Quantity or quality? I won't answer you, I'll give you an example: With the Suzuki GSX, apart from the straight, I don't go flat out for long... with the Husaberg, I don't even go flat out for long in a time trial, sometimes not even on the straights... and with the BMW I rarely go over the middle rev range. Let's say I use 120 HP on the Suzuki, 30 on the Husaberg and 90/100 on the BMW. Then bikes with that power would be enough for me, but no, because the 120 HP of my Suzuki 1000 are much better than the 120 HP of a 600… and, what's more, if I want, I can have more… And the same goes for the others. And for you, what type of bike and engine "suits" you? We look forward to your comments.