Gilera DNA.org

I had reason to ride one of these recently. It’s the most powerful bike I’ve ever ridden and  having been aware of the of the bike over many years and aware of the fact that it has a way bigger fan base than my DNA, I was very interested to try it out.

What a disappointment! It’s not that it’s a bad bike – it’s that it’s an incredibly flawed bike. I can see why the Americans like it because it’s like a Harley: it’s big and noisy, people see you coming, you ride it like an armchair and it has a very low seat; it goes like the space shuttle in a straight line but doesn’t want to turn corners. It’s the first bike I’ve ridden that will comfortably do motorway speeds, yet if you try and overtake a truck on the M4 as I did this morning, you’re so buffeted by the truck’s slipstream that you don’t want to do it again!

I’d like to try a 400cc Piaggio to see if this is better because I do like that engine. You could happily go hundreds of miles on that engine if it had a decent scooter wrapped around it.