Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/135930
TEST P66 BORILE 450 SCRAMBLER Although you wouldn't want to race it in the Baja 500, a trip through the dirt roads of a winery will work. Singing along in fifth gear at an indicated 80 mph (at 7000 rpm) is the Scrambler's comfortable cruising speed before you have to start hanging on unduly tight, though it's allegedly capable of 97 mph, according to Borile. The Scrambler is a good bike for riding in carefree mode along a winding country road - it's a bike with a built-in feel-good factor. The Scrambler gets a good level of ride quality from the twin Bitubo shocks that were more compliant than I'd expected with no hint of chatter or jumping in the air over bigger bumps. The Marzocchi fork is also perfectly adequate, but I can't say I was tempted to start pushing the envelope in terms of turn speeds thanks to those meaty-looking Mitas dual-purpose tires the Scrambler was wearing. These worked very well on the dirt between the vines, but are really inappropriate for the use that most B450 Scrambler owners will put their bikes to 98 percent of the time - i.e. riding them on the road as a sort of modern day middleweight single-cylinder Monster. The Scrambler steers very easily through a series of bends, thanks to the wide-ish handlebar and its compacted mass, with the fuel under the seat. Having the weight down low may be another reason why it handles bumps so well at speed. However, getting it stopped from any sort of velocity is a little marginal and requires a strong pull on the brake lever to get the front disc to anchor up well. I'd fit a bigger 280mm disc and/or a four-pot caliper to really get the job done with any degree of confidence. This is a streetbike with some basic off-road capability, after all – not the other way around. But in overall terms Borile's latest two-wheeled baby was born well – it just needs to raised right. As a modern tribute to the days of the Ducati Scrambler over 30 years ago, it's an entirely successful tribute that will probably do Ducati management a big favor in getting all those people off their back who've been criticizing them for more than two decades for not building a modern Scrambler single. Yes, Borile has brought the original Scrambler single back to life in pretty much authentic period guise, but in a modern fuel-injected context. Even at the slightly high projected list price of over $16,000, he's likely to find a good number of customers from around the world for whom buying a Borile Scrambler will make it yesterday once more for them, too. CN