BROUGH SUPERIOR SS100
FIRST RIDE
P130
help give a sense of substance
to the bike, which also has nu-
merous detail touches like those
classy looking brake and clutch
master cylinders that all add to
the sense of quality.
Thumb the starter button—not
so easy to do wearing gloves,
because the rather small but-
ton is too deeply recessed in
its holder for you to press it
properly—and be ready for a
surprise. The Boxer-designed
engine's 88° cylinder angle isn't
so far away from a 90° V-twin
like any Ducati, and the SS100
motor's 94 x 71.8mm dimen-
sions are practically identical
to the 94 x 71.5mm format of a
1000DS desmodue motor. But
the Brough Superior doesn't
sound anything like a Ducati,
with a decidedly higher pitched,
less sonorous beat issuing from
the two slim exhaust canisters,
each of which has a catalyst
inside to make the SS100 Euro
3 compliant. It sounds pretty
quiet, while definitely sporty—
though the reduced volume of
sound means you can hear the
valve train thrashing around in a
surprisingly passable imitation of
a pushrod motor like my vintage
SS100. Yes, really.
The new SS100 may hold a
strong visual resemblance to its
vintage predecessor, complete
with a modern reinterpretation of
all the styling cues like the fuel
tank, brakes, fork and so on, but
in its present guise it doesn't have
a Superbike level of performance
that makes it stand out from its
peers as the original BrufSup did.
That's not to say this won't come
in the future—especially once
they get around to turbocharging
it—but that 127 bhp output deliv-
ered at 7800 rpm makes it more
Supersport 600 than Superbike
in terms of acceleration and
outright performance (not forget-
ting that WSBK rules now permit
1200cc twins a capacity that the
Akira-developed motor may even-
tually be uprated to reach, only
not for the foreseeable future).
Think of it now as a neo-Classic
streetfighter, with the option in
the future to deliver Superbike-
level performance.
What we have here and now
is a sort of long-legged, lazy-
sounding gentlemen's express
– a two-wheeled equivalent of
an Aston Martin DB9 or Bentley
Continental; complete with the
same high level of build quality,
adequate rather than exceptional
performance, and the sense of
exclusivity. There isn't a huge
