Review of the 2020 Triumph Rocket 3 2500cc

Dirty torque.

I woke up this morning. I took my boy out for breakfast whilst the missus slept in. When I returned home, my misso reminded me that it was her turn to host mothers group and that the house would soon be full of women and screaming babies. I decided to make myself scarce.

I have a remarkable ZX-14 in the shed, courtesy of my Neanderthal mate, Wazza. We swapped bikes the other week so he now has my M109R and fucking loves it. And I love his 14. There’s something about being in the 1% of all species to hit warp speed in less time then it takes the LNP to blow the budget out.

So I fire up the 14. It sounds incredible with a full yoshi system. I proceed to laugh like a maniac with a bum full of disco biscuits as I belt through the streets. Occasionally pulling over to leave some social distance between the Karens in Prados.

I’ve got a couple hours to kill, so I figure that I should go make Greta angry and belt up and down Mt Stuart. Mt Stuart isn’t a bad mountain. Despite taking a couple lives and throwing bikes and humans off cliffs. I once smashed an old Honda into a rock wall up there. So we know each other well.

As I approached an intersection, I remember my mate Tall Mitch gloating to me about the new rocket 3 that he rode and now intends to buy. I decided that I’ll go check this out. Mitch is like 6’5, maybe 80kg and rides a V-Star 650. So he looks like a praying mantis riding a grasshopper and I happily remind him of this fact each time I see him.

So I rolls into Rising Sun Honda. I walk into the showroom like a kid with a pocket full of coins at the county fair. Except there’s no carnies with hepatitis hanging around. I spot a shiny new Rocket and hover around it like a hungry mosquito.

I am approached by a sales guy. I forgot his name because there’s motorcycles to be ridden and I have no time to remember specific words to get peoples attention. I am almost reduced to animalistic grunts by this stage.

I organise to ride it and minutes later I am sitting on the demo model Rocket 3 R. As I kick it into gear and release the clutch I can feel something poking my stomach. It’s a raging mega huge (mediocre at best) boner of anticipation.

I couldn’t quite tell if my HANDS FELL INTO THE CONTROLS WITH RELATIVE EASE. Because I’m not a fuckwit. And if you have ever read some of Australia’s motorcycling commentary, you’ll know that they talk with this kind of disrespect to fellow riders. It’s a shaft driven 2500 3 cylinder for fuck sake! You don’t buy this bike to go to church and repent your sins of acquiescence. You buy this bike because you want to hate fuck speed limits.

The seating position was fairly upright. And surprisingly it felt like a comfy bar stool. If the bar stool was tossed at the sun by André The Giant mid coke rage. It has a bunch of buttons on the handlebars, as you’d expect. One of the buttons was the happy button, where I could change it from road mode to sport mode. It had other modes too. Rider and rain. I won’t pretend to know how this sorcery works. But work it did.

As I went out of town to an undisclosed definitely not a public road, I set about seeing how fast thing this was. Now an M109R is fast. A ZX-14 is stupidly fast. But the Rocket was exactly that. A fucking rocket. I bet if Donald Trump found out about these rockets, he’d threaten to throw them at the North Korean dictator.

It’s not ZX-14 “hurt you’re eyeballs” with acceleration kind of fast. It’s got more of a meth-fuelled rhino kinda feel. 3rd gear, 60 - 100 took about a second and a half to two seconds. Second gear just about sent me into bloody orbit to join Marquez’s broken asshole.

How much torque does it have? All of it. Seriously. Fucking all of it. With 165 donkey powers, and 220 odd Newton’s of fuck off, this is seriously the bike to buy if you want to upset all of your John-Deere enthusiast mates. All whilst spending less moolah. And if your balls are of sufficient calibre and mass, the Rocket will propel you from 0-100kph in less than 3 seconds.

I told the guy at Rising sun that I’d be half an hour to 45 minutes. So about an hour later, I am still belting along the undisclosed definitely not public road. I decide that I better head back.

I approach the same intersection as mentioned before. And another brilliant thought entered my head. I’ve spent the last hour laughing maniacally and grunting like a primal knuckle walker whilst belting down long straight roads. So I thought it’s best that I find some corners.

I found some corners. I know these corners quite well. I glide through them like a 747 through a CEO’s 100th floor window. It handles exceptionally well and I am pleasantly surprised as i scoot through a corner and feel the unmistakeable feeling and sound of peg vs bitumen. I giggle like a teenage boy with the house to himself and an internet connection.

The bike just worked. It did everything well. I found the brakes to be a bit weird. Like they work astonishingly well but one time I applied the front brakes, then applied the rear brakes, then let go of the front and found that the rear brake feel felt weird. I don’t exactly know what was going on, I could feel the ABS kicking my foot but it kind of felt like the rear brake had some control over the front brakes. Or maybe I just mind-fucked my way into thinking that. I don’t know. Alls I do know is that when it comes time to do stopping things. It does the stopping things incredibly well. My M109R carries on like a mad pig-bull under heavy braking. And as it would, with me on it, it’s trying to pull up near on 450kg with no ABS. It’s definitely not for the faint hearted.

Look, all in all the Rocket 3 is a fantastic bike. I considered swapping my first born for it. But I reckon my missus will yell at me for that. The R model has mid mount foot pegs, and a choice between black or red paint, as to match the excess blood in your nether regions. As where the GT has forward controls, pulled back bars and a back rest for a passenger if you are that way inclined. Oh and it has black or grey paint.

And you’ll have enough change for a Big Mac if you throw 30k at the sales guy for the R model. Another grand gets you the GT. So, even if buying a rocket 3 causes a divorce, just know that the Rocket 3 will only whine if something is actually wrong.

Oh, and the single rear swing arm and wheels look pretty bloody wicked too!