No one will deny the appeal of a throaty V-twin rumble at the stoplight, or slowly cruising up and down the boulevard on Friday night. A long, low, lean bike, slowly putting its way past the Dairy Queen is sure to elicit smiles from the girls and envy from the guys. And since that's where the vast majority of "cruisers" spend the vast majority of their time, it's easy to see why Harleys, Intruders, Vulcans and Shadows are so popular.
But I like to ride. I like to get out away from the city, and just put on miles. If I don't get 300 miles out of a day of riding I feel cheated. This is where the V-bikes tend to fall short. When I had a Virago 1100, with Cobra pipes and a Saddleman fringed seat, I felt just as cool as James Dean when I cruised down the street. But when I was on the back roads of Colorado after 3 days of a 4-day trip from North Carolina to Denver, keeping the bike at 60mph, I felt as if the cylinder was going to come flying through the cylinder head at any minute. And the hammering of two big cylinders certainly didn't contribute to my comfort, nor did the thinly padded, stepped seat that looked so good when I was stopped. The rear cylinder of the air-cooled V-twin also had a tendency to overheat, (which is why most other Japanese V-twins are water cooled.) I had to sell my Virago in 1996 due to mounting college expenses, and it nearly broke my heart, but I also knew that I wouldn't want to take another cross-country trip on it, either.
So when I began shopping for another bike in 1998, I looked at my finances (I had no more than $1500 to spend) and my riding habits, and it was easy for me to decide on a UJM cruiser. When I finally located my desired bike, a 1983 Yamaha 750 Maxim, it was love at first sight. Sure, she wasn't as slick and smooth as the new lanky V-twin cruisers, but she looked good to me, and what's more, she'd cruise at a speed higher than the speedo will indicate (by a 1980 law, speedometers could only go up to 85mph.) It always has plenty of power, and when I was flying down the road at cruising speed, the ride and the engine were as smooth as silk. What's more, even the stepped "cruiser" seat was more comfortable than the one on my Virago (a 535 mile 1-day trip only left me slightly sore, when the Virago seat would have been a torture rack at 150 miles.)
Because the transverse-4 has all cylinders in the wind, it never overheated, and because of it's relatively short wheelbase, it swung around the curves like a sportbike. Well, maybe not exactly like a sportbike, but more so than a big V-cruiser would. My Maxim also had the same trouble-free shaft-drive that my Virago and my Honda 550 Nighthawk (the other UJM cruiser I've owned) both had. I loved it.