Best Bikes of 2018

2018 is now coming to an end. This had us all curious as to what our favourite bikes of the year were. We then realised Auto Trader's recent awards ceremony has been a bit of a 'talk of the office' as of recently. We Buy Any Bike are here today to give you all the insights on the award-winners!

The Judges

ROBERT MORPHET

Of course, it wouldn’t be fair to have this award ceremony without the man responsible for Auto Trader Bikes! Robert founded the platform over 20 years ago in 1996, and has now grown from being a professional racer of Supermoto and Enduro to an overall expert across the field!

PHIL WEST

Renowned in the industry for being a skilled Motorcycling Journalist, Phil now dedicates his passion in being a senior road tester over at Auto Trader Bikes.

ANDREW SHIM

You may recognise Andrew from his popular YouTube Channel, Shimmy TV where he enjoys filming bike and car reviews. He also documents his experiences at Track Days and various motorcycling events. Others may recognise him from when he played the role of Milky on This is England.

Now we’ve met the judges, let’s get those wheels in action and move onto the stars of the show... the bikes!

Best Scooter:

If Marvel did a sketch on Scooters, this one would be Daredevil. Leading the way for the Scooter of the Year is the Honda X-ADV. The name just says it all! It’s supposed to be a scooter, but it’s like a rebellious teenager who likes to go exploring every now and again. Featuring a 745cc twin-cylinder engine, and Dual Clutch Control, as well as especially picked out materials for extra comfort no matter what you do or where you go. This dandy thing comes in 4 colour schemes; Matt Bullet Silver, Matt Pearl Glare White, Grand Prix Red, and Candy Chromosphere Red. Featuring a 14L Fuel Tank and LED Headlights, you can own these wheels brand new from £9,959. Coming runners-up in this category are the Piaggio MP3 and Vespa’s GTS300.

Best AM:

As their slogan states, ‘A name you can trust’ in at the winner's spot for the best AM is the Peugeot Streetfight 50, battling its way to the #1 spot, defeating Yamaha’s Aerox 50 and the Aprilia SX50 along the way. Peugeot made this bike specifically for the exhilarating independence for 16-year-olds – once they have passed their test, of course! Including a USB socket, Peugeot clearly wants to get ‘down with the kids’ – or, maybe they just want to encourage the use of sat navs! This nifty little economical ride comes equipped with a SmartMotion Engine, and Twin LED Lenticular Lights. The asking price starts at just £2,599 – what a bargain if we do say so ourselves!

Best A1:

A is for Aprilia! Yes, the Aprilia SX125 Supermoto has won the race to #1 in this category, fully running down the Honda CB125R and the Lexmoto Titan 125 with its Italian charm. Although it was made in China, the bike still lives and breathes all things Italy with every rev.

The SX125 is a Supermoto bike that is bound to make the friends of a new rider very jealous. The price is unbeatable, starting at around £3,300 from new! This is a bike that is bound to take the roads with pride year on year.

Best A2:

A is for... Oh, it doesn’t work. The winner in this category is the Kawasaki Ninja 400, taking the reins unlike Honda’s CB300R and Triumph’s A2 Street Triple. We think people will be pretty happy with this choice because the Ninja 400 takes inspiration from the styling of the big daddy – the ZX-10R. This Ninja model is a great introduction to big bikes for newcomers, a little starter bike prepping for the big boys. A starting price of just £5,249 isn’t half bad either!

Best Middleweight:

We aren’t sure how much ‘umm-ing-and-ahh-ing’ went on in Auto Traders office when these bikes were nominated, but to us, these ones would be tight contenders! There was a battle between the Suzuki SV650X, the KTM 760 Duke, and the Ducati Monster 821, and the winner was the SV650X!

The cafe-racer styling of this bike just makes it one of a kind on the market, coming in a choice of 2 colours; Metallic Oort Grey, and Glass Sparkle Black. The SV650X is a nice relaxing yet exciting ride for riders with experiences on both ends of the scale. Coming equipped with a 645cc engine and a 14.5L fuel tank, some say that the mechanics of this bike are almost twinned with Yamaha’s MT-07. This one is a great price – starting at just short of £6,000!

Best Tourer:

This one comes as no surprise that the world-renowned Honda Goldwing GL1800 has won the #1 spot. The runners-up in this category are the BMW K1600 Grand America and the Triumph Trophy 1200. Here at WeBuyAnyBike, we think this award is well deserved because this is the newest Goldwing model in 17 years!

As expected, Honda has given us many, many, many more features with this new model – I mean, we didn’t think they could cram any more in, but I guess they surprised us! Amongst the lineup is an electric screen, heated seats, optional DCT, parking brake, reverse gear, built-in luggage and audio system, sat-nav, heated grips, and much, much more! The price, on the other hand, doesn’t class as an award-winner with us, with the figures reaching just short of £30,000. But with added features giving us Hill Assist, Stop/Start and Keyless Ignition, we feel like the price kind of makes up for it... Don’t you?

Best Adventure Bike:

From just £12,400 at new, you can treat yourself to the Best Adventure Bike as voted for by Auto Trader. The bike that has beaten the Honda Africa Twin Sport, and the Triumph Tiger 800 is the BMW R1200GS.

This model has a whole family of bikes to go along with it, such as the Rallye, the Rallye TE, the TE, and the TE Exclusive. They all come with a whole range of extras and prices of their own, but today we’re going to be looking at the baby; the GS.

The model itself comes in 2 colours, light white metallic and black storm metallic. This beast has a fuel range of a whopping 400 miles, and it comes complete with a TFT Display panel with Bluetooth connectivity! BMW have thought of the rider too, they have integrated an SOS button in case of emergencies!

Best Retro:

Beating the Ducati Scrambler 1100 and the Kawasaki Z900RS to the number one spot, it’s lovely to see a family-run brand take the winners spot. In at no. 1, we see the CCM Spitfire Flat Tracker. Here at We Buy Any Bike, we recently bought one of these and I have to say it is a lovely bike, and one that definitely stuck in my mind!

Taking inspiration from one of the oldest motorsports in the world, the 14L fuel capacity Flat Tracker retails from £9,995 based on a brand new model. This fun and exotic 600cc ride boast Twin Stack LED Lights, along with Carbon Bodywork as well as the up and coming feature that is keyless ignition.

Best Cruiser:

Well, you can probably guess that the good old traditional Harley-Davidson Fat Bob won the race to number one with this one. The runners-up in this category were the classic Triumph Bobber Black and the Indian Springfield Black.

Starting from £16,000 you can own the new Fat Bob, featuring a selection of newbie’s. The features include Inverted Forks for better handling, Dual Disc Front Brakes, 2-1-2 Exhaust. As well as, Cast Wheels with Fat Tyres, Milwaukee Eight Big Twin Engine, LED Lighting, High-Performance Front Suspension, High-Performance Moto Shock.

This edition of the Fat Bob comes in a smaller and larger model if you will. One has 1745cc and the other gives us 1868cc. The Fat Bob also comes in a selection of 5 paints; Vivid Black, Black Denim, Red Iron Denim, Bonneville Salt Denim, and Industrial Grey Denim.

Best Sports Tourer:

In this category, the Yamaha Tracer 900 GT won it, beating the Kawasaki H2 SX and the Yamaha Niken. For 3 years now the Tracer 900 has proved to be the most popular sports tourer in Yamaha’s history.

At 847cc the new 2018 edition features an 18L tank, as well as a focused improvement on the comfort for rider and pillion. Here Yamaha has introduced a whole window of new features, such as a narrower form, and a larger easily adjustable screen. Coming exclusively to GT models they have hard panniers, heated grips, cruise control, a TFT dashboard, and updated suspension. Yamaha has also adapted the seats to have thick multi-density foam for extra comfort.

The 900 GT comes in 3 colour schemes; Midnight Black, Nimbus Grey, and Phantom Blue. Without luggage, this bike weighs 215kg and the maximum weight capacity is 394kg – ideal for your next trip!

Best Naked:

The Honda CB1000R and the Husqvarna Vitpilen were the runners-up in this category; Triumph beat them to it with the Speed Triple RS.

Clearly one of the most popular bikes of all time, the Speed Triple wasn’t hard to contend with, taking all the new elements into consideration. Triumph have completely revamped the engine and airbox, topping the product off with some new wheels. Since 1994, the Speed Triple’s cc has evolved from 885 to its current new rate of 1050cc.

The new RS is almost irresistible to Triumph lovers, featuring 6 riding modes; rain, road, sport, rider configurable and track mode. The new 5-inch TFT dashboard features a total of 6 fully adjustable layouts. Allowing the rider to amend the layout to their heart's content. The new Speed Triple also features an all-new keyless ignition as well as fully-adjustable Ohlins Suspension. Buy this bike new for £13,600.

Best Sports Bike:

Well, it seems to be there was a strong competition between the BMW HP4 and the Yamaha R1M. But the real winner was Ducati with the brand new Panigale V4S.

The team at Ducati have their head held high. Claiming that this is the ‘fastest, most powerful production bike the world has ever seen!’. From new, you can buy this beast for £23,985. We don’t think it’s a half bad price considering the engine is built with strong inspiration from Ducati’s MotoGP bikes! A 16L tank, and 211 HP. This 1103cc bike can have you flying from 0 – 60 in just 3.2 seconds with a threshold of 191mph! The electronics on this motorcycle are set to a super high standard, coming equipped with absolutely everything you could imagine.

It comes as no surprise that the V4S has been voted the best bike of 2018!

So, I suppose that concludes the best bikes of 2018! – As voted for by Auto Trader - check out their YouTube video where they talk about the bikes in detail! Do you agree with these winners? Let us know in the comments below!

---

Who are we?

If you haven't heard of We Buy Any Bike before - we specialise in providing a service that allows you to put a price on your bike from your own home! Altogether, we're a big friendly bunch with a passion for bikes - we're bikers with a service for bikers!

If you decide that you would like to use our services and sell your bike to WeBuyAnyBike - rest assured you and your bike will be in safe hands. All of our transactions are submitted instantly and your FREE collection will be quick and simple - our guidelines say within 48 hours and we stick to them!