Honda Gold Wing Review at RevZilla.com
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00:00Howdy! This is Lemmy with RevZilla TV. I'm here in a 2015 Honda Goldwing. We're putting
00:16this thing through a full RevZilla review. Now anybody who knows beans about motorcycles
00:21knows that if you want to lay down high mileage, you've got to be comfortable while you're
00:23doing it. In order to properly assess this bike, we brought it to a more bucolic environment
00:28than the standard city we usually do stuff in. We're going to take this thing out and
00:31do some real world big mileage on it. Let's go for a spin!
00:58The Goldwing has been Honda's flagship motorcycle for 40 years. 2015 marks the 40th anniversary
01:14of the Goldwing's inception. It's been their flagship model for good reason. This is an
01:18exceptionally stable motorcycle, and I mean that in two ways. Both in terms of its road
01:23holding, but also in terms of sales data. This has been a perennial performer for Honda
01:27because it's continually redefined the touring segment as far as what amenities should be
01:31offered to both a passenger and a rider. Now as king of the touring heap, this is a
01:36motorcycle that has lots of ascendance to the potential throne. I'm thinking specifically
01:40of the Harley Road and Electra Glide, the BMW K1600 GTL, and the Victory Vision. They
01:46all compete loosely with the Goldwing in terms of top tier bikes that offer lots and lots
01:51of rider and passenger comfort. Now before we get too deep into this review, let's talk
01:56about the 904 pound gorilla in the room. This is a large bike. It really does push
02:00the boundaries of how big a motorcycle can actually be. As such, it demands a specific
02:05buyer. Firstly, the buyer of a Honda Goldwing should be well-heeled. This is not an inexpensive
02:10motorcycle. This is also not a great motorcycle for somebody who is small or weak. You have
02:14to be accustomed to manhandling a motorcycle, and you should probably be fairly large in
02:18order to handle a Goldwing correctly. The other thing too you're going to want to have
02:22lots of if you're considering a Goldwing is experience. This is simply an intimidating
02:26motorcycle. If you don't have years of riding tucked under your belt, the Goldwing might
02:29not be the best choice for you. Now when it came time to review this motorcycle, I knew
02:33I was going to have to pile lots of highway miles upon this thing. That's what the Goldwing
02:37is made to do, cover ground and leave people feeling good at the end of a ride. Ideally,
02:42a touring bike will take some of the hard work out of a long motorcycle journey and
02:46leave both rider and passenger feeling refreshed at the end of things. That's the measure of
02:50success for me as far as whether or not the Goldwing actually succeeds. Now we're going
02:55to break this thing down RevZilla style. I'm going to talk to you about how it goes,
02:58how it stops, and how it handles of course, but we're also going to have a special section
03:02in this from the passenger seat so you can see what kind of accommodations are provided
03:06for the passenger and also what sort of sumptuous accommodations come for the rider as well.
03:10You can actually see into the cockpit here if you've never been in a Goldwing. It really
03:13is a different riding experience than you're going to get on some more pedestrian models.
03:18Now because this is a RevZilla review too, we're also going to have our section where
03:21we talk about some of the aftermarket items you might want to add to your Goldwing in
03:24order to make the bike work a little bit better for you. Now all that having been said,
03:28it's time to throw on your modular helmet and one piece suit. We're going for a ride.
03:54Now the Honda Goldwing's drivetrain is a big winner. You can see this flat 1800cc milled
04:06down here. This is an awesome engine. It makes all sorts of torque. Now it only makes 105
04:12horsepower, but there's 125 foot pounds of torque. You have not experienced a flat torque
04:17curve until you've ridden around on a Goldwing. There's power everywhere on the tack. It doesn't
04:21matter what gear you're in, when you crank down, there's plenty of power on tap to pull
04:25you along. It's not a fast bike, but it's definitely not a slow bike either. Handling
04:32on the Goldwing, however, is a little bit different. Now the Goldwing is not going to
04:35get over too awful far, but you can get it farther than you would think. It's a lot more
04:40nimble than you'd expect for a 900 pound bike. One of the things I wasn't so fond of though
04:44was the tires. The tires on here, Bridgestone Exedras, aren't to my liking. I'm usually
04:49not too picky when it comes to tires, but the front actually washed out in perfectly
04:53dry weather on me. Killed my confidence on this bike, made me feel a little bit shaky
04:58when I was really burying this thing into a turn. However, once you're in a turn, it
05:02really does feel like it corners on rails. Now for everything this does give up in the
05:06corners though, it is a fairly good ride. The suspension is fantastic. It really just
05:11soaks up all the bumps. It may say Honda back there on the trunk lid, however, this thing
05:15is all Cadillac. See, coming through these turns though, handling really is limited clearance
05:20wise. One of the other things I didn't dig so much about the handling on the Goldwing
05:27was unfortunately a nasty head shake we encountered. Our bike only has 6,000 miles on it or so,
05:32but when I take my hands off the bars at 35 to 40 miles an hour, I have a bad head shake
05:37problem. And that's probably steering head bearings, but the question becomes why does
05:41a bike with 6,000 miles on it need its steering head bearings replaced? Now let's talk about
05:46braking real briefly. Braking on the Goldwing is also a little bit subpar, but again, we
05:51have to take into account how large this bike is. You can see these large brake rotors up
05:55here and these huge calipers, and they'd be great fare on a sport bike. They'd be fantastic
05:59at stopping that, but because the Goldwing weighs so much more, they feel a lot more
06:03anemic than your standard brake. One of the other mistakes I think Honda made too was
06:08offering no ABS on this base model you can see here. Now you can get ABS on a Honda Goldwing,
06:14but you're going to be paying quite a bit for it. You have to bump up two packages in
06:17order to get the most affordable package that includes ABS. I really think that Honda should
06:21offer the base model with ABS. They're probably turning off a lot of potential buyers with
06:26respect to that.
06:38Alrighty, so as you can see, the Goldwing is no slouch when it comes to street performance,
06:49but that's not the entire game here. In order to really succeed as a touring bike, I have
06:53to be comfortable on this as does a passenger. In order to give you a bit of POV from the
06:57passenger viewpoint, one of our PAs, Sarah, has agreed to jump on and take a ride with
07:01us. I'm going to flip down her footrest to make her just a little bit more comfortable
07:04on this motorcycle, and as she jumps up here, I'm going to do a couple other things too.
07:07I'm going to adjust my suspension right now. The Honda Goldwing allows you to actually
07:12adjust the preload on the rear suspension automatically. You can move up and down on
07:16the suspension preload, and the other thing you can do too is adjust the windshield. If
07:20I yank these two locks here, I can then kind of wrestle the windshield up here. I've struggled
07:25a little bit with this. In these days of electric windshields, this seems a little bit antiquated,
07:29and I'm sure it's something that Honda will probably address in the next redesign. Now,
07:34having adjusted the suspension and the windshield, I think we're about ready to get underway.
07:37Sarah, are you ready to roll?
07:38Ready to roll.
07:39Cool. Let's get out of here.
08:05All right. You can see we're out here on the highway, and the highway really can be a rough
08:08spot for both rider and passenger, but I think the name of the game as far as passenger accommodations
08:12on the Goldwing are concerned is really autonomy. The passenger has a lot of freedom to do all
08:17sorts of stuff that they're not able to do on other bikes. You can see Sarah back there
08:20has a lot of stuff going on for her. Check out those stash pockets she's got back there.
08:24The stash pockets are really nice for her. They let her kind of, you know, stash her
08:28stuff, chapstick, sunglasses, without having to rely on me passing things back to her or
08:33relying on me to, you know, pull over and let her get into the top box. I really like
08:38that. I think it's a really big add-on from Honda.
08:41One of the other things I really dug, too, was her seat. Look how far elevated she is.
08:45She has a good view of the horizon. She's got a nice stand there. And the other thing
08:49I love about this seat, too, because of the dual-zone climate control, she's also able
08:52to control her own heating back there. I think that's a really big winner as well.
08:57The third thing she's got back there, too, are a set of speakers. I really think the
09:00speakers are cool. The speakers really do serve two important functions. You can see
09:04that she's got those rubber mats on the top. It makes it comfortable for her to use the
09:08speakers as an armrest, kind of kick back and change position so she doesn't get fatigued.
09:13The other thing I like, too, is that they're just very good speakers. Instead of relying
09:16on these speakers just blowing noise over my shoulders, instead, Sarah's actually able
09:20to get her own audio experience back there.
09:22Now, speaking of the audio experience, I'd like to direct your attention up here to the
09:26front, to the left side of the fairing. We talked about some of the stuff on the right
09:28side of the fairing, but the left side of the fairing really is the audio command center.
09:32You've got all sorts of features and options here. AM, FM, stereo, CB radio, wired intercom,
09:38weather band, you name it, you can do it.
09:40Now, there's a couple wins and a couple losses for me here. Some of the winners, as I said,
09:44everything on the left is nice. It's easy to drop your clutch hand down to the buttons
09:48and just get something done. The other thing I love, too, are these nice, large buttons.
09:51Now, some of you are going to say, Len, it looks terrible. It looks like a jitterbug
09:54cell phone. And I agree, it's a little dated-looking, but these actually work. With a gloved hand
09:59and just a glimpse out of the corner of your eye, you can stab a button and it does exactly
10:02what it's supposed to be doing. Love that.
10:05Some of the misses, though. First, no 3.5mm audio jack. That kind of stinks. How are you
10:09supposed to hook up sound to this? Sure, there's a USB cord in the back, but it's all the way
10:13back in the trunk. What are you supposed to do, run a wire all the way up? That's no good.
10:17If you use your cell phone for both directions and for music, you're kind of torn. You have
10:21to make a decision there.
10:22The other thing I don't really get at all is that there's absolutely no power port on
10:26here. I don't know how you can sell a touring bike in 2015 with no power port. In spite
10:30of these minor shortcomings, though, the Goldwing's an unbelievably comfortable bike to munch
10:34some miles on.
10:35Alrighty, now's the part of the video where we talk about potential modifications you
10:53might want to think about if you're considering putting a Goldwing in your garage. Now, we
10:58could make the Goldwing perform better. We could make it stop faster, we could make it
11:01go faster, and we could probably even improve the handling. But the truth is, the Goldwing's
11:05not a performance-minded motorcycle. I think that if you were to undertake any performance
11:09modifications, you're probably going to spend a lot of money to mask what is really the
11:12underlying truth of the Goldwing. It's a big, heavy bike. It's designed to move people and
11:16stuff in comfort. This is a Luxo barge. Embrace it. If I were going to take one of these things
11:21home and I was going to make a Goldwing part of my regular fleet rotation, I would make
11:25a couple changes playing to the strengths of the Goldwing. I think the first thing I
11:28would do is drop a luggage rack on here. A luggage rack is going to do two things for
11:32you. The first thing a luggage rack is going to do is give you a place to put something
11:35that's either oddly sized or perhaps cumbersome in shape. As it stands right now, if you have
11:39something you want to carry along with you that doesn't fit into a saddlebag or the top
11:42box, there's not really a way to do it. A top rack solves that problem. The other problem
11:46it solves for you is a lash point. If you look at the smooth, sleek bodywork of the
11:50Goldwing, you can see here that there's not a lot of places to actually lash down to.
11:54The luggage rack provides you not only a place to put something, but also a place to secure
11:57it. Now my second modification will probably draw laughter from some folks, but I would
12:01embrace Goldwingdom very fully. I think I would equip this thing with a trailer hitch.
12:06The Goldwing has plenty of guts. This is great at pulling. It's got all sorts of downstairs
12:10torque. It really would be able to handle a trailer with ease. I think it would really
12:13let you live life on the road for weeks or possibly even months at a time. Now I had
12:17plenty more thoughts on the Goldwing, but we couldn't pack them all into this video.
12:20Click that info button. Cruise on over to my Common Tread article where I really analyze
12:24this thing from soup to nuts. If you're watching us on YouTube, do me a favor and subscribe.
12:28Make sure I got a job next month doing these for you guys. As for me, I'm going to get
12:32a little bit more money's worth out of the Goldwing. I'm going for a ride. As always,
12:35I'm Lemmy. I'm out of here.