Triumph Street Twin Bonneville 900 and Yamaha Nmax 155 are the two motorcycles I own here in Pattaya Thailand and they are the best. But that’s me. I no longer own a car. Because I despise how agonizingly slow they are, and immobile in city traffic. These are the reasons I bought the Triumph Street Twin and Yamaha Nmax. This is how they compare to each other.

Yamaha Nmax is the best all around motorbike one can buy for urban driving here in Pattaya, Thailand bar none.

My Nmax has 14.8 horsepower. It weighs 280 pounds, is fully automatic and can achieve 75 miles per hour indicated.

On the highway at modest speeds it will do well over 100 miles per gallon. It is unflappable on pavement wet or dry. While it corners quick as thought.

At slow slow speeds, it is jerky. While its chief rival, Honda’s PCX 150 is utterly smooth. But if you are thinking about buying the Yamaha Nmax, the new model is every bit as smooth as the Honda at parking lot speeds. While cornering almost as quick as the old model. Yet I feel my Yamaha Nmax handles just a little tighter than the new model.

Two of my friends have the latest version of the Yamaha Nmax. Which offers keyless ignition, and that engine on and off switch that can be turned on and off. This switch shuts the engine down at stoplights for example while starting the engine up as soon as the driver gives the bike a little throttle.

Yes, the new model Yamaha is smoother than the old model while adding a few “Must have” bells and whistles” the Honda PCX has always had.

But I still prefer the old model. So I’m keeping mine. First off, all that gee whiz new electronic gadgetry comes at a cost. It adds weight and complexity. So reliability suffers by comparison to the simpler old model.

The second huge disadvantage that the new model has over the old model is the lack of a hook in front of the driver’s knees for carrying grocery bags. Although the Yamaha Nmax doesn’t come with a hook all it takes is pulling out a screw and screwing a hook back into the bike’s console. One can buy such a hook practically everywhere. I can hang two or three plastic bags from it carrying groceries or whatever’s. So if I’m grocery shopping, I can add two or three plastic bags of groceries to one or two bags that I can already put under the Yamaha Nmax’s seat. While the girl riding behind me can carry another two bags of groceries.

The manager of my favorite Italian restaurant has a friend who has driven his Yamaha Nmax all the way from Pattaya to Chiang Mai in ten hours.

That’s even quicker than it takes a bus to travel to travel the same 511 miles. Which comes out to an average of 51 miles per hour. I’ve never done it and never plan to. But it proves that this little one cylinder 14.8 horsepower bike is capable of handling all the little two lane secondary roads in the world.

When it comes to speed and comfort one cannot begin to compare the Yamaha Nmax 155 to my Triumph Street Twin however.

Although the Yamaha Nmax 155 represents the best all around motorbike for Thailand drivers, the Triumph Street Twin isn’t a bad choice either. At first glance this 440 pound 900 c.c. might seem totally out of place in Pattaya or Bangkok traffic. You might think that a 900 c.c. engine on this heavy a motorcycle is too large for slicing and dicing through city traffic with cars and motorcycles lined up bumper to bumper.

I need a bike that can get into 24 inch wide spaces, or the width between my mirrors. A bike so agile that I can turn on a dime. My Triumph Street Twin can squeeze between spaces nearly as narrow as my Yamaha Nmax can barely get through. And it’s easy to flick sideways back and forth so that I can change direction easily.

My neighbor’s Harley Davidson can’t begin to do that. I forget the model and can’t seem to find it. But it has an 1800 c.c. engine, and it must weigh a good 600 pounds.

Its owner is American, like myself. But when I asked him about his Harley he told me he usually gets around Pattaya on a scooter. Because its just too much effort to haul that big Harley around in city traffic, and it’s gotta be a real bear to park.

This morning I went down to our condo parking lot to take a picture of it. But I could not find it in the condo parking lot. Security told me he’s got it for sale. That’s too bad because that Harley had an exquisite paint job, and it has to be almost perfect for American superhighways. But I got a picture of my Triumph alongside another neighbor’s Kawasaki 1000.

My neighbor’s German. He loves fast bikes and his Kawasaki has more than twice the horsepower than my Triumph has.

With just half the German owner’s horsepower, my Triumph Street twin would give him a good race here in Pattaya. This is because my Triumph’s engine is sensational.

It’s got only 54 horsepower, but it’s got its horsepower where you need it the most. Peak torque arrives at just 3240 rpm’s. So it’s got most of its power down low. The bike screams when you haul back the throttle when you were just loping along at low rpms in traffic.

Aside from its lack of smoothness at low speeds and a harsh ride, my Yamaha Nmax suffers from one other disadvantage. It doesn’t happen very often but when it does, it can be fatal. Suppose you overtake a car which is traveling very slowly. And then suddenly the testorceone hits the car driver. To show you what a man is he jumps on the throttle of his car. He’s in the left lane, and now he’s about to pass you. Then you spot all the cars and other obstacles off the shoulder of the road. You can either pussy out and let the moron pass you, or you can keep pouring the coals to your Nmax hoping you can stay ahead of the bar before you rear end one of the cars off on your right.

In the car driver’s pygmy sized brain he’s in a race with you, and he would rather watch you crash into a car on your right than let you stay ahead of him.

Your Nmax barely makes enough power to out accelerate that car at 30 miles an hour. If you were driving a Triumph Street Twin you’d keep surging in front place, widening the gap between you and that idiot who’s trying to pass you. So in this respect the Triumph is far safer than the Yamaha Nmax because it’s got power to spare in just about any situation you are likely to encounter.

To give you an idea of just how marvelous this new engine Triumph’s been putting into its Street Twins. And nearly all its other models since 2018, let’s compare my Triumph Street Twin a Honda 450 CBR.

In the late 1960’s to early 1970’s that 450 was Honda’s answer to the British 650 twins. With Triumph, Norton, and BSA heading the list. With just 450 cc’s the Honda 450 CBR made nearly as much horsepower as those British 650’s and could almost equal them on the track.

Before I bought my Honda 450 CBR I had a Honda 350 CB which had 36 horsepower and could do about 90 miles an hour with my riding in an upright position.

My Honda 350 was a great all around motorcycle. It handled great and could corner well on twisty roads due to its good power and light weight. But on a four lane highway, it wouldn’t accelerate very fast from 60 to 80. And with cars traveling up to 80 or so, it just wasn’t much of a highway cruiser. Upgrading to the Honda 450 CBR solved that problem. With 45 horsepower on tap I managed to get it just over 100 miles an hour.

Being substantially heavier than my 350 Honda CBR it was much more of a bear to take around tight corners and the hairpins I kept testing my 350 against.

But it had enough power to easily handle just about any highway situation that presented itself.

Still, it was the Triumph 650 Bonneville that kept capturing my imagination.

The key words were that the 450 Honda CBR was competitive with the big English twins. Competitive, yes. But not quite as fast. Or as glamorous.

My cousin had a 650 Triumph Bonneville. I remember that it leaked oil and had enough electrical problems that he never managed to keep it running for long. But if the Honda 450 CBR could do 105 so long as the driver lay nearly prone across the bike’s fuel tank, that Bonneville could top 110. And it’s engine made an unforgettable sound, that I’d compare to a roar. Not a shriek like a high winding Japanese motor but a deep guttural sound that announced that this was a real man’s bike.

Yep, it took real men to drive a Triumph or Norton in those days. Because you had to kick start those 650 British twins, which oftentimes didn’t cooperate with their riders.

But my Triumph Street Twins got a far better engine than those 1970’s British 650s ever had and an even better one than most Japanese bikes have today.

I’ve got just 54 horsepower out of a 900 c.c. engine. When you compare that to those old Honda 450’s, which produced 45 horsepower, you have to think that the Triumph’s engine is detuned. Because if today Honda reproduced the 450 as a 900, it would generate 90 horsepower. Which is almost twice as much as the Triumph Street Twin has.

The latest Triumph Street Twins which were introduced in 2019 upped their horsepower from 54 to 65. Which still isn’t a lot of horsepower for a 900 c.c. engine. Triumph achieved this by refining the engine to give it another 500 rpms. So the new Triumph Street Twin has 11 horsepower more than mine, providing I wring its engine out.

I almost bought a Tech Bike Parts Camshaft for my 2018 Triumph Street Twin which would have provided me with another 11 horsepower for an investment of only four-hundred dollars.

But the service manager from my Pattaya Triumph dealership talked me out of it. For one thing he told me that my Triumph Street Twin has much more power than is needed in Thailand as is.

Tech Bike Parts claims that the Triumph engineers deliberately detuned the 900 c.c. Triumph Street Twin so that it could not compete successfully against Triumphs higher end 1200 c.c. models. And when you consider that today Triumph is producing 900 c.c. on off road Tiger models that produce 95 horsepower I totally agree with Tech Bike Parts.

From what I’ve read, if my “old model” Triumph Street Twin gets to sixty miles an hour in 5.3 seconds the “new model” Triumph Street Twin will hit sixty in 5.1 seconds.

This isn’t that much difference. But to be able to do it, the rider must take advantage of the extra 500 cc’s the new engine offers him. In my driving in and around Pattaya I hardly ever take my Triumph that high up the rev counter. Because I feel I can get enough acceleration at any speed simply by shifting up.

And speaking of shifting up into higher gears with my Triumph Street Twin, my Triumphs controls work spectacularly well.

Shifting is nice and smooth while the clutch of the Triumph Street Twin is extraordinarily light and comfortable to engage. A lot of us prefer automatics, which are the rage here in countries such as Thailand. I was one of them because a well designed automatic drives like I would imagine a magic carpet would drive. There’s no thinking to driving these marvelous machines.

But as good as it it, my Yamaha Nmax 155 still has a firm suspension and a short wheelbase thanks to its superbly engineered 13 inch wheels. So it’s got a rough ride while my Triumph Street Twin has a relatively soft suspension and large wheels that combined with its comfortable seat and upright riding position does a great job of soaking up all those bumps city driving throws at me. But I’ve been driving rear motorcycles since I was 23 while most of my cars and pickup trucks had manual transmissions.

So for me, it’s a lot of fun shifting my Triumph Street Twin through the gears. While its engine, light clutch and easy shifting transmission combine to create a very pleasant manual shifting experience.

All of this translates to a very comfortable riding experience for the Triumph Street Twin that is a least equal to what I’m getting from my Yamaha Nmax 155.

But that seriously detuned engine is out of this world. Whereas both my Honda 350 and Honda 450 CBR never managed to get much more than 50 miles to the gallon, I’m almost certain my Triumph Street Twin will get right at 70 miles per gallon or so. This is unheard of for a 900 c.c. engine that generates nearly as much torque as my Street Twin.

My Triumph Street Twin has a modestly sized 3.3 gallon fuel tank. Which is roughly the same size of tank my Honda 350 had. So if I were driving on the highway I figure on getting a 200 mile range from this modestly sized tank. The Triumph’s detuned 900 c.c. engine gives me excellent range from a fuel tank that still looks good. Whereas even a lot of 650’s today can get decent range at the expense of overly large fuel tanks that destroy the lines of a trim attractive bike.

And forget what you’ve heard about the reliability of those old English twin cylinder 650’s. I cannot fault the reliability of my 900 Triumph Street Twin.

From what I’ve gleaned the Triumph Street twin is even more reliable than a lot of Yamaha models that are well known for being almost problem free. I’ve even read that the Tiger 900 model gets its electrical parts checked and waterproofed. I don’t know if the electrical components of all Triumph models are this thoroughly prepared. But this should show how seriously Triumph is about manufacturing reliable motorcycles.

Lastly, that detuned 900 c.c. engine should prove to be bullet proof.

And although the Triumph Street Twin offers a lot of the best modern high tech. Such as anti lock breaks. throttle by wire, and fuel injection, it still comparatively simple. There’s just two cylinders to go wrong. While there’s a minimum of adjustments and modern day bells and whistles. All of which come at a cost. In reliability.

Lastly, it’s a Triumph. People who know and appreciate fine motorbikes understand what a Triumph is all about.

The Centara Grand Mirage Resort is a five star operation only half a mile from my condo. I’ve been a member of the Centara’s physical fitness center for eight years now. So I go there often. There are a lot of BMW’s and Mercedes Benz’s here. Rich Thais own most of them. I will often see Lamborghinis here and Ferrari’s . And an occasional Rolls Royce.

But when I arrive on my Triumph Street Twin, the security guards will often salute me. Because they understand what a Triumph is and what it stands for.

While I’ve never seen a security guard salute the driver of a BMW, Mercedes, Ferrari, or Lamborghini.

I think it’s because the security guards understand that most owners of such cars own them purely as status symbols. And many of them don’t even know how to drive them. But the guy coming in driving a Triumph has to know how to drive a motorcycle. Moreover, although a Triumph is more expensive than your typical Honda or Yamaha motorcycle, owning one is not out of reach of most people. And as for many Westerners I encounter here, I oftentimes find them interested in my Triumph. Because it brings them back to their past.

Retro motorcycles such as the Triumph Street Twin are the best all around motorcycles that money can buy.

The owner of the 1000 c.c. Kawasaki is German. I know him too well. He

loves powerful well engineered motorcycles. His sport bike develops over 100 horsepower, which is double what my Triumph Street Twin produces but after he test drove my Triumph Street Twin he told me, “your Triumph feels almost as powerful as my Kawasaki.” In a race he would trounce me. But the engine of his Kawasaki is overkill because 1.

He doesn’t need 100 horsepower and 2. All that horsepower comes at very high rpms which are useless in the kind of driving we typical do here in Thailand.

The guy has a beautiful Thai girlfriend who’s tall for a Thai women. She has to feel very uncomfortable on that small passenger seat. And she looks like a bird on a perch riding behind him. Whereas the girl riding behind me on my Triumph Street Twin is riding in comfort on a soft long and wide seat.

And speaking of Germans compare two German BMW motorcycles that will tell the final tale of which type of motorbike is the best all around motorcycle you can buy.

Over twenty years ago I owned two German BMW motorcycles. I thought both of them were the cat’s meow. But which one is best for the kind of all around driving we do here in Thailand?

The two BMW bikes in these pictures are exactly like the one I once owned. The first one is black with white pin striping. The second is blue with the special RS sport bike faring.

My BMW R65 was a 650 that had only 50 horsepower. Which is still 5 more horsepower than my Honda CB 450 had.

The Germans developed the horizontal twin engine in the 1920’s. With its two cylinders sticking out like two sore thumbs, this engine design permitted the best air cooling possible.

The horizontal twin arrangement of the BMW’s two cylinders also permitted a very low center or gravity that make the bike a great handler in city traffic.

One of my best friends had a 1000 c.c. BMW twin that would have cost him $6000 brand new back in 1981. Whereas my 650 BMW set me back only $3500.

But in my opinion that 650 BMW R65 was even better than its larger 1000 c.c. brothers

I once drove my 650 BMW R65 non stop to Door County peninsula Wisconsin with my 4 foot eleven girlfriend behind me. That’s 500 miles in one day.

So that little 650 BMW was a great highway cruiser that equaled its larger 1000 c.c. stable mates so long as the driver and his passenger are not overly large (such as most Americans are today).

It weighed only 408 pounds and handled brilliantly in both Chicago and Saint Louis city traffic. And it had a long comfortable seat that permitted me to move my body position very easily. Riding solo I could position my feet way back on the passenger’s foot pegs and crouch down low with my stomach practically riding across the fuel tank. Or I could ride totally upright. And switch back and forth when I got tired of my riding position.

Back in those days the U.S. had a 55 mph speed limit. My BMW R65’s engine hardly vibrated at all up to 58 miles an hour due to the horizontal placement of its two cylinders. From then on until I reached 70 miles an hour, the bike entered a vibration zone. But at 70 all the say to the bike’s top end, my BMW R65 was as smooth as glass.

Partly due to its horizontal cylinder arrangement my BMW 650 R65 allowed me to get at the bike’s essentials.

So that I could easily perform routine maintenance. Getting at the batteries to either charge or to replace them was a snap. I could even adjust the bike’s timing very easily. And the bike had carburetors which I had good luck with as they never went out of adjustment.

After I got married I sold my BMW R65 and have regretted it ever since. But three years later I just had to buy my dream bike, the gorgeous 1000 c.c. 4 cylinder BMW K100 RS

Spending $7000 for a motorcycle back in those days was just a little too much for me. But when I found a 1985 BMW K100 RS that had just 5000 miles on its odometer for sale for $4600 I just had to buy it.

That 1985 BMW K100 RS was poetry in motion. It was styled like no other bike, before or since, had 90 horsepower and was said to be able to top out at 137 miles an hour.

This four cylinder bike could reach 100 miles an hour in 7 seconds. And although Honda soon produced a four cylinder motorcycle that churned out over 100 horsepower, there was no way that Honda could achieve high speeds and still feel reasonably safe the way that the BMW K100 RS could. It handled great so long as I was doing at least 80 miles an hour.

The 90 horsepower K100 RS BMW had a uniquely engineered sate of the art engine placement. That permitted a low center of gravity and magnificent high speed stability and handling. But it had a very serious Achilles heel that my BMW R65 never had.

That 1985 BMW engine’s design offered great handling performance at the expense of undo high speed vibration. Which was inherent in the engine’s design.

I tried softer grips to dampen some of that high speed vibration tingle. But even that didn’t work. And although the bike was so composed at high speeds that allowed me to average 100 miles an hour from my farm to Chicago that high speed vibration tingle always got to me. Making me want to get off and rest my hands after driving every 100 miles of so.

The BMW K100 RS was also not as reliable as the old BMW boxer twins

It offered the latest state of the art improvements such as liquid cooling and fuel injection but a couple of times I found myself stranded due to fuel injection teething problems that manifested themselves in this new BMW model.

And although I could get to Chicago in just 2.5 hours with my wife riding behind me, compared to four hours driving a car, my BMW wasn’t nearly as good as my old BMW R65 handling city traffic.

Its narrow handlebars were great driving at high speed. But they weren’t very good at speeds that are typical of city driving.

I dropped my BMW K100 RS once while driving through the cones in a motorcycle safety course. I was so hung over that when the bike started to go down I couldn’t make the necessary corrections in time. The bike weighed 504 pounds. And those narrow handle bars just didn’t give me the leverage I needed to keep the bike from keeling over. Had I been driving a 600 pound Harley the Harley’s wider handle bars would helped me keep the bike upright.

Which brings me back to my Triumph Street Twin. Because the all around winner between the two BMW’s I once owned as the BMW 650 c.c. R65.

It could do everything well. It was great on the highway. While it performed equally well in city traffic due to its light weight, wide handle bars and low center of gravity that its horizontal twin cylinder arrangement permitted.

Unfortunately, BMW stopped producing that 650 c.c. R65 a long time ago. And the reason was, in my opinion, it was just too good of a bike to be selling for just $3500 when BMW could be selling its larger models for $6000 and up.

I think the marketing boys at Triumph decided the same thing was true with the Triumph Street Twin. More than enough horsepower that anyone could reasonably need can easily be gained out of that 900 c.c. engine. So the engineers at Triumph decided to curb its power down to just 54 horsepower. Then it could sell it as an entry level Triumph for just $9000 in the U.S. or 400000 baht in Thailand (equal to about $12000). But then again anything that’s totally imported into Thailand usually costs at least double what it costs in the country of manufacture.

Triumph partly overcomes such huge import fees by assembling their bikes in Thailand

So it costs me $12000 to buy a Triumph Street Twin here in Thailand. Whereas in the U.S. it’s a bargain at $9000. Once again that’s 400000 baht. Whereas one has to pay 550000 baht to buy a 900 c.c. Triumph Tiger that generates 95 horsepower. Granted it has 3 cylinders. Whereas the 1200 c.c. Triumph Speed Twin generates 100 horsepower for the same 559000 baht.

Upgrading my Triumph Street Twin

I thought about trading my Triumph Street Twin in for the new 2021 Street Twin model due to the increased horsepower. And much better brakes the new model had over my Triumph Street Twin which I bought in 2018. But I decided that I could accelerate almost as quickly with my bike than I could with the new model by simply shifting at the right intervals to get the maximum benefit of my Triumphs enormous toque.

I also felt that if I had on tap an extra 500 rpms good for 11 more horsepower that I would be tempted to rev the bike up more often than I really needed to be doing. For me getting an additional 11 horsepower was not worth it. So I decided to go all out for better brakes and tires.

I was not very happy with the handling of my Triumph Street Twin. For some reason or another whenever I would hit a small rut in the road the bike tended to want to go sideways on me.

Which was not at all confidence building. I finally decided that the answer to such blemishes in my bike’s handling I took the advice of my Triumph dealer and get new Pirelli Scorpion tires to replace the stock Pirelli Phantom tires the bike came with. I also invested another $2000 and ordered a Brembo brakes.

My Triumph Street Twin improved 200 percent with the new tires and brakes

I spent nearly $300 for two new tires even though the stock Pirelli Phantom tires were still practically brand new. Before I got down the road a half a mile, I knew that the new Pirelli Scorpion tires totally transformed my bike into a totally different animal. The bike tracked straight as an arrow regardless of what imperfections in the pavement I encountered. Since the Pirelli Scorpion tires were designed to offer off road capabilities I decided to go down a rutted dirt road down to the beach.

The new tires didn’t quite transform my Triumph Street Twin into a dirt bike

But, I was able to drive across the ruts and rocks I encountered with total confidence in my tires. So buying the new tires alone gave me much quicker and much more sure footing than I felt my Triumph ever possessed.

Two weeks later I received my new Brembo brakes. Now I know a lot of you might feel that spending $2000 just for new motorcycle brakes is a terrible waste of money. After all, my old brakes were up to doing the job. Unless you read a lot of reviews on the Triumph Street Twin that called them barely adequate. And then you ask yourself why Triumph installed Brembo brakes on the new Street Twin model to handle the additional 11 horsepower.

The way I figure it, $2000 is a small price to have to pay for saving my life. Which is why I bought my Yamaha Nmax 155 in the first place.

I had a Yamaha 135 c.c. Elegance that I was perfectly happy with. But for not much more than $2000 I could buy the Nmax, which offered disk brakes front and rear and anti lock on both wheels. The Nmax has just about the best brakes going at any price.

Conclusion on the Triumph Street Twin vs Yamaha Nmax

If one were to buy only one bike to handle all the driving one is likely to encounter in Thailand, my first choice would be the Yamaha Nmax.

One can carry a lot of groceries on it. It will do 75 miles an hour indicated on its speedometer. On the highway it will get over 100 miles to the gallon. it offers superlative handling with an automatic transmission that is as entertaining as it is practical. And you can buy one here in Thailand for just $2637,00 out the door.

But I love bikes. Especially here in Thailand where one can swim or drive a motorcycle everyday where I oftentimes encounter a lot of city traffic. If I need to I can strap a desktop computer, a couple hundred pounds of floor tires or bags of concrete on the back of either my Yamaha Nmax or Triumph Street twin with their large long seats. Which you can’t do on a sport bike.

The Triumph Street twin brings me back to my roots in my past.

It’s a quick very good handling motorcycle that can slice and dice city traffic here in Pattaya nearly as well as the Yamaha Nmax which is 160 pounds lighter. It’s comfortable and it offers a smooth ride for both the driver and his passenger. And it has a terrific engine that will hold up for a long time, that offers nearly unbelievable fuel economy and gobs of torque that brings on power one can actually use. While it has a sound that is unique Triumph which announces, I’m here for business that real men can appreciate.

Review of Triumph Street Twin after owning it for three years.

Since I first bought it, I’ve improved it immeasurably. The original Pirelli tires did not inspire confidence so I got the Pirelli Scorpions. Which are awesome taking my Triumph Street Twin to an entirely different level. Then I upgraded the brakes for $2000. In this review I’m taking a forty minute ride through Pattaya. And three years after buying my Triumph I’m even more in love with it than the day I bought it.