REGARDLESS of your financial situation it’s arguably always been a good idea to shop secondhand when you’re new to riding. Even the best of us has suffered the embarrassment of dropping a bike and somehow the sound of crunching plastic is less painful when you know it wasn’t brand new in the first place.
These days, riders stepping up to a full-on ‘A’ licence, with access to full power machines for the first time, are already going to have had experience on smaller bikes, but even so the added weight and bulk of a big bike can still catch you out. Throw in the fact that it’s worthwhile making steady steps up the performance ladder rather than leaping straight onto a superbike – meaning you might be trading bikes fairly regularly – and the used market makes way more sense than buying new. With around seven used bikes changing hands for every new one sold, it’s clear that most riders already prefer to let others soak up the initial depreciation.
But if you’re venturing into the classifieds to get your first big bike, what sort of thing should you be looking for? We’d suggest that as well as a good combination of performance and handling – without going too mad on the former until you’ve gained more experience – it’s worth considering things like reliability, parts availability and ease of maintenance as well as whether or not the bike in question has life-saving technology like ABS.