Daily Rider Year in Review 2025

First of all, I crashed myself out of daily riding in the middle of October, when I highsided myself off the KTM 990 RC R while testing it in Spain. I cracked a couple of ribs, plus a little bone in my neck, and blasted apart the middle of my ankle badly enough that all of the foot surgeons seemed impressed. I hate it when that happens. Bored surgeons are my favorite kind.

The best of 2025

Despite my best efforts to retire early I did learn a lot this year and, as is tradition with these chin-stroking retrospectives, I reckon we ought to start at the top. Honda’s CB750 Hornet was the best motorcycle I rode in 2025, that’s according to the Daily Rider Leaderboard and the ‘board doesn’t lie. On that note, let me rephrase: The CB750 Hornet was the bike I rode in 2025 which I am most likely to recommend. And I stand by that.

To put it more succinctly, and quote Mr. Editor Lance’s first-ride review, the Hornet has "no glaring weaknesses.” It checks all of the basic boxes of being affordable and reasonable to ride as well as feeling agile and spunky, but it’s the little things that really get me. For example, in this age of bikes trying to do too many tricks with technology, finally there is a switchgear that is simple and easy to understand with a bright, clean dash to match.

For me, it was riding it down a twisty road that cemented it in my pantheon of great motorcycles. I was blown away with the poise and stability that the Hornet had when I pushed it (a little too) hard. Every facet, from the brakes and ABS to the suspension and the transmission, was better than it needed to be. Including the engine, which is good enough to be in a $12,000 motorcycle if you ask me. Getting it for eight grand is just a steal.

Not to mention the 160-section rear tire, which I love. It’s a clear signal that there’s no posturing or pretense about the CB750 Hornet. It’s just unapologetically terrific, from start to finish. In fact, if there’s one legitimate complaint it might be that it blends into a showroom of other machines too well, when really it’s a gem of a machine.

Other good things

Regulars to the Daily Rider playlist or Common Tread in general will know that the CB750 Hornet is interesting in part because it breaks the trend of an ADV bike topping the DR Leaderboard, which has been the case every year since the series began. Maybe if I’d ridden some $25,000 machine bristling with tech and oozing horsepower over the course of 2025 that bike would be at the top. Even without that, the Hornet beat out some good competition.

Triumph’s Tiger Sport 800, for one, which is a bike I was really excited about. On paper it looked like everything any Daily Rider would want — compact, powerful, practical, and affordable. It’s a nice machine, and one I’ll recommend to some people, but it had one too many misses to top the Leaderboard.

It’s kind of the same story with the CFMOTO Ibex 450, which I think is a superb piece of kit. People tend to land on the fact that it has so many features and such a low price, and yea, sure, it has those things. What I continue to love about it is the core concept of a premium-but-small engine in a package that delivers what most ADV riders want. It’s not dinky or purposely limited (in fact it’s pretty heavy), it just has a small engine.

While I’m on the topic of my favorite bikes of 2025 I should mention the machine at the very bottom of the DR Leaderboard, Honda’s Dax 125. Not a particularly good motorbike to ride every day, for most of us, and yet it is packed with so much joy and potential. I referred to it and its Super Cub and Trail 125 siblings as “geodes” in my article; “stone simple when you first see them, but when you crack them open and ride they glitter with all kinds of skills and facets of motorcycling waiting to be honed.” That’s worth a smiley face in my book.

The bad and the ugly

I don’t have a lot of hate to spray around at the other motorcycles near the bottom of the Leaderboard this year, frankly. Honda’s Gold Wing and Harley’s CVO Road Glide are just too massive and absurd to ever be recommended as good all-’round machines, and yet the Gold Wing is majestic far more often than it should be and the Harley is a hoot most of the time.

The Zero S and Can-Am Pulse are good at doing extremely specific things, which means ultimately they live in too much of a practical silo for anyone to be excited about them. Is a motorcycle company ever going to figure out how to lure all of the people buying e-bikes and e-motos and e-everythings into the world of actual motorcycles? I can’t blame them for trying, and it’d be nice if people cared enough to take a couple of tests and be licensed to ride for real. But maybe that’s a different podcast.

Back to the point, one bike I will begrudgingly file in the failure column is Kawasaki’s Ninja 7 Hybrid. It just isn’t very good, and it makes me sad because I love the concept. I applaud Team Green for making it happen, and pricing it reasonably. Kind of like the applause for the person who sings the national anthem at a ball game and forgets the words. Good on you for having the guts to do it. Unfortunately, nobody is going to remember this fondly.

Thank you 2025, and good riddance 

I had a buddy who took a year off between his freshman and sophomore year of college, basically because he was burnt out on school. “I’m tired of writing papers for only one person to read,” he said. That has stuck with me, and I bring it up now because of how much it tickles me that Daily Rider reaches so many of you.

We’re not doing Taylor Swift numbers here. Hell, people post videos of themselves unboxing toys that get more views than we do here at RevZilla. But, as of my writing this, more than 300,000 people have watched the Ibex 450 Daily Rider episode, 430,000 have viewed the Gold Wing video, and more than 700,000 riders or wannabe riders have seen some amount of the KTM 390 Adventure R review. That means a lot to us.

Daily Rider videos are simple, and formulaic. Sometimes we make mistakes. But, I try to make each one valuable in its own way, and every video is pored over tirelessly by the DR editor, Stephen. The creative force behind our CTXP episodes, Spenser, even lays eyes on Daily Rider just to make sure there aren’t a few frames that could be trimmed or an audio glitch that we missed. We take pride in the series because you get a kick out of it. So, thank you.

Now that I’ve softened you up, this is where I remind you that, hey, you’ve barely gotten more than 20 episodes of Daily Rider in past years! The fact that I managed to squeeze out 19 of them (that’s including the 1969 Kawasaki H1 Mach III that made its way onto the DR Classics board) in 10 months is basically a miracle! Don’t make me use more (!) exclamation points! 

Also, you may have noticed that the team finally had enough of me complaining about wanting to do some version of Daily Rider on a racetrack that they let me dabble with a Ducati Panigale V2 S review and eventually make a full-on track video at COTA on a souped-up BMW M 1000 RR. And then, of course, my fateful trip to Spain, where I broke myself to bits, but not before I recorded most of a KTM 990 RC R track review. 

I guess those are all of my excuses. I got a little distracted doing racetrack stuff and then hurt myself. Hopefully 22 videos and this whining holds you over for now, because it’ll be a slow start to 2026. I’m hoping to be able to walk by the end of January and ride by the end of February, so keep an eye out for some Daily Rider content sometime in March.

In the meantime I’ll be here at the keyboard. I spent November mostly wallowing in self pity, and December digging out of my inbox and filing insurance paperwork. Now I’m back at work, trying desperately to prove to the team that I can still be an asset to Common Tread even if I’m not riding a new motorcycle every other week. With any luck, the crash data from the airbag I was wearing will make good food for thought. Stay tuned.

2025 Daily Rider Leaderboard
Rank	Machine	More from Common Tread
1	Honda CB750 Hornet 🙂	Lance's first ride
2	Triumph Tiger Sport 800	Dustin's first ride
3	CFMOTO Ibex 450	Joe's first ride Dustin's long-term update(s)
4	Husqvarna Svartpilen 801	Dustin's first ride
5	Suzuki GSX-8R	Dustin's first ride Zack's op/ed
6	Yamaha MT-09	Dustin's first ride
7	Kawasaki H2 SX SE 🔥💰	Zack's road test (and Ninja 1100 comparo)
8	Honda NT1100 DCT	Dustin's first ride
9	Royal Enfield Himalayan 450	Dustin's first ride
10	KTM 390 Adventure R	Zack's first ride
11	Suzuki DR-Z4S	Zack's first ride
12	Yamaha YZF-R9	Ari's first ride
13	Honda Gold Wing Tour	Lance's first ride
14	Harley-Davidson CVO Road Glide ST	Lance's first ride
15	Zero S	Zack & Ari's CTXP road trip
16	Can-Am Pulse	Marc's first ride
17	Kawasaki Ninja 7 Hybrid	Zack's 'round-town review Jen's first ride
18	Honda Dax 125 🙂	Zack's first ride