A love letter to Husqvarna Vitpilen 701
#motorcycles 2 min.
This was the first motorcycle I bought with my heart and not my head.
It’s wildly impractical.
You cannot take much for trips, since the only practical luggage options are a tank bag and a backpack.
The Husqvarna Vitpilen 701 had the most powerful single-cylinder engine ever installed in a mass-production motorcycle, until the Ducati Hypermotard 698 Mono was released last year. It surpassed it by only a couple of horses.
Unfortunately, getting 75 horses out of a single-cylinder engine means that anything below 4K RPM feels like a pogo stick, and everything above 6K RPM makes my hands numb from vibration.
Suspension is great for spirited riding on perfect tarmac and too hard for anything else.
Cafe racer ergonomics and clip-ons mean my wrists hurt after 30 minutes of riding or even sooner in the city traffic.
It’s not the best bike for commuting, touring, or anything apart from carving corners. It’s not the most comfortable and doesn’t sound that great, either.
So I’m thinking about changing it for something more sensible and practical.
There’s just one problem: I love the damn thing.
Just look at it.
It’s a beautiful, minimalist, modern motorcycle that looks like it came straight out of a sci-fi movie. The design is clean and sharp, and there is nothing else like it on the road.
I wanted it since the day I found out it exists. It took around five years for the stars to align, and I finally got it in 2024.
I’m in my second season, and still, every ride feels like an occasion. Riding it feels exactly like a child’s idea of motorcycling.
The chassis is so well-tuned and light that it feels like a bicycle with a motor; even a noob like me can corner confidently. Change the stock mirrors for the ones mounted on the bar ends, and it’s the closest feeling to flying without leaving the ground.
I love that it’s a cafe racer with a supermoto engine that goes BRAAAAAP as I accelerate from red lights. Such torque on a 160kg motorcycle makes it feel like you’re sitting on a rocket.
It’s brilliant, weird, and quite unnecessary. If that isn’t a definition of art, I don’t know what is.