Buell XB-12 S LIGHTNING 2004 — Specifications

Imagine a roadster that had spent its weekends riding on supermoto paddocks, absorbing the best of both disciplines without ever choosing a side. That’s roughly what Buell offered in 2004 with this XB-12 S Lightning, a machine that baffled as much as it seduced, and which deserves more than to be reduced to a simple derivative of the XB-12 R.

The kinship with the faired version is real: the same perimeter aluminum frame that serves as a 14.5-liter fuel tank, the same hollow swingarm that stores engine oil, the same 45-degree V-twin with a displacement of 1203 cm3. The 100 horsepower available at 6600 rpm and the 107.9 Nm of torque at 6000 rpm are rigorously identical. What changes is everything above the handlebars: the headlight assembly is gone, replaced by two small headlights and a mini windscreen that deceives no one about the machine's sporty intentions. The handlebars rise, the riding position opens up, and the machine changes personality completely.

At 179 kg dry and 209 kg in running order, the Lightning sits in the upper-middle range of its category, but this raw figure says nothing about how it feels in your hands. The very low center of gravity, a direct inheritance of this chassis philosophy patented by Erik Buell, gives a feeling of lightness that machines ten kilos lighter don't always manage to reproduce. The 43 mm Showa inverted fork with its 120 mm of travel does a good job, and the single rear shock absorber with its 127 mm of travel completes a set that tolerates chain of turns with disconcerting ease. You turn around the steering axis as if the motorcycle were pivoting under itself rather than being pushed into the turn. It’s disconcerting for the first few minutes, enjoyable afterwards.

Faced with a Ducati Monster S4 or a Speed Triple of the time, the Buell plays a different score. Less Latin in its emotions, less British in its brutality, it fully embraces its American origins. The V-twin rumbles low, the torque arrives early, and the 5-speed gearbox coupled with belt drive makes urban journeys particularly smooth. This XB-12 S targets a rider who wants a versatile motorcycle with a strong personality, capable of feeling comfortable both in the hairpin bends of mountain passes and across town, without ever demanding a racing license to enjoy it. The experienced beginner will find a pedagogical playground; the experienced rider will seek sensations less formatted than those offered by the Japanese competition.

The honest criticism that can be made concerns the engine itself. The chassis would willingly accept more power, and you can feel that the engine, as generous as it is in the higher gears, plateaus where a more modern engine would take off. Buell was then constrained by its parent company Harley-Davidson, which held 95% of the capital, and technological orientations left little latitude for rethinking the engine architecture from the ground up. The result is a motorcycle with character, sold at the time for 11,995 euros, which embraced this contradiction with a certain elegance: American in spirit, European in the design of the chassis, unclassifiable in its riding sensations. Few motorcycles from 2004 could claim such originality.