Top 5 Bikes under £7500

The very nature of having such a wide range of bikes available makes knowing what you should go for actually tougher rather than easier.
So, taking the hugely popular adventure bike category as an example, at one extreme £7500 will buy a virtually as new, novice-orientated, two-year-old BMW F750GS showing 5000 miles or, at the other, a 2014 BMW R1200GS with 25,000 miles on the clock, with everything in-between. But which, taking everything into consideration, performance, equipment, condition etc, is best? The reality is usually somewhere in the middle, i.e., a three or four-year-old quality, litre-class machine in good condition and under 20,000miles. With that that in mind we taken a good, long look at what’s available for this budget across a range of the five most popular categories – retros, all-rounders, nakeds, the aforementioned adventure bikes and sports machines. We’ve looked at their performance and abilities, reliability records, quality and used values and come up with our recommendations. In some categories we were spoilt for choice, so have made mention of a number of brilliant bikes with which you won’t go wrong. All of them, however, are great bikes in their own right with proven records and which are also fantastic value as used buys.

Triumph’s revitalised Bonneville, as completely revamped in 2016 in both T100 (900cc) and T120 (1200cc) forms remains THE definitive retro roadster due to it combination of fruity performance (especially with the T120), easy manners, quality build and, arguably, the best name in heritage motorcycling. But with the top-spec T120 now starting at over £12K, decent used examples weren’t available for this £7500 budget – until now. And we’re not talking scruffy high milers, either. Now, for just under £7500, you can get a clean 17-plate T120 with under 10,000 miles, that’s likely to have been pampered, fully serviced and smothered in quality Triumph accessories and, with 79bhp, excellent handling and the name and looks to turn heads you won’t regret it. Alternatively, you can get the softer T100, or even the excellent, but also 900cc, Street Scrambler – but the T120 is the ultimate!
Read a full review of the Triumph T120 Bonneville here. Find a Triumph T120 Bonneville here.

When BMW brought out its first superbike based, adventure styled S1000XR in 2015 it effectively invented a whole new class of bike – the ‘adventure sports’, a street bike with upright dirt looks, the performance of a superbike (nearly – the S1000RR engine was in detuned, 165bhp S1000R spec) and the versatility of an adventure. And early, but high mileage examples, now just about fall into this price category. But we’d instead recommend it’s newer, cheaper little brother. The F900XR arrived in 2020 and has proved a revelation. Following the same style as the 1000 it’s instead powered by an enlarged version of the F850 parallel twin producing a perky 105bhp. It’s also smaller, lighter and more manageable yet is immensely versatile, comfortable for all, bristles with enough quality touches (adjustable screen, two riding modes, TFT dash etc) to justify the BMW badge with plenty more available as extras. Best of all, the earliest used examples are now under £7500. We saw a clean, private, 20-plate example with just 12,800 miles down, for sale for a stonking £6800!
Find a BMW F900XR here. Read a full review of the BMW F900XR here.

A lot of tosh is talked about ‘super nakeds’, the unfaired, upright, aggressive-styled siblings of full-blown superbikes. People think you want full-blown 200bhp Ducati Streetfighters or electronics-laden Aprilia 1100 Tuonos. Most of the time, however, on the road at least, you don’t – especially for this £7500 budget which will likely incur high-mileage, abused or cosmetically ‘challenged’ examples. For example, £7500 could buy you an early, high mileage, slightly tatty Yamaha MT-10, but we don’t recommend that you do. But it WILL buy you an excellent, 2019, 11k mile example of its brilliant ‘little brother’, the MT-09 SP. If you’re unfamiliar with it, the three cylinder, 113bhp MT-09 is already a brilliant, characterful and fun ‘real world’ roadster – if a little ‘budget’ feeling. The ‘SP’ version, though, with quality Ohlins rear shock, uprated, fully adjustable forks and quickshifter on top of its three riding modes and traction control, is a class act. We found a 2019 ‘minter’ showing just 11K miles for £7495…
Read a full review of the Yamaha MT-09 SP here. Find a Yamaha MT-09 SP here.

Again, the £7500 price point is a tricky one when it comes to popular classes such as adventure bikes. You CAN afford, just about, the ‘last generation’ BMW R1200GS, but it’ll be nearly 10 years old and have over 30K miles under its wheels. The same’s true of Ducati Multistradas, KTM Super Adventures, Triumph 1200 Tigers and more. So don’t. Instead, we recommend you go for one of the best of the recent ‘midi’ adventure class that’s done fewer miles, will be in better nick and, in the real world, likely do everything you need anyway, whether that be tour, scratch, take a pillion – and even go off road. Our pick of these is KTM’s 790 Adventure which came out in 2019, has a sufficient 95bhp, decent electronics and is genuinely ‘dual purpose’ Best of all, early bikes are now well within our budget. We found a 2020 example showing just 8300 miles for £7489.
Read a full review of the KTM 790 Adventure here. Find a KTM 790 Adventure here.

Another class where, like with super naked, a lot of bluster and bravado is talked about, 200bhp performance boasted about, mega-sophisticated electronic trickery blathered about with much of it, on the road at least, being irrelevant. It’s also tempting, at this budget, to go for older, higher mileage examples of full-blown superbikes when you really don’t need it and, by doing so, end up with a bike with issues. You could, for example, get an older, 2012 example of BMW’s brilliant S1000RR for this £7500, but we’d probably recommend that you don’t. Instead, however, Honda’s 2015 version of its CBR1000RR Fireblade is more than worth a look. In 2017 Honda reinvented its Blade with lashings of electronics and arguably got it wrong while that bike’s 2019 successor was effectively a race bike with indicators. Preceding both, however, was the ultimate incarnation of the ‘old’ Fireblade which had minimal electronics and brilliant build quality and road manners. At the time it was outplaced and overshadowed by race track refugees such as Yamaha’s all-new R1. Now it’s regarded as a road-relevant classic and you can now get a 12,000-mile, 2014 example for under £7500.
Read a full review of the Honda CBR1000RR Fireblade here. Find a Honda CBR1000RR Fireblade here.