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We own a 2004 Marauder, so I've got some experience with the bike.

Acceleration potential is mild (in stock form). It will get out of its own way, but it won't snap your neck back. Weight is indeed carried low, steering is OK except at very low speeds, where the bike's steering geometry works against it. It is difficult to get it to go in a straight line at very low speeds.

I also own a 2005 Triumph Bonneville. Bonneville and Marauder weights are identical. Bonneville makes quite a bit more horsepower and will out-accelerate the Marauder handily. Nonetheless, I believe the Bonneville makes a superior choice for beginners. The standard frame and very compact weight distribution make it a very docile handling bike with very predictable steering at all speeds. It handles like a more powerful version of the little 200cc bikes in the MSF class.

I think a newbie will gain confidence in steering and leaning a bike much more quickly with a Bonneville than with a Marauder. Not impossible with a Marauder, but it takes a while to get the knack of its low speed handling. Low speed handling on a Bonneville is so easy, it almost feels like cheating! In this case, the more powerful bike is actually the better choice.

I am the poster child for staying on smaller bikes for beginners. I rode for years as a teenager and adult, and on some fairly decent-sized bikes (my last bike before my hiatus was a 93 Honda ST1100 ABS, not a little or lightweight machine.) I then went a little over four years without riding, and when I got back in the saddle picked up an 02 Suzuki Intruder 1500LC. It was an awful lot of bike -- weighing just under 700 pounds with all of the extras I had on it -- but with so many years experience and being a larger guy myself I did not think it would be an issue.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

1) Dropped the bike the very first time I rode it. It was not entirely my fault (right, we are all supposed to say that you know?) but the fact is I didn't make it three miles on the damned thing before I was grunting and straining to get it up off the ground.

2) 60 days before I could come off a stop on a reverse incline reliably

3) Six months (no sh#t) before I could do a really tight U-turn

Going through a few years without a bike then jumping on something bigger than I had ever had was about the stupidest thing I've ever done (discounting second and third marriages.) There are many, many good 500-800 cruisers and 250-600 sport bikes out there that make decent starter bikes, don't cost much and have decent resale retention for when you're ready to upgrade. My pride, ironically, cost me tons of embarrassment at stop lights on hills, in parking lots and in one complete stranger's driveway (the time I dropped it, naturally) and as that is all it managed to cost me I consider myself lucky. I could have seriously hurt or killed myself just because I was too pigheaded to admit that I really needed to go down, not up, the scale when I started back riding.


Frank