2010 Victory Hammer

THE Victory Hammer S flexes some serious muscle and it just can't help attracting attention.

IN FACT, in a six-hour return trip from Newcastle to south of Sydney and back, it attracted about one "appreciative incident" every 20-minutes, but more on that later. When it was first released last year the Hammer was powered with the 100cu in Freedom V-twin motor, but this year's model has the more potent 106cu in (1731cc) powerplant.

On the stand

If the Boardwalk Blue and White striping is striking, then the 250 wide rear tyre is an eyeball magnet. Fitted to the blue 18inch Performance Machine X-Factor wheels with their interesting twin cross-over spoke pattern, that low muscled rear-end attracted a lot of comment. Dunlop Elites grace both wheels and coped well. Front and rear have 18inch rims and the combination works well, especially with such a wide rear. The staggered slash-cut dual exhaust with crossover look good and gave a low muted rumble but I couldn't help wondering what a set of after-market pipes would do. The rider's seat is comfortable and the removable passenger seat cowl functional. But being a muscle bike your pillion might want something a little more salubrious. The 106cu inch motor is a fuel-injected four-stroke 50 degree V-Twin with air/oil cooling and has a single overhead camshaft with four valves per cylinder, self-adjusting cam chains and hydraulic lifters.

On the road

What a difference an extra six cubic inches can make. As they say, Hammer by name, hammer by nature. Our longest jaunt, over 400km, covered a lot of territory from inner city streets and freeways, and even took in the whole length of Parramatta Road in Sydney - suspension certainly passed muster there. Despite sharing powerplants with the Victory Jackpot, one of the notable differences was the inverted 43mm front forks which offered 130mm of travel. The rear-end has a single mono-tube gas set-up, made from cast aluminium and featuring rising rate linkage with 100mm of travel and the system has a preload adjustable spring. Like all the Victory range produced by Polaris Industries, that six-speed gearbox with the sixth-gear overdrive just laps up freeway kilometres and the engine loves it. At 120kmh on the freeway in top gear the tacho only just touched 2500 rpm. The engine was barely purring along. The tacho's redline is at 5500rpm, and the end of the world comes at 7000. It might be filling a niche as Victory's muscle bike but the Hammer S can do some serious cruising kays if you're so inclined. The carbon fibre reinforced belt just adds to the smoothness.

The seat is certainly comfortable enough and the tank holds 17 litres, which might not sound a lot but if your engine is cruising at barely 2500 rpm it's going to barely be sipping the juice. We found 250km is not unrealistic before the light comes on. The other big difference to the Victory Jackpot is a steeper rake. Combined with 148mm of ground clearance the Hammer S handles really well. The first thought that went through my head when I saw the rear tyre was to wonder how much effort I was going to have to use to tip this muscle machine into corners - you have to remember I stand about 5ft nothing and weigh barely 70kg. But, surprise surprise. The bike felt very easy tipping into tight turns and the reasonable ground clearance meant I didn't scrape once on either side. Cruisers, being what they are, sometimes tend to have issues with ground clearance on corners. But here's the rub - I had to keep reminding myself that I wasn't riding a cruiser. This is billed as Victory's muscle bike, and rightly so, just because it can handle cruising duties is a bonus.

For someone of my slight build the 303kg dry weight was also quite acceptable, as was the 673mm seat height. Shorter riders, or people with short legs are not going to have a problem with the Hammer S. One of my colleagues remarked that he felt the handlebars were a bit too far back. Maybe my shorter arms are perfectly suited to the geometry of the bike. Victory does have other bars to suit. I reckon a set of risers with flat bars might be the go, for both longer reach and just for the look. The front brakes are twin 300mm floating rotor jobs with four-piston calipers while the rear is a 300mm twin-piston caliper set up. I had a couple of "moments" in Sydney traffic and can gladly attest to the performance of the brakes.

On the eye

The Victory bikes in general have attracted a lot of attention since they were launched in Australia just over 12 months ago, but the Hammer S really drew eyeballs. Even before leaving Newcastle it was attracting wide smiles and enthusiastic thumbs-up every time we stopped at traffic lights. Then 15 minutes down the road a driver in a van with an Orange County Choppers sticker on the back offered an enthusiastic thumbs up. Such enthusiastic gesticulations were frequent. In Sydney there were visits to two accessories warehouses which drew an instant crowd at each one with questions about engine size, model, manufacturer and appreciative comments in general. The most notable incident was a biker in Sydney traffic pulling alongside and commenting on the cool looking huge rear-end and wanting to know more about the bike.

On the pocket

What are you prepared to pay for a muscle bike that looks cool and is an eyeball magnet? Well, the Victory is not outrageously priced at $30,995 + ORC. There's a lot of muscle bikes out there with tons of bling which will exceed this price bracket easily. Even in standard trim it's a lot of bike for the money. The Hammer S comes with two-year unlimited kilometre warranty. There's also a pretty decent range of accessories available for it too. A selection of pipes, screen, luggage, handlebars and seats are available if you want to personalise your Hammer in your own way.

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