10 Used Touring Bikes That Offer Luxury Feel Without The Price Tag

As a rule, a touring bike can’t ever really be a cheap motorcycle. All those comfort features add both money and weight to a motorcycle. With that added weight comes the need for big, torque-rich engines capable of maintaining highway speed for extended periods of time. Accordingly, new touring bikes will set you back north of $20k in most cases.

That’s where used options come in. You won’t need much more than half of that. While you will need to do without some of the more modern features like smartphone connectivity, you will still get that luxury feel, just without putting a dent in your retirement fund. So let’s dive in.

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10 Cheap Used American Touring Bikes For Cross-Country Rides

If you are after a cheap American touring bike, your only realistic option is to turn to the used market

10

1997 Honda Gold Wing GL1500

Price Range: $5,000 – $7,000

Back in the 90s, nothing could touch the Gold Wing in terms of luxury motorcycle touring. The GL1500 became the default choice for anyone in the market for a touring bike and by the time the last one rolled off the production line, over a million Hondas had been made in America. It might be a Japanese brand, but this generation Gold Wing, was made in America from start to finish.

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9

1998 Harley-Davidson Road Glide

Price Range: $2,000 – $4,000

By the time the Road Glide came out in 1998, the venerable EVO motor had done more than enough for Harley-Davidson and was certainly due for replacement. That is at least part of why it is so cheap on the used market. Let’s face it, this is a slow motorcycle, but if you are willing to embrace the slower pace, you get serious comfort for next to nothing. Parts won’t be much of an issue either, and if you are interested in learning how to work on a bike, an air-cooled Harley is a great place to start.

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8

1999 Harley-Davidson Electra Glide

Price Range: $6,000 – $8,000

Although the Twin Cam 88 engine might not look that much more powerful on paper, it was a pretty big upgrade at the time. This may not have been revolutionary, but it was a necessary step in the right direction. The classic styling of the Electra Glide has kept the value pretty high, and doesn’t offer the same bang for the buck as the more modern looking Road Glide.

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7

2005 Honda Gold Wing GL1800

Price Range: $9,000 – $11,000

The 500,000th Gold Wing was manufactured in 2005. By the mid-00s, Honda was no longer the only metric bike in the touring game, with big-bore touring bikes on offer from all three of the other Japanese brands and one upstart American brand also looking to get in on the action. Honda was still head and shoulders above them, offering more features and one of the very best flat-six engines money can buy.

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6

2008 Victory Vision Tour

Price Range: $6,000 – $8,000

That upstart was indeed Victory. In the mid-00s, this was the only American alternative to Harley, and the Vision Tour was certainly a lot of motorcycle for the money. Victory had a crack at designing what they believed to be a modern motorcycle back then. While some sang its praises, we would argue that the design aged like milk, and has the most dated looking design out of the bikes on this list.

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5

2008 Harley-Davidson Street Glide

Price Range: $9,000 – $11,000

If you feel like the pleasure is not worth the pain of dealing with the more anemic older Harleys, then this 96 cubic inch Twin Cam-powered Street Glide might be a better bet. As is the case with pretty much any Harley – except for the aforementioned Road Glide – it holds its value pretty well. You will need to spend a little more for a good one, though.

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4

2010 Yamaha Royal Star Venture S

Price Range: $6,000 – $8,000

Yamaha bet big on the touring class in the early 00s, launching the Star Motorcycles sub-brand. Unfortunately, that did not work out for Yamaha as sales proved to be pretty weak, in part down to some pretty ambitious pricing. Today, the V4-powered Star Venture S makes for an interesting and affordable alternative on the used market with a V4 engine and loads of comfort features.

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3

2014 Honda CTX1300

Price Range: $5,000 – $7,000

Another interesting alternative is the CTX1300, but it might be a little harder to find. At the time, this was viewed as a pretty dismal failure, because it was underpowered and overpriced. Plus, it wasn’t the paragon of reliability most people expect a Honda to be. But, thanks to all that bad press, prices are now low. It’s low enough to look at it more objectively and see a genuinely comfortable, relatively new motorcycle at a rock-bottom price.

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2

2014 Moto Guzzi California 1400 Touring

Price Range: $8,000 – $10,000

While most Italian motorcycles don’t age particularly well, this one is hard to ignore. It certainly isn’t the most powerful bike on this list, but it has “enough” power and a lot of comfort features. It handles its weight pretty well and won’t cause nearly as much consternation as some of the other bikes before you approach a mountain pass. Again, the sales numbers were not great, and finding one won’t necessarily be all that easy.

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1

2015 Kawasaki Vulcan 1700 Vaquero

Price Range: $9,000 – $11,000

You can actually still go out and buy a new 1700 Vaquero. But with that new bike more or less the same as the 2015 model, the used version certainly offers a lot of value. While it isn’t the most feature-rich bike out there, it does offer a lot of comfort and cruise control, something that CTX1300 somehow forgot.

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