2011 Victory Cross Roads
For 2011, Victory is instituting the Victory Cross Roads CORE Custom Program. This plan allows a rider to select the bike color, saddlebag style, highway bar style, and add a windshield, before the motorcycle leaves for its new home.
Colors: Solid Crimson and Solid Black are the available colors. Highway Bars: The two styles available are the styled Forged Chrome Highway Bars and the Tube Chrome Highway Bars. Victory dealers will stock these components so a rider can select the combination that suits his style preferences and riding needs, and then ride home on his new customized Victory Cross Roads motorcycle.
Victory upholds this tradition with its 2011 Cross Roads, a 782-pound beast with a 106-cubic-inch, V-twin heart of steel.
Launched last year, Victory’s Cross bikes, the Roads and the Country, are fraternal twins; they’re based on the same platform but offered with different touring amenities. A bone-stock Roads has no windscreen, a single instrument gauge and 17.4-gallon soft saddlebags; the Country gets a fork-mounted fairing with full instrumentation, a sound system and 21-gallon hard saddlebags. Taking a page out of Burger King’s playbook, Victory’s new Core Custom Program lets you have a Cross Roads your way. Pick Black or ($500 extra) Crimson paint, then add a windscreen ($550), chrome saddlebag tip-over bars ($300) and chrome highway bars ($350 for tubular, $600 for forged), or upgrade to the hard saddlebags ($250). Long floorboards—wide in front and narrow in back—and fore-aft adjustability on the shift lever and brake pedal enhance comfort. Victory says the revised transmission is good for 100,000 miles, and thanks to less internal friction the Cross Roads’ recommended oil-change interval was bumped up from 3,000 to 5,000 miles (self-adjusting cam chains, hydraulic valves and a carbon-fiber-reinforced final drive belt further reduce maintenance). Unfortunately, our test bike, which was delivered with 2,000 miles on the odometer, clunked loudly when shifting gears, especially at cruising speeds in low gears. This is completely out of character with other Cross bikes we’ve ridden, including a 2011 Cross Country I rode for 1,000 miles on my way home from Victory’s Colorado press launch.
All 2011 Victorys are powered by the 106/6 Freedom V-twin, with touring models (Crosses, Vision) equipped with mild Stage 1 cams and ¬the others with hopped-up Stage 2 cams.
The Cross Roads is a well-balanced machine that comports itself admirably on just about any paved road. Every Cross Roads comes with a lock cylinder for the new-for-2011 accessory quick-detach Lock & Ride top trunk ($1,750 with mounts).