I loved my fazer 600, top top bike, wish I'd kept it and not bought the gsxr!

in terms of not saving money….

20k miles a year travelled for work purposes.

Roughly £4000 for the car fuel, based on my car
Tiger would be £2300! My car requires 4 new tyres when they're changed, which is a minimum if £400 each time, where as the bike would be £300 for the same distance, which would be roughly 2 rears and 1 front. I can reduce the insurance cost on the car, which will be affected this year, due to vandalism.

And I arrive at work like 😀 and not 👿

In regards to doing the commute in the car before riding it on a bike. I've done that for the last 5 years!

Winter riding will test my resolve, but to be honest I will most likely choose the car, as it's a subaru outback, so deals with ice and snow really rather well, plus I'm a southern flat lander, so we hardly ever get anything worse than rain.

I have already got my riding kit and its all HG gortex and lovely. Can't imagine I will ever get cold in that gear!

Cheers for ll your help. TJ, I know you like your scooters, but I will never buy one of those. Just not me.

Andy – you want to have a rethink about the tyres. double that or more for tyres – seriously – I used to get 3-4000 miles from a rear on my BMW and 5-6000 from a front and that was touring tyres. Motorway riding squares them off rapidly – you can get as little as 1000 miles. You simply will not do 20 000 miles on one front 2 rears unless you ride them down to the canvas. Handling goes off before they become illegal and grip disappears in the wet on part worn tyres

Fair point, but then my car tyres would be pretty close to past it by then as well. so I double the tyre cost, it still works out better value for money than the car.

Oh the joys of justifying the expense.

Who makes the best motorway tyres? As in a hard centre compound tyre?

What you could investigate perhaps is one of these:

Wheels on fire! James Bond fan invents flame-throwing scooter

It is the ultimate road rage revenge vehicle – a scooter that fires 12ft flames.

Colin Furze rigged his 60mph bike with a rear-facing flamethrower because he was fed up with drivers cutting him up.

More photos and lunacy here:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1260047/Wheels-James-Bond-fan-invents-flame-throwing-scooter.html

Andy, if I were you, I wouldn't try and do it by numbers…

You seem to have calced your tin box at ~26mpg and a bike at ~46mpg, the latter might be a bit optimistic if you start having any fun. Not sure how bad Outbacks are but if I were averaging 26mpg I'd be getting shot of that vehicle regardless of commuting.

On the tyres, I have to agree with TJ (gulp :-)). You're more likely to need 3-5 rears and 3-4 fronts on that mileage. Yes they get squared off on the motorway but only if you 'pootle' about on a geriatric BMW 🙂 (that was a feeble attempt at a joke at TJ's expense and not an invitation to all out internet ping pong).

I'd be shocked, nay stunned if you were to save any money by commuting on a boik and remember, a bike carries the mileage less well than a car so its residual may be impacted more.