Cheap and Cheerful

I used to watch a british show called Top Gear, if you haven't seen it, watch it.  It is a show about cars done by guys who are entertaining and have a passion for cars.  Anyway, when the economy tanked several years ago they did a show where their goal was to find a brand new car that was cheap (I think it was supposed to be < 8000 pounds) and a joy to drive.  I remeber at the time thinking that this was an impossible task, and I am not sure they really hit the mark.  But, try and do that with a motorcycle and the equation changes a bit.  The TU defines cheap and cheerful.  Start with price, at $4000 this is a cheap motorcycle to buy, you can finance it for less than $100 a month, that's easy to live with.  Then fuel mileage, I have seen the advertised 79 MPG with city and twisty mountain road riding (very twisty, < 50 MPH kinda twisty), you will give up some mileage for freeway driving at 75-80 MPH, I've seen it drop to 60 MPG with all freeway driving.  But even at 60 MPG this bike is easy to feed.  Then you've got maintainence for the do it yourselfer, 1.4 quarts of oil, a small inexpensive oil filter, and rocker arm actuated valves that can be adjusted without buying shims or removing cams.  This makes maintainence a bargain.  And finally the cheerful part, I can't wait for a reason to get on this bike.  Any excuse to ride it and I am there.  I wish my commute was more than the 1 mile commute that it is.  This bike defines cheap and cheerful, if you need cheap transportation just get it.  :-)