Yes.
Also yes.
To be fair, the conclusion I've come to in this thread and looking at a bajillion classifieds is that what I really want is a Griso, but as one isn't available in my budget and locally RIGHT NOW, I'm trying to work my head around something else. The top logical choices are clearly the Street Triple and VFR, for value, meeting my needs, and personal curb appeal. The first for fun factor and dirt cheap insurance (
@matt365 was right, they're ridiculously cheap), the second for do-it-all universality and ride it for the rest of your life durability.
As a practical purchase, the Griso is ridiculous. Piaggio parts chain questions (though they were always fine with my Aprilia), air cooled, expensive insurance, bad on gas, heavy, not overly comfortable, a bit spendy by comparison (though there are some out west that seem quite fairly priced). But I keep coming back to it as just the right balance of 'character' (whatever that means), sporty-ish but not overly so, unique (very), torque-ey motor that's happy to lug along, and stacks of curb appeal (for me, natch). Early 8V models had a terminal valve tappet issue, but they eventually fixed that with rollers, which can apparently be retrofitted into the earlier models to make them dead reliable.
Anyway, the hunt continues, but if anyone sees a reasonably priced Griso come up for sale, please shoot me an alert. There's a newer one locally for $8500, but I'm seeing similar (maybe a bit older) ones asking $6-7k out west, so I'm going to hold out for something in that price range.
Meanwhile, if a VFR, or Striple, or FZ1, or 1090 SMT, or ZRX11/1200, etc comes up at an unbeatable price, who knows?
