The following is my opinion based off my experience and research.
The pros:
-Fun to ride.
-Easy to ride and comfortable.
-Lots of options; cruise control, storage space, good sound... it's all great.
-Lots of compliments and questions.
-SAFETY - the Spyder mitigates minor road hazards like gravel/sand, blowouts, and road trash quite well.
The cons:
-Lousy MPG. My new 2013 has never got better than 24 mpg no matter what I've tried, and I ride very conservatively. This isn't true for all Spyders, but even the most fuel efficient Spyders average 32 mpg, so expect to stop for gas after every 110-130 miles to be safe depending on how you ride because that low fuel light will be glaring worrisomely into your eyes. This makes touring long distance a pain in the butt. You'll be stopping every hour to an hour and a half at gas stations, and carrying a gas can with you at all times. I too bought my Spyder to go touring in the area I now live in, but some of these scenic desert roads don't have a single service station for 100 miles or more in any direction (and it's posted too), so it makes the idea of remote touring seem impossible to me and I wouldn't risk it. I spend half of my time while riding looking for gas stations instead of enjoying the ride.
-Terrible, TERRIBLE gauges. The analog fuel and temp gauges bounce everywhere and are almost never accurate. This seems to be the norm. Switching to the digital gauges barely helped. It seems to me that a $20-30k toy should be able to give an accurate fuel reading on the OEM gauges, especially considering I can buy 2 new fully equipped cars for that price, and I gaurantee you that the fuel and temp gauges on both of those cars would work.
-These machines are apparently plagued with gremlins. Excessive heat, oil & coolant leaks, dripping gas and fumes, strange software glitches & codes, Spyders that go into limp mode for no apparent reason, techs and mechs that don't know how to work on them properly or assemble them at the dealership incorrectly... Some people are free from any issues, but a lot have experienced some sort of problems, big and small, that do detract from the joy of ownership.
I say the above not to try and dissuade you from buying one, but because these are things I wish someone had told ME before I bought mine. I did a few days worth of research before I bought, but I wasn't prepared for all the little issues that add up. Now, if I had known all that going into the dealership, I would probably still have bought the Spyder. BUT, the difference would be that I would understand from the start that I'm basically part of a trial and error test on a design that's only a handful of years old and I wouldn't be quite so upset when any problems arose, understanding BRP would fix it. In other words, I would have felt more like a test pilot than a guinea pig. For their part, BRP service seems pretty darn good from my own experience and from what I've seen from other peoples' experiences regarding most issues.
To be fair, I spent half my ride time on traditional 2 wheel motorcycles worrying about safety and never letting my guard down, which was pretty stressful in itself, and still didn't save me in the end. I rode for 11 years without a single accident before a gravel driveway spilling into the road on an inside corner took me out on a Victory Kingpin doing 60 mph. Thankfully I was riding solo that day, but after that I would NEVER put my wife on the back of another 2 wheeler again. I feel fine letting her ride (and sometimes drive) the Spyder though. We get to be outdoors safely while we commute to places locally for fun. That alone is pretty much worth it to me to have the Spyder.
P.S. As an honorable mention that doesn't specifically relate to the mechanics of the bike, another "pro" for the Spyder would be the Spyder community overall. Being 34 myself, I appreciate that Spyder riders are generally more mature and interested in helping each other and enjoying themselves instead of bragging about how many cubic inches their bike has or how loud their pipes can get. Vehicles do identify people into certain groups and cliques whether we like it or not, and that being the case, this is the community I most want to participate in.
