No guru here -- I did sleep in my own bed last night.
I was a happy owner of a Helix. I remember when I was researching them at the time, I was really impressed with the high mileage numbers I was seeing, and someone had won some category of the Iron Butt on one a few years before.
Its top speed was around 75 mph which was enough to be in traffic around the Washington D.C. metro area. It was practical in terms of stowage, handling, fuel consumption, and no clutch making it easy in the inevitable traffic around here (similar in that respect to my current Honda CTX700D).
My sense is, like our Rocket Tourings, the motor on the Helix is significantly detuned, so "wide open" running at its set limits would be more permissible than another "performance" tuned engine that permitted the operator to command performance closer to the machine's actual tolerances.
We see this explicitly in airplane engines, where the manual explicitly talks about "takeoff power" being limited in how long, or warplanes having "war reserve power" - a concept that was around in World War II and is still with us today, explicitly trading longevity and time between major overhauls for a tactical performance gain.
My experience with the Helix, and the similarly tuned Aprilia Scarabeo 500, would lead me to comfortably believe the "wideout" claim.
One thing for sure is a tradeoff with all of the so-called "scooters" (Helix, Scarabeo, Silverwing, Majesty, etc) is the small diameter tire form factor yields significant increase in tire replacement frequency.
