Hit the start button,
brap, rumble. Oh! That’s
nice too. Slightly, and I
mean slightly, less than
totally polite. Potent
sounding. Good
The engine absolutely hauls arse, and with
the new shiftcam (more later) when wrung
out, the 1250 suddenly blurs out the edges
of the world very swiftly indeed. Miles simply
evaporate. And I found myself daydreaming
while zooming at quite astonishing speeds,
and then having to pull over and wait for
the party of riders accompanying, on several
occasions. So why the ‘No’ above?
Well, the bike falls into corners almost as
well as the RnineT, (one of the current best
in the motorcycling world, in my opinion)
and all that electric techno-wizardry in
suspension, tracking and cornering ABS
makes it child’s play. The end result of
which is that your confidence level soars,
but I tended towards ‘woolgathering’ type
thought. I had too much time on my hands.
In effect, I was insulated from the experience
to a certain degree. That feeling of being
slightly removed from things continued
on every ride until I pushed myself to
frightening levels of performance on-road
to find the ‘connection’ to the machine I was
unwittingly searching for.
It’s hardly fair to say that BMW has
developed such an incredible machine
and that I wished for less, but that’s what
happened and I want to be as honest as
possible.
So it is smooth, and silky, and powerful, and
capable, and slick, and likely to make you
long for high speeds and fast flicking turns
– and that might make for riding without
a license sometime in your future. It could
easily turn you into a law-breaker. Hell, even
that isn’t fair, any fast bike can do the same,
but the ‘isolation’ from the bike is more
pronounced on this iteration of the big GS
than I’ve ever found elsewhere. I’m taking
a long time to explain the only negativity I
really found, precisely because it is unfair
and subjective. This might be exactly what
you want in a motorcycle, and touring, for
me, is exactly when I do want all element of
discomfort minimised. So if I was heading to
the Burt Munro, this fantastic new 1250GS
would be the first pick, every single time.
Daily? I dunno.
KIWI RIDER 61