R
egret. It’s such a prick of a
word when it’s accurate.
I grew up in the seventies, that time
when kiwis referred to Asian bikes as
‘riceburners’ with a scoffing nod that
they weren’t British. If it didn’t leak oil
everywhere, break down weekly, have a serious case
of frame whip, and chew your flares to pieces in an
unguarded front sprocket, well, it wasn’t a real bike.
Everything from the ‘old country’ was regarded as
cool, tough, sacred. The few Harleys that were around
were regarded as treasure from ‘offworld’, and only
strip club owners or drug dealers could afford them.
The notorious Epitaph Riders in Christchurch all rode
Triumphs with the occasional Norton, but certainly
nothing Italian, and just being seen on a ‘Jap’ bike,
was tantamount to picking a fight. I was so stupid
that I thought a Jawa 175 would be better than a cast
off ‘Japper’. Idiot. So, regrets, yeah, I’ve had a few.
As we know, the wearing away of New Zealand’s
xenophobic dislike of the Asian marques in any
motoring field takes a long time. I continue to
have a 15-year, faultless, 150,000km run from
my battered Ssang Yong Korando, with the only
expense being two light bulbs, a rubber tube, a
couple of oil changes and diesel, and this in spite of
dire and dramatic warnings from the knobs at the
helm of the Dog and Lemon. We’ve gotten over
the Asian vehicle stigma, as they have proven to
be amongst the best in the world, repeatedly.
So why the hell am I banging on about Asian vehicles
in a BMW Review? Well, the latest offering from
that stable, the BMW G310R, happens to have been
built in India. Now before we go all horrorstruck and
irrational on it, and run screaming for the exit door
of the café, take a moment. The engineers and the
boffins, the marketers and the quality control people
charged with looking after BMW’s premium brand
image at all costs, are not idiots. Far from it. And they
have installed German engineers and overseers in the
plants they set up, precisely to maintain the exemplary
standards we expect from the BMW marque.
Did they deliver? Hell yes. I first saw the 300cc
offering at the launch in a bar in downtown
Auckland, and it looked sensational, the quality
of the finish was, as always, exceptional – deep
lustrous paint, strong plastics and gleaming
bars. It looks every inch the quality ‘beamer’.
Now here comes the regret part. A couple of years
KIWI RIDER 65