recommend to the majority of riders looking for a big ADV. Surprised? Well, while it might sound like I’ m a little down on it, I’ m really not. For most riders it’ ll be a stunning machine. It is just the bits around the edges that will frustrate some riders, which seem to stem from someone on the design team other thinking the electronics. The base bike is truly excellent, phenomenal even, and I don’ t say that lightly.
SECOND OPINION I was really quite interested to try what motorcycle manufacturers think is the next big‘ thing’- automatic gear-changing. After an initial afternoon on the manual‘ box version, I swapped with Eric and spent the rest of a tour up north on the R1300GSA with the Automated Shift Assistant( ASA). Initially, I selected the‘ D’ shift mode where the bike behaves like it has an automatic gearbox. Behind the scenes it is still the conventional six-speed gearbox but it has two electro-mechanical actuators that automate clutch control and gear shifting. There is no clutch lever, which I found myself reaching for out of habit. The clutch control is pretty good, only a few gear changes were clunky in automatic mode, but I preferred riding in‘ M’ mode where the gearbox becomes‘ manumatic’ with the gears selected by rider using the traditional foot lever. The lever is not
physically connected to the gearbox, rather it sends an input to the ECU by a wire to activate the actuator. It’ s mostly excellent but lacks the traditional feel on your toe of cogs engaging. I did four track sessions on it at Hampton Downs and ASA worked very well in“ M” mode and I ended up riding in that mode on road the whole time. Riding dynamics feel very similar to my R1250 GSA and the control whizz wheel and TFT user interface feel very familiar but with a few extra functions. I had the BMW tank bag and Expandable top box which was enough for the weekend away. Overal, l I feel it’ s an incremental evolution of the GSA that I will definitely be getting after my 1250 becomes too long in the tooth, although I’ ll be going for traditional clutch rather than ASA purely, because I go a little further offroad than a big heavy GSA should go! For most riders ASA would be a good choice. HUNIA RANGI
THIRD OPINION“ Who ordered an automatic? I didn’ t. Take it back …” were my first thoughts when presented with BMW’ s R1300GS Adventure Triple Black. This feeling was reinforced as I rode out of Motorrad’ s secret storage lock-up onto the road and up to a Give-Way sign and my left
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