fingers were scrabbling in thin-air trying to slow the bike just a tad by slipping the non-existent clutch. Sometime later, I swapped to the bright coloured, manual R1300GSA Trophy with its familiar clutch feel I was after. But even the clutch wasn’ t all that was familiar. The 1300 might be a completely new bike, but it still feels very similar to the previous 1200 and 1250 BMW boxers I’ m used to. There’ s very much a‘ GS’ feel to the new bike. It feels like the same seating position, much the same comfort, slightly better brakes, slightly better suspension and slightly more torque and horsepower. BMW’ s engineers clearly know what the buying public want and keep designing slightly better but very familiar bikes. And why wouldn’ t they? BMW’ s GS models sell and sell. What were the designers thinking with the whole automatic gearbox thing and … who asked for it? Well, probably nobody asked for it, but, as you may have noticed, manual cars have almost completely been replaced by automatics here in New Zealand. That’ s even more the case in the good ol’ USA. If you’ ve got kids, chances are they’ ve never driven a manual vehicle, and it’ s certainly not something they actually WANT to do. So, if a motorcycle manufacturer wants to keep selling bikes and market them to a generation or two who haven’ t an interest in anything manual, it pretty quickly needs an auto offering. You may say that all the little bikes are manuals, and they are, but the recent boom in auto-scooters is going to have a whole lot of youth looking to step up to something bigger and more comfortable that is also an auto. This is BMW’ s premium offering. To be very honest, I didn’ t give the auto 1300 the chance it really deserved. The feeling of panic I experienced is exactly what I felt when my uncle asked me to move his auto’ holden ute out of the garage back in the 80s. I was completely out of my comfort zone. But, all it took was a slight mind shift. I think we’ ll find the same with the R1300GSA auto- just don’ t worry about it and it’ ll look after itself. ERIC EASON
KIWI RIDER 63