it was my second midlife crisis - “ I HAVE NEVER OWNED A BMW ”. This was the one after “.. never owned a boat .” and before “... never owned a V8 car .” Anyway , there wasn ’ t a lot of thought that went into it ( if you read my last rant , you may be picking up on a theme in this regard ). Coz any bike with “ Dakar ” in the name and on its decals would be as off road capable as the real thing , wouldn ’ t it ? I ’ d be just like Gaston Rehier , right ? So , it was done - I had bought a
2002 BMW F650GS Dakar . The common theme developing here is the less than vigorous test ride . I remember during the test ride admiring my reflection in a shop window thinking how gorgeous an actual BMW looked . Besides , it had returned a positively glowing review from NZ ’ s best motorcycle mag ... which we will discuss presently . This was my first Euro bike aside from a fleeting dalliance with a CZ250 Falta that resulted in a sore foot ( it was a bitch to start ) and a broken heart some years earlier ( it lasted
two weeks before being swapped for Honda CT90 , but that ’ s another story ). And it was a BMW ! You know , a big boy ’ s bike . Several problems became evident immediately . The first was that it was apparent that ze Chermans hadn ’ t quite got things right . This time it was a dodgy fuel injection system , which meant it had a disturbing habit of stalling halfway across intersections . I got proficient at lightening restarts whilst hoping that the cars behind me had good brakes . The other problem was a simple lack of grunt . My theory was that some Betriebsleiter had specified that this thing had to make 50hp . It probably did , but the power was never there when I needed it . It was very peaky , making power too far up the rev range , not down low – you know , where a big single is supposed to work . Notwithstanding that , whatever power it may have made down low was academic , as the thing idled at about 1800rpm ( due to the aforementioned crap fuel injection ).
60 KIWI RIDER