THE MAGNIFICENT 7 GO ADVENTURING
CAN’T ARGUE WITH the Italians. Coffee, motorcycles and living life like there is no tomorrow, right! I have sat in dark and hip cafés in Milan, with the persistent grey rain pouring down outside. Sipping espresso after espresso, waiting for the darkness to lift and craving some freedom and space. You can’t argue with the Italians wanting an excuse to escape the claustrophobia of Italy.
Fabio Meloni, the chief guy from the famed Italian magazine Motociclismo, explained it. “We wished to come to Australia to see beaches, girls and ride into wide-open spaces.”
And so five young Italian men jumped off their Airbus 380 with 40 kilo bags each, stuffed with brand new kit, into… a gloomy, wet, chilly Sydney winter's day. Conditions that were to persist for a few days more.
Waiting for them after 24 hours’ travel, and for me, were seven new adventure bikes shod with Metzeler’s best: the Tourance Next radials, suitable for road and some off-road challenges we were about to throw at them.
AMM had been invited along as the only representative of the Australian press, to share in the experience with Motociclismo. The idea was to assess the suitability of a mix of bikes for their market, and simultaneously to put Dainese's latest offerings in touring comfort through a winter test. Grant from Off Track Motorcycles was to lead us to great roads and support came in the affable streakiness of Marcel Bode from Metzeler, playing driver for photographers Alberto (stills) and Beppi (video).
All the motorcycles were big-bores with price ranging from the V-Strom at $15,790 to almost double that for the latest Triumph 1200 Tiger XCa. Some of the bikes were more road-orientated, others were more hardcore adventure bikes like the Honda Africa Twin and the winner of our last year’s comparo, the BMW GS Rallye X.
Like the Italians, we were after a winner out of this effort, although this comparison was based on
