TORTOISE & HARE
Us bikers like to be a little bit different, don’t we? It’s part of the deal. After all, if you were happy with the mainstream, you’d not be riding about on a killer death machine, that makes you wet and cold most of the time in the UK, then too hot for almost all of the rest of the year. Much more sensible to get a nice little car, and drive it about on a weekend, to IKEA, and Tesco, with the 2.4 kids and spouse in tow.
No – we like to change it up. Firstly by riding bikes at all – but then by radically changing the sorts of bikes we buy. Sportsbikes were the mainstream for much of my riding life, but now there’s a far broader range of machines – naked, retro, urban, and the new mainstream – adventure bikes. That class further taps into the non-conformist ethos of motorcycling, by offering the image – and sometimes also the capability – of riding to the ends of the Earth.
The current adventure sector is much less cut and dried than some other classes we’ve seen over the years. The 600cc supersport class, for example, or the litre superbikes – all very similar in spec, layout and design. But when it comes to giant trailies, there’s an enormous variety in engines, performance and design. You can have a five-valve single, a flat twin, parallel twins, V-twins, triples, inline-fours – take your pick.
There’s more convergence when it comes to the chassis – but even here you get variety: shaft drives, funny front suspensions, giant fuel tanks. And the latest trend is for manufacturers to load up their big, flagship adventure bikes with the very latest in cutting-edge tech. An
