The back tyre started sliding, breaking traction as I fed the power of the new Transalp’s parallel twin through the gearbox and into the Metzeler Karoo Street rear tyre, until a quick flick of my boot fired the bike up a gear through the quickshifter. The higher ratio combined with a steady throttle allowed the tyre to grip and push the bike forward, the slide fading and the wheel coming back into line with the front.
It’s a buzz to ride like this, feeling the back end break traction and move around, and it’s pretty easy and fun to do so on the loose gravel of the Gold Coast hinterland where launch ride leader Daryl Beattie had brought us for our day on the Transalp.
To get the bike to break traction and to fire it through the gears, you’ll need to put it in the User riding mode and turn off traction control, and the quickshifter is an optional extra, so there a few little hoops to jump through. But that, in some ways, is modern motorcycling.
WHO IS IT FOR?
For a huge crop of young riders who got their licences during the COVID-19 lockdowns, for more mature riders feeling the pinch of higher interest rates, for anyone not liking the prices of the more exotic adventure bikes out there… Honda’s Transalp is now available.
At $14,499 plus on-road costs — around 16k ride away depending on where you live — it’s amazing value for a new model made in Japan. You get to
