Comparing Touring Styles:
COMPARING TOURING STYLES:
There’s more to it than full leathers vs. Willie Nelson tapes
AS THE COMEDIAN SAID WHEN no one quite understood his joke, “I guess you had to be there.”
The people at BMW might soon find themselves in much the same situation. Their new K100RT touring bike isn’t likely to be fully understood or appreciated by most touring riders here in America, where fulldress luxury liners like the Gold Wing Limited Edition rule the open road. The BMW, a touring bike with a decided sporting bent, was designed to excel on European highways and byways; but the riding conditions and touring attitudes are significantly different here in America, different enough to make certain elements of the BMW seem out of place. If you understand what long-distance riding in Europe is like, the K100RT makes sense. If you don’t, it doesn’t. In other words, you have to be there.
On the other hand, a land yacht like the Honda Limited Edition doesn’t make very good sense in Europe. For one thing, there are nowhere near as many limited-access highways Over There as there are Over Here. In fact, there probably are almost as many miles of interstate or freeway-type roadways in the Los Angeles area alone as there is in all of Europe. So Gold Wings, Ventures and the like don’t have the opportunity to be ridden in their element all that often in Europe.
Ah, but anyone who rides an American-style touring bike on European superhighways at least will find some consolation in not having to contend with a 55-mph speed limit. The posted speed limits on most European interstate-equivalents are generally around 60 to 70 mph, and— provided you don’t ride irresponsibly—you can usually exceed that by at least 10 mph without fear of the local gendarmes getting in your face. And, of course, on the autobahns of Germany—the European country with the biggest network of freewaytype highways—there are no speed limits at all except in certain posted areas. You merely ride as fast as you wish, even if it’s flat-out in top gear.
When you do that on a K100RT, many of the complaints that are evident at 55 or 60 mph simply don’t exist. At triple-digit speeds, the fairing pokes a clean hole in the wind and leaves the rider in a comfortable pocket of relatively undisturbed air; engine vibration is practically nonexistent; and the bike seems almost to be loafing along. The Gold Wing, however, is hard-pressed to reach or maintain speeds above 100 mph due> to its tall gearing, large frontal area and comparatively high coefficient of drag. It also tends to weave around a bit at high speeds—not dangerously, but enough to be mildly disconcerting.
Despite that, the Honda’s overall competence on Europe’s superhighways is about the same as it is on America’s. But the BMW’s level of proficiency there is much higher than it is at 55 or 60 mph here; and in many open-road situations in Europe, the RT outperforms the GL.
Still, traveling any distance in Europe means spending considerable time on two-lane roads rather than on divided highways. In France and Spain there are some dead-flat, rulerstraight two-laners like those that criss-cross the American midwest, but not many. The roads tend, on the average, to be narrower, bumpier and more serpentine than American riders are used to encountering, and they incorporate more hairpin turns and quick elevation changes than is common practice stateside. What we call a “secondary" road might qualify as a main route on that side of the Atlantic, and their secondary roads often aren’t much more than wide footpaths that someone has taken a stab at paving.
That’s not a riding environment particularly suited to a bike whose fully loaded weight can approach half a ton. It is, however, an environment suited to sporty motorcycles and people who like to ride them fast; because throughout most of Europe, there are no enforced speed limits on the roads that connect the many towns and villages dotting the landscape. The posted speed limits in each little hamlet are rigidly enforced; but once you’re beyond city limits, you can attack the swervery about as quickly as you wish without nervously eyeballing the rear-view mirrors all day. No wonder wacko sportbikes and ultra-sporty touring machines continue to be so popular in Europe.
Obviously, the Limited Edition is out of its element in those kinds of surroundings. But to its credit, it feels much lighter and handles a lot more nimbly than any 813-pound motorcycle has a right to, due mainly to the low center of gravity provided by its opposed-Four engine. But it’s still a mighty big, long, heavy rig. And on a typical tour through a typical European countryside, the lighter, more responsive, more maneuverable BMW clearly is the superior machine.
If your itinerary happens to take you through the Alps, one of Europe’s most heavily traveled zones of motorcycle tourism, the BMW will really put the Limited Edition on the trailer. For while it might be considered great fun to spend a few hours leisurely bending the Honda through an endless succession of lowand medium-speed turns, doing so for days on end over some of the most convoluted roads in the world—which is what so many Alpine routes entail—is not most people’s idea of a good time. But the K1 OORT thrives on that kind of riding. The BMW really has a home-field advantage here, though, because the factory’s test riders racked up many, many miles in the Alps while developing the K100.
And it shows. Its laid-down engine gives the RT an unusually low center of gravity that makes the 565-pound machine as easy to toss back-andforth as some pure sportbikes weighing a hundred pounds less. Its suspension is supple enough to absorb the punishment dealt by Alpine roads that have been wrinkled and twisted by countless frost heaves over the years, yet not so mushy that the bike wallows through the turns. And the engine's relentless mid-range torque powers the RT at a comfortable pace on the most circuitous of mountain roads without requiring the rider to shift gears like a 125 motocrosser with a twitchy left foot.
...“politically, philosophically, geographically and topographically, touring in the U.S. is something quite different than touring across The Pond."
Not so the Limited Edition, which can demand constant gear-changing while climbing steep, twisty roads. The GL1200 engine has many wonderful traits, including being lightyears smoother than the rather buzzy BMW, but instant acceleration and low-end lugging ability are not two of them. And when you combine that with the bike’s considerable size and weight, a ride between, say, the south of France and southern Germany via the most direct route—the Alps—can turn what should be play into hard work.
But that shouldn’t be too surprising: These two bikes were never intended to do the same job, even though they both wear a label that says “touring.” Because politically, philosophically, geographically and topographically, touring in the U.S. is something quite different than touring across The Pond. In America, touring people depend upon entertainment to make the ride; in Europe, they depend upon the ride for the entertainment. In America, you take along everything you possibly can; in Europe, you leave behind everything you possibly can.
Indeed, but this is America, not Europe. This is the land of wide-open spaces, of the four-lane, straight-asan-arrow Interstate, of the 55-mph speed limit that is, compared to the way it’s done in the Old Country, strictly enforced. It’s the place where Winnebago-class bikes originated because . . . well, because whether they tour on two wheels, four wheels or more, Americans prefer pure comfort to sheer speed. And the Gold Wing Limited Edition —the most luxurious, comfortable and competent American-style touring bike ever builtgives them more of what they want than anything else on two wheels. Including a K1 OORT. E3
