Bmw R100gs
BMW R100GS
CYCLE WORLD TEST
So, you want adventure, eh?
THE TWO MARINESSTOOD ON THE FUSELAGE OF THE overturned, crashed helicopter, watching the rocky dirt road leading uptotheir encampment at Margarita lookout station. For about 15 minutes, they had been following the progress of a lone rider as he climbed the twisting mountain path on what seemed, through binoculars, at least, to be the most enormous motorcycle on earth.
They had been stationed there for several boring days, guarding the twisted evidence of a minor military catastrophe, and the arrival of a motorcycle was the most exciting thing to happen since a coyote stole half of their K-rations. They jumped down from the wreckage to greet the rider, who seemed as fascinated by the helicopter as the Marines were by the motorcycle.
“What kind of bike is that?” asked the older of the two. “Geez, it’s huge.”
But the rider’s eyes were riveted on the helicopter. “Uh, it’s a BMW. What happened here? Were you guys in that?'
“Nope, we’re just guarding it.” That made sense, in a military sort of way. The Marine’s gaze was still fixed on the Beemer. “A BMW dirt bike? I never heard of such a thing. Did you build it?
“Well, it’s not really a dirt bike . . . how did that thing crash?”
This disjointed conversation continued for several minutes, with the motorcyclist unable to tear his attention from the helicopter and the Marines equally intrigued by the motorcycle. Eventually, the rider departed and the two guards returned to their boredom.
Later that same day, four other Marines doing some advance scouting were not having much luck in locating the enemy Bravo company. To their amazement, a motorcyclist came riding down a rutted dirt road that led straight into the heart of Bravo territory.
“Say, can any of you tell me the best way to a road?” the rider asked. “I’m kind of lost.”
Three of the scouts just stared at the BMW in disbelief. One spoke. “Are you a Marine?”
“No.”
“Well, you’re way inside Camp Pendleton, and there’s a game going on right now,” the scout said in a surprisingly casual tone. “What kind of bike is that?”
“How do I get out of here?” the rider pleaded.
“Well, you could go on down this path, but they’re doing some live-ammo drills down there. It might be okay if you go real fast. Is that a BMW dirt bike?”
It already had been a long, hard day for the BMW rider, and things weren’t getting any easier.
But there are several things you just learn to expect when you ride a BMW R100GS. The first is a nonstop barrage of questions. After all, the GS is a strange bike, teetering on the brink of bizarre. So no matter where you are or who you’re talking to, you’ve got to answer all sorts of questions before you can go about your business. Yes, it’s a BMW. Well, yes, it’s sort of a dirt bike. But not a real dirt bike. No, it’s actually not all that expensive, especially for a European bike.
Another thing you learn to expect is adventure, because the R1OOGS instills an Indiana Jones mentality in anyone who rides it. The bike begs you to go exploring, get lost, and sometimes even get in trouble. So, when you’re aboard a machine that virtually insists on being taken down the most forbidding, least-traveled roads around, it’s only natural that, eventually, you’re going to wander into places and situations where you don’t belong. Places like military bases and roads to nowhere.
There are several reasons why the BMW is a round-trip ticket to adventure, and the most powerful surely is the bike’s against-all-odds image. Some riders climb on the GS and see themselves scouting for Rommel’s panzer divisions. Others picture themselves racing to Dakar with Gaston Rahier in hot pursuit. Still others envision an endless trek through third-world countries, surviving on sheer tenacity and the toughness of the BMW. The bike conjures any or all of those images, promising survival in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles. And the GS
should have such an image, after all, for it is modeled after the big Beemers that have won the grueling Paris-to-Dakar Rally three times.
But when you finally stop looking at the GS and start riding it, you quickly learn that the bike’s true talents don’t lie on the sands of North Africa but rather on city streets and country roads right here in America. Despite styling and imagery that shout dual-purpose adventure, the GS’ performance is more along the lines of what used to be called a “standard.” It can do a little of everything, just as some bikes did in the times before narrow-focus specialization became the order of the day.
What’s most amazing about the GS is that its versatility costs it nothing. Matter of fact, in some situations the GS can actually outperform BMW’s more specialized machines, beating them at their own game. On a twisty road, for example, the GS is the best-handling sportbike that BMW has yet built, able to knife around corners with the kind of ease and precision that other Beemers can’t muster.
Several factors combine to make it that way. First of all, the R100GS is the only BMW to use the company’s new Paralever rear suspension (see “BMW Paralever,” below). This system eliminates practically all of the pronounced up-and-down movement of the chassis on the suspension that usually occurs with shaft-drive motorcycles when the throttle is opened or closed. This “chassis jacking” has been a particular problem on Beemers for many years; but its absence on the GS allows this BMW to be smooth and predictable, even when its rider isn’t. On all other recent BMWs, being anything but silky smooth when trying to make time along a twisty road results in enough wallowing and bobbing to be disconcerting, to say the least. But the GS is much more forgiving of less-than-perfect riding techniques than any BMW of the last couple of decades.
Factor Number Two; BMW’s traditional Fichtel and Sachs-built front suspension has not been used on the GS in favor of a Marzocchi unit with more travel, more torsional rigidity and more damping. Thus, the horrendous
front-end dive that BMW owners had to grow accustomed to is greatly reduced on the GS, adding still more to this BMW’s forgiving nature.
And, thanks to the longer travel of the new fork and rear suspension, the GS has more cornering clearance than do other Beemers. It’s still not in the roadrace league, but the GS banks way over in slower corners before anything starts making sparks. In higher-speed turns, the longish, dualpurpose-style suspension succumbs to g-forces a little more easily than would a strictly street set-up, so most of that clearance advantage is nullified.
Factors Four and Five are weight and steering leverage. The GS is a good 50 pounds lighter than, say, an R100RS, and its handlebar is about 10 inches wider. This means the rider has more leverage and can steer the bike with less effort. And to give this lighter, quicker bike the necessary stability, the wheelbase is a more than 2 inches longer than those of the other R-series Boxers.
Admittedly, a motocross handlebar and long-travel suspension are not the hot tips for ultimate backroad blitzing.
but their drawbacks become evident only when you start pushing the GS to its sportbiking limits. The rear suspension is underdamped, and perhaps even undersprung, for hard cornering, so at near-racetrack-speed, the rear end pogos up and down slightly. And although the Metzeler tubeless tires are amazingly effective for dual-purpose rubber, their paved-road cornering limits are noticeably below those of most real street tires.
The GS also sometimes exhibits an odd sort of topheavy feeling when being pitched quickly from one corner to the next, mostly when the 6.9-gallon tank is full; but when it is only partially full, you can feel the fuel sloshing from side to side inside the the unbaffled tank, creating a weird oscillation. The good news is that while this is most noticeable off-road, it’s hardly anything to worry about in either environment.
Besides, the GS was never meant to be a roadracer—or a genuine enduro bike. If you’ve ever ridden a regular street machine off-road, particularly one that weighs just over 400 pounds dry, then you know what to expect from the BMW. Still, it does have some off-road advantages over a conventional streetbike. Once again, the width of the handlebar allows you to muscle the bike around where normal, sportbike-style bars would be a problem. The suspension travel is a bonus, as well, for it does a good job of absorbing the kinds of impacts that are prevalent in the dirt—although due to its weight, the GS does its best offroad work on relatively smooth dirt surfaces. And on-road, obviously, the long suspension provides a quite pleasant, cushy ride, even if the rider’s section of the seat is not quite as plushly padded as the passenger's portion.
In either world, however, the GS’ strongest asset is its engine, which has a powerband that is close to perfect for any kind of riding. The 980cc, overhead-valve opposedTwin seems to make smooth, usable power everywhere. And it’s no wonder, for with a torque peak at 3750 rpm, the GS engine is already making respectable power at rpm levels that are only a fast idle for most bikes. Peak horsepower won’t scare away any V-Max owners, but the Beemer is satisfying nonetheless. And you can be sure that the BMW will walk away from anything else wearing a dual-purpose label, be it a Honda NX650, Kawasaki KLR650 or Cagiva 650 Elefant.
Still, as smooth and refined as the GS is, there are a few things to complain about. Little things, mostly, like mirrors that vibrate too much to be useful at 60 mph, and a fairing (or is it a numberplate?) that does little in the way of rider protection. On the other hand, there are just as many nice touches, like a real, honest-to-God luggage rack, and even optional detachable saddlebags.
Put all that together and you’ve got a motorcycle that's not quite like anything else in existence. You could make a case that the GS is the world’s most versatile motorcycle, that its capabilities and fuel range enable it to go places that no other bike would dare venture. You could say that the BMW is the ultimate backroad machine, or that it's the ultimate din-road machine. But all of these claims are true; the GS is different things to different riders simply because its uses are limited only by the imagination of its rider.
For us, we’ll simply say that in an incredibly wide variety of situations, the GS overall is the best BMW we’ve ever tested. That's saying a lot, since we’ve tested some mighty fine BMWs over the years. But if that’s not enough, consider that, at $5695. the GS is also the cheapest BMW you can buy. If that doesn't constitute a screaming deal, we don’t know what does. E3
BMW R100GS
$5695
