BMW 1200GS

by Dino

The BMW 1200 GS? I had heard so much about this bike but never had an opportunity to ride one.

So when I got the call from Boris a couple of months before this year's Moto GP and the question was put upon me ? "Dino, what bike would you like to ride down to the GP this year?" -- I immediately thought of the 1200 GS.

Dino is shortly going to discover that he's forgotten to open the garage door. And the keys are in his inside pocket.

I picked it up from Mick's summer palace about a week before the trip, wondering if I should have gone for something a little more exotic; but the moment I slung my leg over the saddle I knew I had made the right choice.

"Nothing to tempt me to be silly here," I thought. I would arrive relaxed with licence intact and no bike-caused stiffness, aches or pains from the journey down.

Well I got some of it right.

I found the cruise down to Tumut along the boring Hume a relaxed and comfortable experience, but I had expected that from this bike and would have been disappointed had this not been so.

I had lots of information on the dash to play with, ambient air temperature, distance left before more fuel was required, the clock to measure distance in time etc etc.

Then came the good bit of the ride: the Snowy Mountains Highway. Yes, corners; lots and lots of corners.

Mick and I had dropped back a few hours from the rest of the group to make a small repair to his Gixxer and we decided to bang on hard to make up some time. And bang on we did, and the harder we went the more I fell in love with the GS.

It was rock steady on the corners at any speed, inspiring great confidence with its amazing sure-footedness. And with 100bhp at the back wheel it was not lacking a thrilling amount of grunt.

"It was rock steady on the corners at any speed, inspiring great confidence..."

We made it to our overnight stop after making up a surprising amount of time on our comrades, and I hit the pub with a smile on my dial and lots of nice thing to say about the venerable BMW GS. Then I hit the sack a very contented soul, and drifted off to the memories of the roads up over the mountains and the anticipation of the next day's ride.

The next morning we were up early and we headed off towards Mount Hotham.

The road was built for the GS: tight 30-80 km/h corners and dry. I couldn't help myself. I cut loose, passing every bike in front of me with ease.

The boosted linked ABS brakes worked to perfection. Those and the Telelever front suspension set up meant I could fire at the corners really hard and with two fingers on the front lever I could brake really late. No front end dive meant I didn't have to drag the rear brake -- I could just tip it in and get straight back on the gas and punch it out with just a little rear wheel spin and a few very controllable rear wheel slides.

I was in heaven.

Even with the very thin front tyre it never tucked or gave any reason for alarm the whole trip, which I must put down to the heavy but very clever Telelever front end as it was shod with Bridgestone 80% road 20% dirt touring tyres designed to last a million kilometres.

In conclusion, I found very little to fault on the GS. The heated grips were brilliant in the cold mornings, the engine throbbed nicely, the finish was exceptional and this year they even look half decent.

The few niggly little things I didn't like were the torque nuts on everything making it hard to make any adjustments, the fuel meter's tendency to sit on 200 plus km and then just drop strait to less than a hundred and flash a warning signal continually until you replenished the tank, and the indicator buttons. They pissed me off. Turn left on the left switch and turn right on the right switch, which I got used to, but to cancel them the switch was under the throttle and I found when I attempted to cancel I blipped the throttle which could be dangerous in traffic.

But overall I know this has been said of this mount before, if I had to own just one bike in Australia, it would be a BMW GS. Preferably the Adventurer, but I could live with either.