With the continuation of motorcycles and associated equipment categorised under the current ‘adventure’ label, I paid a visit to the Bike Show in Birmingham to see what’s new in this area.
We all have our own ideas on what sort of bikes are genuinely suited to plying the AM Zone, but it’s no great surprise to see that what sells under that label and what gets actually used continues to diverge. ‘Adventure’ has just become an aspirational marketing label for a growing range of huge, complex and expensive tourers as there’ll always be a market for such versatile two-up road haulers. For the overlander the range of suitable, purpose-built machines may have long passed its zenith and so unless something ticks your box we may as well adapt any  suitable machine, rather like my GS. Meanwhile, like the Japs half a century earlier, the Chinese are here and making progressively bigger bikes. It makes you wonder if something like a CFMoto 650NK twin (sold as a WK650i in the UK) might make a good basis for an adventure tourer. It’s been well reviewed so far, overcoming prejudices based on earlier Chinese bikes. There are plans for a ‘dual-sport street enduro’ 650 which might well resemble a Kawasaki Versys (left) – not a bike I’ve ever really got or read about being used as an overlander, but one that sounds like not unlike my frankenbike, only modern and proper.

In fact, it’s not so far removed from Honda’s CB500X I heard about a few days later but not at the show. Similar in looks to the Honda NC700X, this 500c, 6-speed 54-hp parallel twin is spoiled a by running 17s front and rear – the beaky adv look without so much of the adv purpose. Where have you seen that before?About 195 kilos wet at the kerb with a 17.3-litre tank.

I also had half and eye out for some sort of light trail bike that might fit the bill for a deep Sahara ride planned for next year, ten years after the original Desert Riders.

First thing that caught my eye in the hall was the new Enfield T5. It’s the latest restyle of the base model and I’m always a sucker for the street scrambler look; a cooler label for a big trail bike. With its green army look the T5 evokes the Steve McQueen Special which Triumph released earlier this year. I took another look at it as I left the show and noted the massive brake pedal and kick starter, but also the skinny tubular swingarm. That may not be up to jumping a barbed wire frontier fence to freedom, or even bumpy cornering with a load, but the principle of an adequate machine for world touring is better met by bikes like this than a Ducati Altostrada, for example. You get 28hp, 185kg and but pay £5195. some £1200 more than the plain Bullet model. I’ve been curious to know whether these Enfields are merely one of the original players in the growing ‘old-looking new bike’ retro scene, or whether they might actually make a decent overlander and which, in the T5′s case, boasts some dirt road potential. I may find out one of these days.

Nearby on Yamaha’s stand the XT660Z has not much more than a new paint job, but why change a good thing.  Although I didn’t gel with mine (or couldn’t really afford to own one any longer than needed), I do have a soft spot for the Tenere. It still comes very close the ideal overlander: great fuel range, protection and comfort, dirt roadable and strong (perhaps at the cost of weight). And now there’s enough know-how and equipment around to refine yours for the open road.

Wandering on, I passed the spectacular array of dvds and books produced by the enterprising Nick Sanders over the years. ‘Any 5 for £15′ it said, perhaps he was having  clear out. Not everyone I’ve met has ended up a fan of the guy’s tours and other productions, but with his record-breaking long distance stunts he’s certainly succeeded in developing the sort of brand which attracts sponsors, and not just by starting off with a famous mate.

I flicked through one of his books, ‘Timbuktu; In search of the Dakar Rally‘ based around his 2007 road tour to the famous Malian city and which these days has become off limits. The book is no longer listed on his website and it might be fair to classify it as ‘remaindered’ (it goes used for 1p on amazon), but it didn’t look too shoddy produced and reading a couple of sections, had a bit more depth than I was expecting. After all, how interesting can a book be about a group ride down to Timbuktu?

Nick’s Super Tenere was one of the few bikes at the show that didn’t look like it was polished to put on display at a jewellers. On the TRF stand there was an XR400 plastered in mud and nearby Honda or James Bond Inc. were giving away something or other to capitalise on the gripping bike chase scene from the Skyfall movie. Staged on Istanbul’s tiled rooftops using the new Honda CRF250L (left), a short doc about the shooting of that sequence looped on an adjacent screen (right). It’s as well to remember this was shot for real – on bikes – with stunt riders and not rendered on a computer with more RAM than Google HQ.

Another eye-catching video was running on the KTM stand. When I caught up with it, two guys were tearing along some grassy alpine ridge on a pair of bikes which definitely weren’t your typical gangly KTM enduro weapon. In fact, turns out this brilliantly shot vid’s been out for a year and has over half a million hits. Here it is.

What were these amazing machines? It’s the  newish Freeride 350 a mate had mentioned as a lightweight overland contender, but which had otherwise slipped under my radar, as most no-compromise KTMs do. Could this be the machine for Desert Riders 2013? Not sot so sure if that lick of a seat is anything to go by, even if 350 is an optimum capacity for the job.
The Freeride weighs just 105 kilos wet but that’s with the tiny 5-litre tank. And incredibly, it puts out a very non-KTM 350-like 23hp. You’d hope that would translate to phenomenal economy as well as a very useable, torquey but controllable engine; it certainly appeared to manage fine is the hands of the expert riders featured on the vid. There’s even an electric version too. Me, I’d happily put up with an extra 20 kilos to make it more of a conventional trail bike for the getting there as well as the being there.

There’s an electric version of the Freeride too that weighs about the same. Good luck to KTM with that one – is it some new EU directive that every new bike must be complimented by an electric version? I’d like to have seen a pair of 350Es bouncing off the scenery on their way up to that mountain peak east of Innsbruck. Zero had an electric trail bike at the show too (right), along with a full range of other battery-powered styles. I’m in the camp that believes Hydrogen cells will catch on before electric powered cars and bikes succeed in making their mark beyond being town runabouts.

BMW craned in the latest water-cooled version for their R1200GS onto a turntable which made picture-taking easy, although I find it hard to relate to the quarter-ton tourer genre, even if there’s no doubt the new GS, now making 125hp, will ride like a magic carpet on rails.
The F700GS version of the 650 twin I rode in Morocco was also on display and attracting attention. That would sooner be my choice for a long ride on a big bike, but whether it’s merely the Long Way effect or the fact that they’ve got it right for so many years, the big GS continues to be seen as the definitive adventure bike.

Over on the Suzuki stand, their answer to this dominance was a concept V-Strom 1000 – sat in a ridiculous perspex box which achieved nothing other than shooting glare-free photos too much bother. Alongside it was an old DR800 Big from the 1980s which the new bike is said to be based on – and which strikes me as more cobblers. What’s so conceptual about this bike over the current Big Strom? Time will tell I suppose, but there have never been more contenders in adventure-styled mega tourer category. It’s what sells (or at least, attracts attention) I guess.

Over at AJP the air-cooled 125s and new 240s (up from 220, iirc) stood alongside a new, water-cooled 250 racer (below, foreground). As I heard last year, they have an adv bike in the pipeline, delayed a little to accommodate the newer 240cc engine.

Even then, these Portuguese-made lightweights using Chinese-built engines look too much like KTMs than XRs (or CRF-Ls for that matter) in terms of weight, size and intended function. Notice how they’re also using a cast alloy central spare like the Freeride, with steel subframes front and rear. For someone my size these AJPs just look too much like endure bikes to be a travel bike; I’d be sitting on the filler cap or behind it. If manufacturers can make a Freeride or one of these at around 110 kilos – and a Sertao or Tenere at around 190kg, how hard would be it for someone to make a well-equipped 500-cc travel bike at around 160 wet?

The planned APS adventure bike will be based on the carb-fed air-cooled 240 (right) with I was told a screen, racks and an Acerbis tank tacked on the back with a gravity feed. I have to say that sounds like a throwing on some parts to jump on the adv bandwagon – but let’s see it first. I’d sooner see efi whose benefits and reliability (fueling issues apart) are by now well established, but roadside repairability was the rationale behind a sensor-free carb. Good to know manufacturers are thinking like that, but I hope backside comfort, good lights and a fat alternator output get a look in too. AJP hope to debut the Adv 240 at the UK Horizons meet in May.

There was no Husky Baja on the Husqvarna a stand as i’d hoped (pix bottom of this page), and I was told that plans on releasing that model – based on the TR650 I tried out recently – were still to be decided, although the feedback has been good. Something new is coming out from Husky this year, apparently.

Sexy twins
Let’s finish up with some sexy twins. On the right, I mean left is a cool-looking Kovert Scrambler based on Triumph’s  Bonneville version which was rather lame (or cheaply done) I thought, and similar to the as cool Steve Mac Special mentioned above.

While down on the Guzzi stand the Griso didn’t quite look as good to me in the flesh – or at least not this one, even if anything with a Guzzi engine sticking out of it is worth a double take.

But the sexiest twin by far was the Kawasaki special pictured left and at the bottom of the page. And if I am reading the face of the guy stood behind the bike correctly, it’s not just me who thinks so.There’s more of this 70s retro stuff coming out than ever but you can see why. Most bikers are older (as the crowds at the NEC testified) and who – for better or worse – recall their teenage biking years with a rose-tinted fondness, while the maturing mind conveniently obliterates the poor tyres, bad brakes and dodgy handling. Increasingly you can now have your cake and eat it – a bike that looks like your first love but that won’t give you your first heart attack.

Spirit of the Seventies is the moto custom builder down in Kent who put together this W800-based special and in doing so managed to turn Kawa’s Brit-clone plodder into something you might enjoy power sliding through the roundabout on the way to work, if only just to see those pipes glowing red.