BMW R1100GS vs Honda XRV 750

You know the bit in African nature films where herds of wildebeest sweep majestically across the plain and straight into a river where they either get swept away or eaten alive by crocodiles? The Africa Twin has got sod-all to do with that. It's got sod-all to do with anything except wide open spaces of tarmac. Taking the Twin off road is asking for a hefty repair and/or medical bill. It's too big, too heavy and its Michelins clag up at the first sniff of mucky-muck. The road is where the Honda belongs, so that's where we kept it.

Which is a smart move because the Twin is a good road bike; not exciting the way a Fireblade is, but a lot less demanding and usually a lot more fun. The trouble with race reps is they're so damn serious...

The Africa Twin's 750cc V-twin was always going to be out-torqued by BMW's 1100cc gruntmeister, but how gutless the Honda is comes as a shock. 112mph and 52bhp is so pathetic we thought the engine was ill, but it sounded healthy and top speed was bang on the 8,500rpm redline in top, so it wasn't. At Bruntingthorpe, Mark F got the best quarter mile times by keeping the throttle wide open and dipping the clutch to grab the next gear, proddy racing-style. It was still horrendously slow.

The Africa Twin's lack of power isn't a problem on the road (you just ride the thing flat out everywhere, all the time, to compensate), but the engine's lack of personality is deeply disappointing. The power delivery is flat and lifeless with no bumps, steps or identifiable character to get your teeth into. The motor is willing to work — it revs freely and quickly skims to the redline in every gear — but from the polite chuffing at tickover to the exhaust's apologetic whisper at full chat, the Twin feels dull and blunted. It almost feels restricted. Mechanical noises and vibes are muffled into submission, which is very comfortable and civilised, but boring. The Twin even — get this — duffs away cleanly at any choke opening on cold mornings. How do Honda do it when no one else can?

Should the Africa Twin owner ever need to pull a hooooge wheelie to impress a burd or avoid running over the neighbour's cat, doing it off the throttle is a no-no. The Twin needs a hefty dump of the clutch from a virtual standstill to get the front up.

At least Honda's over-zealous civility department haven't completely disguised the fact this is a V-twin; the bike still bops forward under full throttle with the long-legged gait of a distance runner, and the seriously understressed engine looks good for reliable high mileages. And a 112mph top speed isn't all bad. The Honda is stable flat out but there's enough vagueness in the steering to suggest any more mph would be unhealthy.

The Honda won't quite pull from nothing (it needs 2,800rpm, or 40mph in top, before it'll take full throttle), but 70mph happens at a relaxing 5,200rpm, with as much gumph as you'll find anywhere else in the rev range for top gear overtaking. But dear oh dear: the gearbox is a mess. A gaping hole between fourth and top, and a sloppy action make clean changes with MX boots a hit or miss jobbie. With road boots on it just hurts a lot.

The suspension is fully adjustable at the back and has air adjustable preload at the front. I didn't fiddle — with so much suspension travel the ride is always comfy and bumps happen miles away down below. With enough damping to take care of the springs the Twin never gets wibbly-wobbly when you go mad; even some last second braking and direction changes chasing BMW Road Captain Forsyth round Cumbrian racetracks didn't upset the Honda. Or me.

The BMW is always a clear head in front of the Twin, but never leaves it behind completely. When we realised how slow the Honda was at Bruntingthorpe, I was surprised I kept up with Mark at all. 'I was flat out chasing you,' I said. 'I was flat out staying in front. Almost,' he replied.

This sort of throttle wrenching has a bad effect on fuel consumption. The fat tank holds 23 litres of gas but doesn't keep a tight grip on it —130 miles full to reserve was the worst; 160 miles the norm. At least there's over 30 miles in reserve.

Tank shape and position mean the Twin handles dramtically differently between full and empty fuel loads. As the tank drains you get used to a light and fickable bike, you start chucking it about a bit, carving up cars and generally looning around. Then, when you fill the tank up, the Twin becomes more unwieldy than a fat man on a tightrope and the bastard topples over.

The Honda's brakes are F. strong. There's a lot of braking effect for little lever travel, which is great for rolling up to traffic lights and howling the front.

The Michelins are perfectly acceptable. Mark took one look and said, 'Ooooh, I bet they're grippy.' I suspected sarcasm but, as my last encounter with an African Twin ended up with a washed-out front end and some expensive-looking cosmetic damage, I wimped out to make sure. The textbook riding technique with these things is brake upright, off brakes, let front settle, then turn and get on the power early. Stuff that. My preferred technique is slow in, slow out and save the heroics for thems as can do it...

The Twin comes with a low level of equipment: the trick-looking LCD trip is disappointing because there's not much to it. You get two trips, a countdown trip, a clock and a timer. A few more functions, like average speed, ambient temperature, humidity, latest stock market prices, etc, would be good.

In the live-with-it-every-day stakes the Africa Twin beats yer race rep tackle hands down. It's easy to get on and just ride, day in day out, without thinking very hard, or being intimidated into knee-scraping on every corner. Neat touches to warm the cockles of your heart, and feet, include an exhaust pipe which curls around your right foot to keep it warm, a wide seat and spacious riding position for lots of arse shifting, a good fairing (which needs another 2in of screen to keep noise and wind off six footers), and an impressive paint job if you're a visual cripple. I am and I think it looks good.

So that's the Africa Twin: an utterly functional, competent, reliable, high quality motorbike which, if you're in the market for a giant trailie, is better than most and, if you're not, isn't worth a second glance. And to all those people who thought a Honda 750cc V-twin would combine the cliche-pulling torque of a Ducati with the reliability and build quality of the planet's largest motorcycle manufacturer. To specials builders who reckon it'd be stonking in an RGV frame — we say bollocks. It's not very good where it is.

People were very unkind about the R1100GS. The controversial styling and peculiar choice of colours (pus yellow and off white) made people gag. And that, if you've ever ridden one of these beasties, is a great shame; the R1100GS is a whole heap better than it looks.

I've said some very unkind things about BMWs in the past but now it's word eating time. This R1100GS took me by surprise. It's better than I ever expected.

The biggest shock is the size of the thing. With more than ten quids' worth of unleaded on board, the prospect of a U-turn in a narrow lane is daunting. With tip-toes on the tarmac, an unpredictable clutch action and the strange side-to-side flywheel effect the odds are stacked against you. Overbalancing and falling over is embarrassing and best avoided. When U-turn time comes it's much safer to get off and do it.

The next shock to the system is the gearbox. The usual wincing as first gear crunches home is gone and replaced by a satisfying snick. The rest of the gears go home with silent precision too. Amazing. A BMW gearbox that's smoother, quieter and more precise than ninety per cent of Japanese gearboxes. What's going on?

But the real surprise is speed. The R1100GS is blisteringly fast from A to B. It's not powerful, it just grunts from low revs. Open the throttle at a thousand revs and the BM's fuel injection responds immediately, punting the GS forward instantly. It's the kind of lightning, shuddering response that sheds the occasional unsuspecting passenger off the back. Crack the throttle open hard in first gear and it'll loop over backwards; really, no lie.

On the road this low-down grunt is about as subtle as a smack in the face with a cricket bat. Tight corners or slow left-right-left complexes are the GS' home ground. Use the massively wide handlebars like a tiller, throw the bike into the corner on the brakes, get off the brakes and wind open the throttle. Shudder, shudder, grunt; before you know it you're out of the corner, hooking up another gear and aiming for the next. It doesn't take much concentration to get the best from it, making it the ideal longdistance scratcher.

But riding the GS quickly, really quickly, isn't that easy. It must be ridden how it wants, not how the rider wants. This takes some getting used to — maybe two or three days, but once you've cracked it everything happens second nature. Some of the quirks are familiar, old BMW ones like the back end refusing to squat under power; but there are some newer, more alarming habits.

That front suspension is responsible for 90 percent of the steering quirks. Quite why BMW went to all the time and trouble of developing it defies belief. The biggest shortfall of the Telelever front fork is its inability to dive on the brakes. Dive under braking is a good thing in our book. Not only does it reduce the rake and trail of the steering geometry for quicker steering (turn-in), but it concentrates the bike's weight onto the contact patch of the front tyre. I had a couple of scary moments on the GS, braking into slow downhill corners when, very suddenly, the ABS started working. A squeal from the front tyre and a sudden loss of braking. Eek.

An R1100GS without ABS would be a dangerous thing in an emergency stop; brake hard and feel the bike's weight act through a point level with the top of the front wheel. Brake harder and feel the front tyre lock up momentarily, until the ABS comes into play.

Snap the throttles shut and the forks dive; between gear changes is when it's most noticeable. Accelerate hard and the front and back end rise upwards in equal amounts; a very strange feeling if you're not used to this strangeness. I only narrowly avoided several accidents while watching the forks go up and down through the hole in the fairing. Captivating stuff. Our verdict? Sack the silly, just-for-the-sake-of-it fork design and give us some USD teles (strong in the right places) instead.

Front and rear suspension work surprisingly well through corners. Throttle position and treatment is critical but the big BM can cope with stutter bumps, dips and hollows with amazing competence. Problems only arise when you have to shut off suddenly mid-turn. This, due to the peculiar suspension reactions it triggers and the excessive amount of engine braking, causes many a hilarious moment.

Engine braking is probably more effective than using the brakes. Neither front or rear brakes are particularly powerful. There's an incredible amount of lever travel before anything happens. The front brake lever comes right back to the handlebar if the stoppers are used hard. This makes four-fingered braking the only option. Use one or two fingers and the rest get trapped between lever and throttle.

But I'm getting carried away; all this talk of outright performance isn't really what the GS is about. It's about covering huge distances quickly in supreme comfort. Tank and seat allow you to travel the width of the country without so much as a twinge from your butt or the need to keep stopping for petrol all the time. Even the beaky looking fairing does a good job of keeping wind-blast at bay. If you're under five foot six — forget it; the GS will get the better of you at low speed. Taller riders will revel in the space available and the generous distances between handlebar/footrests/seat. Spacious is not the word.

The physical enormity of the GS is one of the best reasons not to take it off road. Falling over at walking pace onto a rock would be expensive. It could also be painful trying to right the bugger once it was on its side. Trail tyres seem oddly out of place on a bike so inept at off-road work, but with a nineteen inch front wheel and a seventeen inch rear, alternative tyres shouldn't be a problem.

The lockable, Q/D hard panniers are excellent, easily swallowing a full-face helmet. They're reasonably waterproof too. Other practical touches are an accurate fuel gauge (LCD) and a clock. Not sure about the benefits of a digital gear indicator, though. Finish, be it paint, welding or detailing is the kind of standard you'd expect from BMW. Detail freaks loved the straight-pull spokes and wide alloy rims, techno freaks enjoyed grovelling around on the floor for a better look at the oddball front suspension.

But for £8,460 (plus about £400 on the road charges) it's a lot of money. An awful lot of money. Throw in a set of panniers (£360) and you've pushed the price over £9k. However, next to a Harley Davidson it's still excellent value for money. Take a test ride and see for yourself. Can't think of a better bike to tour Europe on.

Source PERFORMANCE BIKE 1995