2024 BMW R 1300 GS ADVENTURE TRIPLE BLACK REVIEW – “My head has exploded…”

IMAGES BY NICK ‘AUTOMATIC, FOR THE PEOPLE’ EDARDS

And because it went “Bang!” and all the important internal synapses fizzed and sparked and then had a nap, it has taken me some little time to reboot.

Let’s start with the basics, and then I will address the elephant in the room, and then some of you can smear yourselves in monkey poo and outrage. No, I’m not judging. It’s just a statement of fact because I know you’re gonna do that.

You did it when ABS came out – and it’s OK. I did it too for a while, then I came to my senses. You did it when Yamaha introduced the brilliant Nikken. Some of you are still demanding the return of two-strokes, carbies, and leading-shoe drum brakes when you get too much fortified wine into your bellies.

“All this electro-bullshit is taking away from the rider’s skills!”

Really? Like there’s so many highly-skilled riders out there to begin with.

Look, at the end of the day, you don’t have to own a bike that has any rider aids at all. There are lots of second-hand GSX-Rs, Ducati 900SSs, and Yamaha XS1100s you can buy and ride. Ranting against the advancement of technology is pointless, especially if you can make the choice not to have anything to do with it.

So, here’s another statement of fact: BMW’s GS is one of the greatest bikes ever built. It is the consummate all-roader, a superb touring bike, and in skilled hands, a hard-charging, incredible-handling scratcher that will shame many sportsbikes.

This is especially the case in Australia – a magnificent country ruled by the implacable tyranny of distance. And governed by an ever-changing assortment of shitlords who struggle to provide its citizens with decent roads. We have a few great roads, some good ones, a bunch of mediocre ones, and a vast array of bad ones. Often, one road will be all of those things in the space of five kilometres.

The GS is the one bike that rules all of those roads. Effortlessly. It is now, and has long been, the benchmark for all Adventure bikes.

Each time I ride one, I cannot rationalise NOT owning one. I fight it, of course, because I am wilful and accursed, and my life-choices make no sense to anyone but me – and even then, not all the time. All that aside, the only bike on this earth that makes iron-clad sense as a bike that can do everything you need a bike to do for 99 per cent of your riding time, is a GS.

Yes, it is THAT good. It has been for years.

And in 2024 it is better than ever. That brilliant and seemingly timeless Boxer-twin donk has been refined and engineered to the point where I’m thinking they could easily use it to launch missiles. It produces 145 horses, 149Nm of torque, and weighs 269kg wet, if numbers are your thing. These numbers do not make its brilliance more brilliant – and they really don’t matter in terms of the riding experience.

What makes the GSA more brilliant is the adaptive vehicle height device. I can literally put my legs flat on the ground when the bike is at a stop. I ride off, it lifts itself up 30mm, and we are once again riding GS-high.

But there is so much more. The technology wedged inside its vastness – which is no longer intimidating thanks to the ride-height device – is amazing. In terms of fuelling, suspension, and rider-assistance stuff, this is as cutting-edge as it gets.

There are actually five iterations of the GSA. In ascending order of equipment, there’s the base R 1300 GS Adventure, the R 1300 GS Adventure Trophy, R 1300 GS Adventure Trophy X, the one I had (R 1300 GS Adventure Triple Black) and the R 1300 GS Adventure Option 719.

You may look at all of them HERE, which saves me listing what differentiates one from the other. And because BMW, you can option each one up even more.

And yes, the GSA is the one that has been branded “ugly” by people who don’t seem to understand the bike transcends such labels. Does a main battle tank need to be beautiful? It is function over form. All it needs to do is look like it means business, and it ticks that box hard. Some, but not many, bikes have “intent” written into their design brief. The GSA is one such beast.

If that’s a bridge to far for you, and its looks keep you up at night, why not look at a normal GS instead? They’re rather more elegant in terms of design.

Looks are, of course, subjective. Personally, I have no issue with a bike that looks like it strangles crocodiles and sunders boulders.

I’m fairly sure you’ve read lots of reviews about the GSA, both today’s model and previous models. Like I said, it’s as brilliant as it has always been, now with a touch less intimidation, for the faint of heart. It has the best front-end in the world, and anyone who’s ridden that tele-lever sorcery hard will agree. There’s nothing that compares. That’s what makes the GSA such a competent scratcher’s bike.

So, its super comfy, has all the bells and whistles, goes like a bastard (albeit rather deceptively because it’s just so good-natured about it), can carry giga-tonnes of stuff (no, that’s not a fat-shaming thing), has way over 450km fuel-range, and is essentially an access all areas kinda bike, and a complete hoot to ride.

Which brings me to the elephant you all wanna hear about. This is the Automated Shift Assistant (ASA), and it’s rather amazing.

I was convinced I was gonna hate it. Where’s the damn clutch-lever!? I am a man! I need a clutch lever! For…um, clutching, damn it! How can this possibly work at low speed, or in the dirt!? What was BMW thinking? And so on, and so forth. Of course, I had ridden other automatic bikes before, and they were pretty good, especially the Goldwing, where such a device seems very much at home. But on a GSA?! WTF, even!

And then I rode it. And it blew my mind.

When you start it, it always starts in M mode, and you must always depress the front brake (and it will remind you if you forget). This mode means you change the gears. No clutch, just as you would with a quick-shifter. This is where I began, imagining there would be some funky bullshit going on from standstill. Like, how can I ride off smoothly without a clutch? Well, pretty much like I then did. Twist the throttle a bit harder from standstill, and it takes off very quickly. Surprisingly quickly. Coming to a stop in M mode, the GSA will put itself into first when you’re at a standstill.

“Yeah, got that,” I told myself, and pressed the button on the left that switches it to Automatic, or A mode. And yes, you can do this on the fly. Off I went again, and once again, this slightly different process was flawless. I rode the 99 corners of the Mother Road’s Ten-Mile just as hard as I normally would, and it was simply astounding. So, I did it several more times just to make sure. It even blips on the downshift, while offering gear-changes that are way smoother than I could do with a normal transmission. And yes, you can over-ride the A mode whenever you like by changing gears up or down if you suddenly want to overtake or have been challenged by a sportsbike. Or you can just jam the throttle wide open and it will do it for you.

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27 August 20214

Once again, as you come to a halt, it puts itself into first.

“Noooo…” I said. “This is weird. This is strange. This is un-manly! This…well, this should not be!” And it IS bizarre at first. Of course, it is. We are hard-wired to use a clutch. But then, the more I rode it, the more I accepted it. And then I started to enjoy it. Now and again, I would examine myself to see if I was still a man, but the vegetables were always in situ.

I took it on some easy dirt and did very low speed stuff – the kind of stuff where you’d swear a clutch was crucial. Apart from the reflexive spasming of my left hand, the GSA behaved perfectly. The fuelling in this situation needs to be carved from perfection, and so it is.

So, my thoughts, and it took me a while to assemble them, regarding ASA, came to this…

Firstly, ASA is not compulsory. You fit it as an add-on.

Secondly, don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.

Thirdly, hard-core GSA dirt-riders – and there aren’t as many of them as you or even they would like to think – will always default to a clutch. Understandably so. But the vast bulk of folks riding GSAs, or thinking about GSAs, should seriously consider fitting the ASA. GSAs are only single-track, hard-enduro-capable monsters in the hands of very, very few people. Most owners spend their time highway touring, with the occasional detour down some fire-trails if mummy is feeling adventurous. There’s even an off-road mode if it gets a touch gnarly – and that’s always a subjective term, because my “gnarly” is not Toby Price’s “gnarly”.

The ASA honestly did my head in. Why did it have to be so damn… well, effective? It was not at all out of place on the GSA like I imagined it would be.

Would I fit it if I was buying one? Sure. Why not?

Oh, it makes me less of a man, huh?

I guess that means you’ll have to lead if we ever dance.