这是在一个月内第三次这样的对话。一个friend and fellow rider calling to ask my opinion about an upcoming motorcycle purchase. I’m familiar with these calls. And, equally, wary of them. I’ve learned, over the years, that people only ask for opinions when they’re sure you’ll parrot their beliefs. Ultra-conservative Florida fundamentalists do not habitually consult atheists for their views. Ditto the other way around.
After years away from motorcycling, Jake, now living in Vancouver, had the means to purchase any bike he wanted. But he was wary of a buying misstep that would necessitate him trading to something bigger, smaller, or better suited to his needs within a year or two.
Much of what I needed to know to formulate an answer for Jake I already knew. That he lived near mountains, that wet weather is the norm, and that he planned to ride in the city in addition to remote wooded regions. And Jake, I knew from our days back in Toronto, had owned a vintage Mercedes sedan and an equally beautiful smoke grey BMW R90S. I rolled these elements—predisposition to things German, big mountains, rough roads, so-so knees—around and made the most self-evident suggestion imaginable: A BMW GS. The big one was my preference, but the middleweight one would do, too. What’s that? Not keen on parallel twins? Ok then, the R1250 GS it is. But the base model, no need to go crazy with the Adventure. From the other end of the phone I heard the static from 3,000 miles of flat prairie that separated us. Jake? You there?
The problem, Jake said, was that the GS is ugly. That all ADV bikes are ugly. It doesn’t matter if they’re Multistradas or V-Stroms or KTMs. They’re all just ugly. His tone suggested I was to blame for this. “Why,” he asked, “do they look so awkward.” The two other callers who sought my council the month Jake called said virtually the same when I suggested a Multistrada for one (an Italophile who only dips below 100 mph to urinate) and a Triumph Tiger to another who thinks everything—excepting food, naturally—from the land of Churchill demands our adoration.
At the end of the month in which the three of them had called, I had three friends who weren’t so friendly anymore. Jake was hoping I’d have suggested a classic-looking roadster. Something black, with wire wheels and white pinstriping. The Italophile wanted a Panigale with cavernous luggage and a Gold Wing’s legroom. And the lover of all things English planned to ride into deepest Alaska—two up, with luggage for camping—on a cordovan red overtop silver ice Triumph Bonneville. Not that you’d be able to see the paint color beneath the mud.
The point—and all three friends took issue with my suggestions for exactly the same reason—was that while they acknowledged the superiority of the modern ADV-bike architecture for just about any type of riding short of track days, they just couldn’t get on with the aesthetics. And when I said, with no small degree of exasperation, “you can’t see it when you’re on it,” it felt like I’d failed at fully articulating why the adventure-touring motorcycle is, in most instances, the best type of motorcycle for most people. What I didn’t admit to them is that I know how they feel. Because I feel it too. ADV bikes do not inspire love for the way they look.
One unavoidable aspect of ADV bikes is that while long-travel suspension is a boon for off-roading and bad-roading (if a bust for riders short of inseam), motorcycles that sit high look awkward. It’s why custom builders, almost without exception, slash fork and shock travel. Lower looks better—function be damned.
Ex-Yamaha motorcycle designer Michael Uhlarik spoke of proportion when solicited for his opinion. The ADV’s smaller-section front tire on a large-diameter rim looks out of balance with the fatter tire on a smaller diameter rim out back, he said.
BMW’s controversial at-the-time approach to deal with the GS’s front wheel, which can appear as overwhelmed as a caster on a dishwasher, was to stick a beak on the front of the bike in an attempt to move visual weight forward. Other manufacturers made fun of it. Right up until they copied it.
The sheer visual busyness of big ADVs is astounding. In the photograph that accompanies this piece, find the shiny silver panel that tucks behind the multi-directional crash bar (that replicates the convoluted plumbing I once tore out of a neighbor’s hunting cabin). The purpose of the shiny panel is to direct the viewer’s eye forward and down.
Michael spoke of designers unable to leave surfaces alone. The GS’s bodywork is besieged by a multitude of angles, surfaces, and finishes. Look at the beak as it moves back into the bike to a pair of vents and what appear to be a pair of “oh shit” handles on either side of the multi-angle-funky-reflector headlight. Walk away, lads, walk away.
Lest it appear we’re singling out BMW, current KTM Adventure architecture doesn’t do itself any favors with a horse-collar-headlight that apes a bug’s face at mega-magnification. And virtually every other modern ADV can be faulted for trying far too hard. It doesn’t have to be this way.
回顾KTM’s original 950 Adventure. It’s not pretty. It’s not supposed to be pretty. It’s unapologetically what it is—a hard-nosed bike that looks like Austrian army surplus. I can’t confirm KTM designers cobbled it together in the design studio by covering the frame with drywall off-cuts, but it doesn’t matter. It works. And in all-black it looks as sharp as a machete withdrawn from its sheathing.
One new machine that’s doing its level best to reverse the far-too-much, far-too-busy design trend is Ducati’s DesertX. Looking austere in its white livery, the DesertX’s inspiration—Cagiva’s Elefant—is a machine from an era when designers allowed a machine to be a machine. Stoppingjustshort of the point at which it could have become fussy, not every surface of the DesertXlooksfussed over. Another bike that bucks the trend is Husqvarna’s retro-futuristic Norden 901. Neither bike is burdened by a tongue-depressor beak. And they have a hint of the purposefulness of racing motorcycles. And, with luck, they’ll point the way to the future of ADV motorcycle design. A future that can’t come soon enough—I’m missing my friends.
