Simply the best: New R1250RT wows us on the MCN250 route
How to explore the MCN250 test route with a big smile on your face
BMW’s R1250RT and the R1200RT before it have won countless MCN Best Tourer Awards and it isn’t hard to see why. The German machine will take you big miles in comfort with half your life stashed in the panniers and do over 250 miles to the tank, if you take it steady. Thanks to the magic of its ShiftCam engine it’ll pull cleanly in top from just 2000rpm or accelerate like a crazed sportsbike in the lower gears and, despite being a cruiser par excellence, it somehow manages to dance through corners with the grace of a bike half its size. If you’re serious about touring
and want to have some fun along the way, the R1250RT is actually the only choice. Traditional big capacity tourers like the RT aren’t as popular as they once were thanks to the surge in adventure bike sales. That’s hardly a surprise as our knobbly-tyred friends are more spacious, agile, sporty and every bit as comfortable. Some are as capable off road as they are on tarmac, too, giving you two bikes in one.
You could point to the Kawasaki Ninja H2 SX, Yamaha FJR1300 or BMW’s own R1250RS as RT alternatives, but they’re not in the same long-distance luxury league. There are also big cruisers like the BMW K1600GT, Honda Gold Wing and any number of Indians and Harleys, but they all live for the straight and narrow and merely tolerate the bendy bits in between. So, the RT is the king of its domain, especially now that rivals such as the Triumph Trophy have gone, but despite being the biggest fish in its own pond the BMW has continued to evolve.
It still uses the same 1254cc flat twin and its chassis, suspension, superb BMW branded Hayes brakes and ergonomics are all unchanged. It still has a maintenance-free shaft drive and Telelever front-end that enables this big beast to steer crisply on the brakes.
For 2021 it gets a variety of upgrades to ramp up luxury, convenience and safety. The nose is even more spaceship-like and the old dash, made up of analogue dials and a small TFT, has made way for a huge 10.25in TFT split-screen colour display that manages to be in-yourface and subtle at the same time. Meanwhile the cornering ABS now has a new electronically controlled dual braking set up for improved stability under hard braking. It actually mirrors what most MotoGP racers do now – dragging the rear brake to pull the