’91 VS ’19 HONDA’S LEGENDARY AFRICA TWIN
The 2019 Honda Africa Twin, with its dual clutch transmission, is a high-tech adventure bike... but doe sall that technology translate into a better ride? We tested it against the 1991 model to see just how far things have come. Both are now available as second-hand bikes, but obviously there is quite a difference…
They don’t make them like they used to. Correct, they don’t. It’s hard to believe the original Africa Twin is now 30 years old, but park it next to a 2019 model and it shows. No ABS, no traction control, no rider modes and a couple of those things called carburetors all remind you how far bikes have come in a few decades.
And for every person who swears by low-tech bikes for travelling, there’s one flying the flag for a newer, more reliable motorcycle. For every rider whose old bike has broken down on a trip, there’s a rider cursing their brand new bike that has conked out and ended their ride early.
There are valid arguments for both options; the right answer comes down to personal preference, but that’s not the discussion we were out to solve here. Part celebration of a legendary adventure bike, the real aim of this test was to put some facts in to settling an age-old argument that old adventure bikes are more fun to ride than new ones.
Okay, so there is a caveat here. The 1991 Africa Twin isn’t technically the original Africa Twin; there was an earlier, limited version with a 650cc V-twin released in 1988, built at HRC to replicate the Honda NXR Dakar Rally bikes. For model code aficionados, that was the RD03, replaced by the bike we have here, the RD04 in 1990.
The 1991 Africa Twin on this test is in fair condition for its age, with 36,000 miles on the clock and was given a full service prior to the test. The claimed figures when this bike was new were a peak power of 62hp and weight of 209kg. For anyone with an ounce of Dakar excitement in them, it is a bike that stirs up dreams of crossing the Sahara desert with nothing but a compass bearing to keep you on track. What is perhaps the most special thing about this Africa Twin, is that it was a bike derived from the HRC Dakar race bikes. Sure, it was watered down and de-tuned for reliability, but people actually raced the 650 Africa Twins at Dakar, so there’s a feel of legit race heritage that you simply don’t get from the new model.
Of course, the reality is the roadgoing Africa Twin was considerably heavier and less powerful than the NXR rally bikes, but try telling your heart that. While it may be low on tech next to the 2019 model, there are some neat touches that have aged as well as the looks. On the left side panel there’s a tool compartment, accessible without taking the seat off
and big enough for a useful toolkit. There is a two-stage fuel warning light, and the multi-gauge dash tells you speed, rpm and engine temperature. No average speed, miles per gallon or distance to next service data here though.
The 2019 Africa Twin, in terms of specification and equipment, couldn’t be further removed from the old bike. Next to the carburetors, floppy turn signals and wobbly speedometer needle of the RD04, the new bike feels like the Starship Enterprise. The model here is the Africa Twin Adventure Sports with the optional Dual Clutch Transmission (DCT) automatic gearbox. Compared with the standard 2019 Africa Twin, the Adventure Sports has longer travel suspension, more fuel capacity, a bigger screen and ‘gravel mode’ added to the rider mode options.
The DCT option features two electronically controlled clutches – it’s a sophisticated automatic system that lets you use the bike as a twist-and-go or you can shift gears up and down manually using the buttons on the left side of the handlebar. The numbers eclipse the older bike too; power is now listed at 93hp although the weight has climbed to 243kg.
SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES
Checking out the two Africa Twins parked next to each other, there’s so much lineage that links the two.
Honda has taken more than its fair share of stick over the years for making bikes that lack character, but the features from the 1991 bike echoed in the new bike are a neat touch. From the closely matched colour schemes, to the shape of the tank, the seat and the Adventure Sports tagline, the new bike pays a fitting tribute to its ancestor. But it does make it look like a minibike.
When the Africa Twin came out in the 1990s, road riders lamented the high seat and dirt bike guys poked fun at the weight. By today’s adventure bike standards, it feels compact, manageable and nimble.
The new Africa Twin, by comparison, feels tall, top heavy and hard to be the boss of in tight situations. Even after miles of testing, every time any of the riders on test kicked the stand up on the 2019 bike, they were having to be that little bit extra cautious with their balance. And two riders on the test were Dakar rally finishers, with years of adventure bike experience between them. The old bike was always the one being thrown around, hopped over rocks, spun round on the gas – its diminutive size and light weight by the standards of this test made you feel invincible on it.
As we got ready to leave on the first ride with the two bikes together, immediately the old bike landed a shot on its high-tech descendant.
I switched the 1991-spec ignition on, touched the starter button and, after I remembered how to use a choke lever, the bike fired into life with a nice rumble from the period-spec Arrow exhaust.
Laughing at me fiddling with the choke lever, one of the testers jumped on the new bike, pulled away, then stopped to work out how to change rider modes. At every intersection, fuel stop or pull in, their head was buried in the dash of the 2019 Africa Twin, looking for a more aggressive throttle setting, manual mode on the transmission, gravel mode or the button to turn the ABS off. It’s fantastic to have such adaptability in modern bikes, but it sure does result in a lot of time scrolling through menus.
Meanwhile I was hopping the analogue machine over kerbs and amusing myself with brake slides.
For sure, when we had the system understood, it was much faster to get the new AT into the setting you wanted, but you still had to reset a few things (like ABS and manual gearshift mode) every time you restarted the motor.
On the road it was a minor niggle, off-road where we were stopping more frequently for gates and map-checks, it became pretty irritating. Stop. Engage parking brake. Stand down. Switch off. Switch on. Stand back up. Release parking brake. Select drive. Select manual mode. Turn rear ABS back off.
Pull away.
TARMAC
Any time lost in the menus of the DCT Africa Twin was soon made up out on the road; longer gearing and a significant power advantage made it easy to reel in the 62bhp 750. And with the transmission set to fully automatic, the new bike was a comfortable, relaxing ride, munching through the miles with ease.
The Adventure Sports model gets a tall seat and high screen that come into their own on this relaxed style of ride, giving you a high vantage point for planning turns and overtakes, but plenty of wind protection to hide behind. The auto transmission is silky smooth, letting you roll on and off the gas with no further thought about what gear you’re in.
At this point, once the novelty of the old bike’s charm started to wear thin, the heavy clutch and clunky gearshift could get tiresome.
To keep pace with the new bike on a cruise, you had to work hard or accept a slower pace of life where you could enjoy the smooth torque curve and sublime throttle response of the carburetor-fed motor.
The old bike is actually a scream to ride fast, squeezing every last bit of power out of the v-twin motor, hammering the surprisingly good brakes before chucking it into corners until you’ve no more boot left to scrape. The old suspension behaves well on the road, never offering the best quality ride, but never doing anything alarming either. Rolling into
a rest stop at the end of an epic mountain pass, the engine was ping-pinging with the heat, I’d broken a sweat, the tyres looked frazzled and every corner now had a 130/70-17 skidmark from braking point to apex. As the new bike rolled in behind me, Llel looked like he’s just stepped out of a spa retreat.
That’s what 30 years of development has done – the same pace, the same road, riders of a similar ability and two totally different experiences. I was babbling at 40 words per second about how good that last downhill left hander was and Llel was sat there the whole time chilling, listening to his tunes and enjoying the view.
Swap roles and when the new bike was pushing on, I could barely keep it in sight.
Mid corner speeds were similar, but the 31bhp deficit was hard to claw back at the end of each straight. The two riding experiences on the road are so vastly contrasting – you’re always busy when trying to ride fast on the old bike and it feels happy to be pushed, playful even.
The new bike will happily sit behind the old one, passing at the first opportunity and wafting off into the distance. It’s more comfortable, the brakes are better and there’s always power to get past other vehicles. Yet somehow it doesn’t urge you to misbehave in quite the same way.
DIRT
When we switched to the dirt, the first section of trail was a gnarly, tight set of rock steps down to a river and back up the other side. I was confident on the RD04, able to pick my line accurately, pulling it back into shape when it slid out and using the clutch and low down torque to punch the front wheel back up the steps.
From the outside, with sound off, the old bike looked made for this. Turn the volume back up and you heard a clang for every step as the low bashguard shaped itself around the rocks... and possibly a grunt of relief from the rider as the heavy clutch started to make its presence felt.
The modern bike felt tall and heavy, but surprised everyone by making up for the weight disadvantage with good ground clearance and well-controlled suspension. Again the DCT system blew us away with predictable response and smooth control just when we expected it to be a hindrance.
As it opened into faster, but still rough terrain, 30 years of technology disappeared off into the dust. The quality of the suspension on the Adventure Sports Africa Twin was sublime. It’s not the most dynamic set up, tending towards stability rather than agility, but it sucked up everything we threw at it, feeling like a magic carpet across gulleys and rocks. By contrast, the old bike’s fork struggled to keep up with the terrain, giving a nervous feeling on loose rocks and bottoming if you hit a gulley too fast.
On smoother trails the RD04 was fun and you could overstep the mark and recover. The newer bike’s weight meant once it did get off balance, it was harder to catch, but until that point you felt nothing would phase it.
CONCLUSION
The Africa Twin, and adventure bikes in general, have come a long way in three decades.
For one thing, the new bike couldn’t match the old one for smell. Parked up, there was always a distinct whiff of gasoline around the carburetor bike, and following it on a fast road brought back memories of 1990s superbike racing and the lingering scent of unburned hydrocarbons. Perhaps not so good for inner city air quality, but damn it’s good for the soul.
So which would I choose? Well for jumping on and going for an evening trail ride it would have to be the granddaddy, the RD04 for me.
I hate to be a Luddite, but the old bike was so easy to handle, so willing to continue off-road way past its comfort zone that it made every trail fun. The caveat to that is that I also love working on bikes, so fixing the speedometer which packed up on test, bump starting it when the old battery died and repairing the droopy indicators all made me just as happy as riding the thing.
But for longer trips, my choice definitely flips over to the newer bike. For riding hundreds of miles, exploring new trails and seeing new places, the comfort, power and quality suspension all let you focus more on the trip itself and think less about what the bike is doing. In all the quantifiable senses other than outright weight, the new bike is king – ABS and traction control make it safer to ride faster for more riders, the fuel efficiency is better, the engine cruises better on the freeway and not
one component fell off it during the test. It’s always interesting to ride old bikes that are held in such high regard, that have such a strong following and shine the cold hard light of technology on them.
In this case the 1991 Africa Twin RD04 stands up proud – it might be slower and less refined than the new one, but everyone who rode it could instantly see where the legendary reputationcomes from.It’s a bike that gives you the confidence to push yourself off road, a bike that tempts you to take that one extra trail and the same bike that will get you home again afterwards... even if home is a four-hour ride away.
With so much character, it really does get under your skin, to the point you’re happy to ignore the occasional puddle of fuel in the garage.