ALMOST A ROADTEST
AN ADVENTURE BIKE? IN BSH? REALLY? WHAT THE HELL’S GOING ON?
THE NEW MOTO GUZZI V85TT
WEwouldn’t normally do roadtests on adventure bikes in BSH in the same way we wouldn’t normally do roadtests of sports bikes (and we won’t, don’t worry) because... well, adventure bikes aren’t really what we’re about, are they?
There’s a big difference between the likes of BMW’s R1200GS, Triumph’s Tiger 1200, and Honda’s Africa Twin, and Moto Guzzi’s V85TT though – the Guzzi isn’t really an adventure bike in the same way as the three aforementioned on/off-road monsters. No, while they drip with technomological geegaws, and boast of their prowess on the rough stuff, the V85 isn’t, how shall I best put this, quite so vulgar – it’s more refined, more sedate... a gentleman’s motorcycle.
The V85TT (it’s an 850cc vee-twin, yes, and the TT stands for Tutto Terreno which means, roughly speaking, ‘goes anywhere’) is a bike which, if like me you’ve grown up on a diet of fast, noisy bikes, takes a little while to get your head around. I have, you see, a natural wariness of Guzzis as, as you’ll know if you read my editorial last issue, they do have a habit of breaking on me. I’ve ridden quite a few over my years of working for this ‘ere magazine, and very few of them made their way back to the people who lent them to me under their own steam. Yes, what caused them to become inert lumps of sculpted metal on the side of roadways the length and breadth of the land was, in the main, silly little electrical faults, but they were still enough to make me a little nervous of swinging a leg over one, and this wasn’t helped with the V85 when, barely two miles after I’d climbed aboard, the rather pleasing-on-the-eye dashboard lit up like the bridge of the Starship Enterprise during a Borg cube attack. I pulled over into the services a mile or so down the road and rang them, to be told that what I’d understandably taken as a screaming warning of impending (mechanical) death and gloom was, in fact, just a series of programmable rev-limit warning lights that’d been set deliberately low as the engine was so new (just 200 miles on the clock when I picked it up). Once reassured that the bike wasn’t going to commit mechanised hara-kiri (or whatever the Italian equivalent is), I found the lights quite useful actually – the first came on at about 77mph, and I took that to mean, ‘Right, this is ten per cent over the national speed limit, okay?’; the second at about 79, which meant, ‘Okay, you’d better hope you don’t see a copper ‘cos you’re pushing your luck’; and the third at 82 which meant ‘Yer on yer own now, pally, I warned you, didn’t I?’
And even though the V85 isn’t on paper the fastest thing on the road (it makes just 79bhp and 59ft-lb of torque), in reality that doesn’t really matter too much. It’s happy bobbing along at between 75 and 80mph on dual-carriageways and motorways, and maybe ten to fifteen miles an hour less on normal single-laners, which may not sound that quick to modern-day riders, but it does it so easily, so competently, so relaxedly (is that a word?), that you feel any aggression, any aggravation you may be feeling, just ebb
away, and the world become a nicer place. Because of this I never seemed to arrive anywhere more than a minute or two later than I would’ve done on a faster bike, and with a much more chilled state of mind. It’s weird – I normally crave the adrenaline rush you get from ‘attacking’ a road, but the Guzzi… it kind o’ made that less of a priority – it just floated along, racking up the miles in a thoroughly pleasant manner. As I said, a gentleman’s motorcycle, y’know?
It was also nice, for a change, to sit so upright, and so high, that you felt you had a commanding view of everything – sort o’ over cars, rather than through their windows; over hedges and fences; able to look a little further ahead than normal and so spot brake lights or oddly positioned vehicles way before you perhaps would’ve done on a ‘normal’ bike. Surprisingly, given that it is an adventure bike, it’s not actually stupidly tall – the seat height is 830mm, or 32 inches (although there’s an 810mm, 31 inches, lower seat option, and an 850mm, 33 inches, higher one too), and the seat’s quite narrow (but very comfy), so while it is tall, it’s not too tall, y’know? The engine, when you tweak the throttle, doesn’t twitch to the right anywhere near as much as on older bikes too, so you don’t get ‘ooo y’fooker’ scare on uneven surfaces, and the chassis feels competent and unflappable. Yeah, it’ll
lean over far enough to scrape itself on the road if you’re so inclined, but it never really feels that necessary – it seems to take all bends, no matter how tight or changeable, in its stride.
Equipment-wise, there are, very obviously, the two boxes at the rear (big enough to take open-face lids and smaller shell full-faces too, but not my Simpson flip-front); and there’s cruise-control (great for dealing with 40 or 50mph average speed sections on motorways); you can sync’ your phone with the dash via an app that does ‘stuff’ if you so wish; there’s a ‘Rain’ mode to soften the power delivery in the wet and an ‘Off-Road’ mode that, basically, turns the rear ABS off so that you can do skids; and a useful USB socket to charge your phone or power your sat-nav. The tank’s big at 23 litres and so should give over 200 miles easily (note the ‘should’ there – I never get the sort of tank range other folk do for some reason), and the fuel gauge is reasonably accurate, but starts flashing up that you need fuel when the on-board range wotsit says you still have 75 miles’ worth of fuel left… odd. Oh yeah, and the Moto Guzzi eagle emblem in the headlight lights up as a daytime running light, which is cool.
So there you have it; the V85TT in about 1,000 words. It may be classed as an adventure bike but, really, it isn’t (you wouldn’t want to take it off-road much – at 235kg it’s a bit heavy for such silliness). What it is, is a gentleman’s motorcycle: smooth, competent, relaxing to ride, and quick enough without being hurried. It’s the sort of bike you could do three or four hours riding on, and get off still able to walk, or commute on into cities every day with ease (assuming you’re not one of those who’s habitually late for work) and enjoy every moment of the journey. And when you get to wherever it is you’re going, it’s unlikely there’s going to be another one of these there, isn’t it? Unless, of course, another gentleman has realised how good the Moto Guzzi V85TT is…
PRICES START FOR THE MOTO GUZZI
V85TT AT £11,200, AND YOU CAN GET MORE INFORMATION OR A TEST RIDE FROM YOUR LOCAL MOTO GUZZI DEALER OR WWW.MOTOGUZZI.COM
ALL TICKETS TO BE PURCHASED IN ADVANCE
EMAIL: BOOKING@KEMPTONPARKAUTOJUMBLE.CO.UK