Verdict

‘The performance, usability, easylife extras and comfort of the BMW, but with quietly-spoken efficiency’

The landlord at the local of Bike’s production overlord Nigel Grimshaw is the proud owner of a BMW S1000XR. Over very many pints of Scruttock’s Old Basher he frequently talks about how he owns a sportsbike – and despite its lofty stance and little beak that’s exactly what the XR is. It can see off miles, offers accommodation for two, has above-average wheel travel and a decent payload, but it’s a bike that exists to scorch along straights and attack the turns. It’s a high-rise sportsbike. If you want serious performance with a hefty smearing of practicality and without contorted limbs, fill your boots.

So the fight to be best road-going large adventure bike is a neck and neck race between the established BMW R1250GS TE and new Ducati Multistrada V4 S. In trinkets-and-baubles specs as tested here (which most people will go for) their prices are split by just £47. Yes, forty-seven quid. Rolling on the same size tyres, there’s just 5kg between measured wet weights and less than half an inch difference in seat height.

Yet despite both also being supremely comfortable, fabulously well equipped and staggeringly accomplished, they’re very different things. The GS has a stronger adventure air, with a more rugged image and larger beak. Sensations are more direct, its attributes more apparent, and the way it rides is unique – no other bike mixes cutting-edge tech and civility with traditional charm and quirky features like the GS. Things are slicker, calmer and more polished on the Multistrada; it has the same performance, usability, easy-life extras, flexibility and comfort as the BMW, but with quietly-spoken efficiency, smoothness and refined modernity. It’s got epic service intervals too. And radar.

It’s bloody close and choosing a winner is extremely difficult. It comes down to what you’ll do with the bike. The R1250GS is perhaps the better genuine adventure bike thanks to its promise of dirt ability, but I can’t ever imagine taking one off-road. The Ducati is – just – the better pure road bike. Multistrada wins.