Going Rallye (ing) BMW W ups the ante
Claimed to be the most off-road focused GS yet, and coming fitted with off-road tyres (road tyres are a no-cost option), BMW’s R1200GS Rallye sets itself up as a serious piece of kit.
The most notable change to the basic machine is an optional 20mm lift to the suspension, making it even more capable in the dirt, and possibly the machine that those of us who enjoy riding our big bikes off-road will salivate over.
Standard Rallyes cost £12,730 (just £480 more than a standard GS), and come fitted with a bench seat (previously a £286 option), plastic frame guards, wider footpegs, plastic radiator guards, smaller Sport screen and black spoked wheels from the GSA. The test machines were also fitted with optional crash bars (£323.23), as well as the Dynamic Package that adds LED headlights, Gear Shift Assist Pro, Riding Mode Pro and LED indicators for a total of £1490 extra. The bikes also had Hill Start Control activated at no extra cost and were also missing the centrestand – in order to give the Rallye more ground clearance. If you need a centrestand, you can add one by getting the £205 passenger kit, or as a dealer fit option when ordering.
For the UK there is also a Rallye Sport at £14,625. For the most part this mimics a top spec GS, just in Rallye colours, but with a standard two-tier seat, regular touring screen, road-biased tyres and the centrestand. It gives you the look of the Rallye, but without any of the compromises. It also features niceties such as LED headlights, Hill Start Control, Gear Shift Assist Pro, tyre pressure sensors and heated grips. Adding ESA and cruise control bumps that price up to £15,775.
Interestingly, none of the bikes out in Portugal featured the optional Sports suspension that gives that 20mm lift. The Sports suspension is essentially that of the GS Adventure, fitted to the regular GS Rallye at a cost of £290. It raises the ride height front and rear, and also shortens the wheelbase slightly as a result. It is also more stiffly sprung than the standard set-up. Sports suspension was deemed by the Off Road Skills team to be too focused for most of the novice riders they have coming through the school, where the ability to get feet down on the ground is more important than an extra half inch of ground clearance. You can also order the bike with a low suspension option (£175), giving a seat height of just 800mm.
Regardless of the depth of changes to the Rallye – or lack thereof – it’s hard not to admire the way the GS still performs in the dirt. The key is its weight distribution and balance, brought about largely by the flattwin engine configuration keeping most of the weight down low. I won the slow speed race on mine at the Overland Event last year, mainly because at a standstill it’ll almost stand up on its own. Then you have the perfect relationship between bars and pegs for stood-up riding and a throttle response that, despite being ride by wire, is naturally fluid and progressive, making it very easy to control rear tyre slip, even if you disengage traction control completely (something many riders prefer once they’ve got the hang of a big bikes in the dirt). The new Dynamic Pro traction control and ABS Pro do seem more effective on the dirt than ever, but for me, you do lose a little bit of feel when they are activated.
With that in mind, we have to add a caveat with these kinds of large capacity adventure bikes, in that they can be wonderful off-road, and can flatter the novice rider no end, but it is largely down to context. When it’s not your bike, you’re riding these perfect trails suited to the BMW, and you’re surrounded by instructors and people to help pick it up should you drop it, then your increased confidence can only lead to improved riding skills.
But flip that around and be on your own bike, riding solo on the muddy trails of the UK and quite quickly a 250kg machine can be a menace, especially if you get it bogged or wedged in a rut on its cylinders. If you’re a novice to true off-road riding (not gentle fire tracks), then ignore the marketing spin because you’re still far better off buying a 250cc trail bike and leaving bikes like the GS – even the Rallye – to the Tarmac.
The Rallye is likely to be a great success, in the same way that the Triple Black has been for those wanting the prestige of a different colour scheme. As an engineering exercise, it could be seen as something of a disappointment. It doesn’t do enough, or go far enough in its changes to promote it as a standalone model in the way the legendary HP2 that influenced this paint scheme was. It would have been good for BMW to have given us a proper off-road biased GS, with 21in front, 18in rear wheels, perhaps regular telescopic front suspension rather than the Telelever, and a significant reduction in weight. German firm Touratech, in conjunction with BMW, has recently built such a thing, called the Rambler. That bike – sadly not for sale – features a revised fuel tank, deleted fairing, and front suspension from an F800 Adventure. In doing so they have managed to shave an impressive 40kg from the weight of the liquid-cooled GS, and it’s the bike that I’d love to see BMW putting into production. But who would buy it? Maybe a few serious off-road heroes with plenty of money, as the price tag would probably need to be in the region of £20,000 to justify the production run, and that’s if it could even pass Euro 4. The rest would languish in dealers, or leased out on PCP deals and never taken near dirt because on those terms of agreement you can’t afford to rack up any off-road damage. BMW has wisely built the bike that will sell, rather than the bike some of us had hoped for, which, in business, is completely understandable. As it is, the Rallye serves as a perfect plateau between GS and GSA, adding intangible cachet to the regular bike in the way that the previous Enduro model never did.
For £12,730 you’re getting a hugely desirable machine without having to add a whole lot of accessories, as you once did with the upgrade to TE model. The standard bike is what I would order – managing without ESA, cruise control and tyre pressure sensors – as at that base price I’d see the Rallye as something I could afford to get out and use, and possibly take on a big trip.
Equally, with the Rallye Sport, BMW has been smart in realising that the majority of customers might like the colour scheme of the Rallye without wanting all the compromises that go with it (screen, seat, centrestand and tyres). The £14,625 Rallye Sport fulfils that need quite nicely, and as a result will probably be the most desirable, and popular variant.
What this gentle attempt at a more off-road focused GS does allow, however, is for the likes of KTM with its new 1090 Adventure R, to gain some traction. That bike has all the right ingredients, from a 21/18in wheel setup, WP long travel suspension, 125bhp, proper crash protection as standard and a tempting price tag of £12,149. It’s the bike you might well choose over the Rallye if you were contemplating putting a large capacity adventure machine through its paces off-road. That or a Honda Africa Twin, which, despite this year’s price rise to £10,849, is still £2000 less than the basic Rallye. Has BMW done enough to stay ahead? Time will tell.
2000 The £ price split between the BMW and Africa Twin
New technologies
New for this year and an option on the Rallye, is the uprated electronics package, now featuring lean-anglesensitive Dynamic Traction Control (DTC) and ABS Pro. The latest Gear Shift Assist Pro (effectively a quickshifter, both up and down) I can take or leave – the strength of the flat-twin boxer motor has always been the torque in the mid-range, with a preference for short-shifting, at least as far as my riding style goes. Ridden in this manner I’m not sure the Gear Shift Assist works so well, sometimes fluffing up changes, still giving something of a crunch on the occasional down-change in the lower gears. Alternatively, if you’re the type of rider who likes to give your bike some stick through the cogs then you’re probably better suited to it.
Hill Start Control (a no-cost option) was also a technology I could live without (I admit I’m something of a Luddite). You engage the system by pulling the brake lever when stationary, and release it either by pulling the lever a second time or letting out the clutch. For the first few times – and I wasn’t alone – I stalled the bike by not giving it enough revs to overcome the resistance of the brake. You adapt to it, and for a fully loaded bike on steep foreign roads it could come in handy. But again, for me, it’s something that doesn’t particularly add much to the core GS package.
The electronic suspension however (a £755 option) was something I missed more than I thought I might on these machines. The manual set-up proved perfectly competent on road and trail, despite its lack of adjustment (only preload at the rear), and there’s something appealing about the simplicity of it, but on a GS, where you might be transitioning from on to off-road with regularity – or even just loading it up with luggage – I longed for the ability to firm or soften the suspension on the fly. The lack of electronic damping control also meant that the bike didn’t float quite so well over rough surfaces, and just lacked that little bit of comfort and finesse that I’d grown used to on my own ESA-equipped machine.
For 2017, the system also features self-levelling technology, measuring the weight of the load and setting the preload accordingly. Previously you had to do that manually, switching between rider, rider with luggage, rider with pillion, and rider with pillion and luggage. Now the system does all that for you. With no bikes in Portugal equipped with ESA it was impossible to test, though it does sound like a worthwhile incremental improvement.
Out on the trails
In terms of changes to the way the Rallye performs off-road, the biggest difference is to the footpegs, which might seem of insignificance, but wide pegs give you better feel and control of the bike. Those on the Rallye are the same as fitted to the Adventure model, so could be retro-fitted to any GS. The smaller screen is also handy off-road, giving you a better view of the trail ahead and making the front of the bike feel smaller and more manageable, a sensation aided by the tightening up – and smartening up – of the front end design for 2017 bikes.
It would have been interesting to try the bike with the 20mm lift of the Sports suspension, but the truth is that on the type of trails we were riding it wouldn’t have made much difference, bar the increased bridge to the floor when coming to a stop. My own standard ride height GS does bottom out sometimes when riding off-road in the UK, so I have a sturdier AltRider sump guard fitted, as the original bashplate bolts directly into the sump, where a heavy impact could potentially wreck your engine.
More generally, it was a shame to see the once aluminium heel plates replaced by black plastic on the newer bikes as they seem to tarnish quickly, as do the Rallye’s frame guards. Even the grab rail at the rear seemed more susceptible to scuffing and abuse than that of previous years. I also miss the fact that the steering lock on the latest model no longer operates with the bars turned left or right; now only left. It was a handy feature when parking in tight spaces or trying to chain two bikes together.
Some of the plastics around the upper fairing, especially the winglets either side of the screen, also seem flimsier and to have more flex after the redesign, the advantage of course being that they shouldn’t snap quite so easily when hit off-road. Otherwise, the larger instrument design is a big improvement, making speed and revs much easier to read.
The single bench seat of the Rallye looks great and is that little bit narrower than the stock one, though whether it’s as all-day comfortable as the standard two-tier seat was hard to tell as there’s a lot of stop-start riding on a bike launch. It can still carry a pillion, but only if they don’t mind sitting close.
The Sport screen was surprisingly good at deflecting the wind and conveniently uses the same fasteners and adjustment mechanism as the standard bike. If you plan on doing a lot of off-road work then consider fitting a Cymarc screen brace (available for £59.99 from Nippy Normans), as the plastic screen struts on the GS are prone to stress fractures and are a swine to change, though at least comparatively cheap to purchase.