F800GS Review

Now before we get started on the important business of reviewing the motorcycle I should say I’m a little bit biased towards the F800GS. I rode one while at Simon Pavey’s off-road training school and that was one of the best weekends I’ve ever had, not just of riding bikes, but ever.

I’m not sure if this makes me terribly sad or just a little bit too into motorbikes but I think you should be aware that just looking at the bike, especially covered in mud, reminds me of good times. And yes, I’ve just realised that sounds a bit sleazy. At the off-road school I got to experience what the F800GS is like in the mud with proper knobbly tires on it, and I’ll put a link to that at the bottom of the page. This is a review of what the bike is like on the roads.

The F 800 GS, with a little bit of mud on it.

I tried to think of somewhere completely unlike rural Wales to take the bike. Something far away from the rolling hills and muddy tracks I’d been on before so I took the motorbike to London. In the rush hour. In the rain.

Since I first encountered the F800GS when it was parked up next to a load of 1200 GS motorbikes I always think of it as rather small, well perhaps not small but not huge. However when you put it next to most other bikes it’s size is fairly noticeable. It’s a bit of a giant, but in a good way. The only time that this became an issue was when I was trying to park the bike, although too be fair the panniers were causing most of the troubles.

The bike had the BMW panniers attached to it and they are big, heavy and waterproof. They are wider than the handle bars and after about ten minutes of riding around London I realised why you never see couriers with panniers, they only ever have top boxes. They also make it fairly difficult to park the bike snugly in the motorcycle bays dotted around London. On the plus side the can be removed in a few seconds with a satisfying clunk so once you’ve found a space you just pop them off and put the bike in.

The F800GS lurking in London.

The rest of the ride around London was fairly uneventful. The F800GS has lots of pleasant torque at low revs which means if you need to blip ahead of someone when the traffic lights go green you will. While it can be a little bit snatchy at low speeds once you allow for that with a bit of clutch work it’s great fun. It’s roll-on acceleration is really impressive so if you have to go from 30mph to 60mph it will get you there before almost anyone else.

The height is also an advantage, while sat in the seat you will see over the top of most cars and if you stand up on the pegs you’ll be able to see over the roofs of black cabs which is very, very useful. So useful in fact that they should include that in the sales pitch when selling the bike in London.

The next big test of the bike was some motorway riding. I had to go up to Silverstone for a work thing and then down to Devon. The weather report was awful with rain, vicious crosswinds and even a hint of snow. This would be a proper long distance test of the bike. I zipped up everything I could on my Tuareg suit (a link to the review is at the bottom of the page) and set off.

At 70mph the bike cruises happly, and strangely doesn’t seem to actually use any petrol. It has a specially programmed engine which tries to use as little fuel as possible and it really works. it’s amazing how far you can go between filling up.

Aside from the surprising fuel economy there isn’t really much else to report about the bike on long distance slogs and I mean that as a good thing. I travelled through horrible cross winds, had to deal with rush hour on a motorway in the snow and even a couple of slightly hairy moments when a hire van decided to change lanes without indicating or checking it’s mirrors the bike just dealt with it.

The display glows orange at night which looks excellent.

That’s the overriding impression the bike gives, it deals with things confidently. Put the panniers on and you can cover vast distances with all the gear you will need without it getting wet and take them off and you’ve got a surprisingly slim bike that can slip through tiny gaps in traffic.

Even without the impressive fuel economy this would be a bike to consider but once you factor that in it’s something you really should take for a test ride. BMW really are ahead of the pack on this, I talked to a load of other motoring journalists about reviewing bikes and they said the top question they get asked about bikes these days is fuel economy.

So it’s stylish, comfortable, fast, adaptable and even suitable for when the fuel runs out and we live in a Mad Max style society fighting over petrol. in short it gets a big thumbs up from me.

Links mentioned
A review of Simon Pavey’s off-road school

An off road review of the F 800 GS

Review of Hein Gericke Tuareg gear

BMW F 800 GS

Riding a Fireblade at Silverstone in the snow

“Riding motorcycles only really becomes dangerous when you ride beyond your ability.” My riding instructor used to say “Well that and when some berk doesn’t see you, but you can’t do much about that.”

Since this was drilled into me and because I’ve got at least a vague sense of self-preservation (on motorbikes, anything else is fair game) I don’t tend to get talked into doing something I’m not comfortable with, well mostly. As part of Honda’s organised event at Silverstone there was the chance to do some laps on the bikes. The selection of bikes was, well it was a selection of different coloured Fireblades.

A Fireblade, in silver

Now the Fireblade has a bit of a reputation, it’s almost given as the definition of a bike you shouldn’t get until you’ve got a few miles under your belt. So as I threw my leg over it I said a little prayer to Thor and Ogri and set off.

At first it wasn’t so bad, it had be beautiful purr of an engine that isn’t even trying and yet you are already going stupidly fast and like the CBR 600 RR it felt nimble and light the moment it started moving. The first corner wasn’t too bad either, we weren’t going that fast and while it was a bit cold it wasn’t awful. With the first few corners out of the way and a lovely straight ahead I thought I’d give the bike a bit of a twist to see what it could do.

My throat hurt, this motorcycle accelerated so fast that it made my throat hurt. It didn’t just feel like it was about to take off, or that I could barely hold on it was something else. It was brilliant, and way beyond what I could handle and then it started snowing.

Yes snow, I’d been around Donington in the rain and so Silverstone had to go one better and snow. I dread to think what Brands hatch will do.

The rest of the track session was spent in well, blind terror. Not because the Fireblade is so unmanageable, it’s not, for something so powerful it’s very well behaved. It’s just that not only was the track cold, now the weather had decided to combined a gusty crosswind with some light snow and a bit of rain. I would have made a mess in my trousers if I hadn’t been worried that it would have affected the delicate balance of the bike and thrown me off.

A few, not exactly brisk laps (but still rather faster than I would have liked) later I got off the bike and felt simultaneously more and less of a man. I’d had the absolutely limits of my riding tested and I’d spent a lot of the time rediscovering god – it’s hard to be an atheist when the rear-wheel is hopping around as you approach a corner a little bit too fast. At least I wasn’t dead, and more importantly I hadn’t dropped the beautiful motorcycle.

I’m not sure I’d want a Fireblade, or at least, perhaps not as a winter ride but perhaps now I’ve had a snow-bound track day on one everything else will seem rather sedate and sensible. They do look rather good in red.

Review of CBF 125, DN 01 and some mowers.

Thanks to a strange mixture of events that I don’t really understand I was invited to go to Silverstone by the lovely people at Honda. I think it’s because I wrote about going to the Ron Haslem racing school a few months ago and Honda saw it and approved but I’m not sure.

Either way, on a rather chilly Friday morning I rode up the motorway on the F 800 GS (there will be more on this later) towards Silverstone.  Honda had arranged a few days at the track so slightly over-excited journalists could turn up and try out, well almost everything Honda make. The entire product range was there, and I mean the entire range.

Everything was there to test.

Sadly the sporty little number on the right wasn’t available to take out on the track but a selection of Honda’s cars were. Cars are okay, they have too many wheels if you ask me and so I consider them a bit dull but my first few laps in an S2000 soon showed me that cars can have their charms. It was a bit chilly so the track didn’t offer much in the way of grip and so having foor wheels planted on the ground was reassuring.

Once we’d had a few laps in the S2000 we took a Civic type-R out around Silverstone which was jolly entertaining (the cockpit is hillarious and like something out of Star Wars) and allowed me to learn the circuit a bit from the comfort of a chair before I took a bike around it. Honda had said that in the afternoon just before the day ended the circuit would be opened up to bikes, this was what pretty much everyone was looking forward too.  

 

After the car stuff was out of the way I set about taking a few different bikes from the Honda range out for a ride. The first was their 125 which was being launched, it’s wasn’t the minature race-rep CBR 125 RR but the new CBF 125. A chap from the Telegraph had just brought it back and was singing it’s praises so I hopped on and took a slightly wobbly ride out of the gate and down some country roads.

 

CBF1 25 Review

 

It’s a great bike. It’s light, extremely nimble and while it’s not exactly got thumping amounts of power it’s more than happy to get up to 60mph and cruise around on country roads. If that isn’t enough to sell you on it feels like a proper big bike, but a very lightweight one. The fuel economy is mind-boggling – The chap from the Telegraph thinks it will do 100 miles per gallon plus perhaps a little more but he had to do a few more caculations – After 50 miles of riding the gauge had only gone down to the top of ‘full’ so it hadn’t drunk much.

 

It would be a great bike for beginners – I’m going to recommend it to my little brother. It would also be a great bike for anyone who isn’t too sure of themselves and wants something nimble to commute about in but doesn’t want a scooter. Everything is put together to Honda’s usual high standards and it is a real gem, the rest of the journalists who had taken it out agreed that Honda had got it right,  this was going to be a future classic and a first bike to a whole new generation of riders.

 

This is good but Honda’s range don’t always cause people to agree so much, like the DN 01.

 

DN01

 

One I’d taken the CBF 125 out I wanted to try something different something weird like the DN 01. If you’ve not seen it before he is a picture.

DN 01

The DN is weird, I had been warned it was strange by well just about every bike magazine who had been pretty damning about it. Before I got on it the chap who had taken it out was going on about how pointless it was and how he hated it. It’s not gone down very well with the press to say the least.

 

It is a very different bike for a few reasons, it’s got a feet-forward riding style which was entirely alien to me, but would seem natural to anyone who has a Harley. It’s an automatic using a very clever fluid based gearbox so it’s a twist and go but it can pretend to have gears if you like that sort of thing. The tank is quite small, and it’s got almost no storage or anywhere to mount bags. The dashboard is set under a visor so if you are really tall and don’t adjust the seat you will struggle to see how fast you are going and it’s costs as much as a Fireblade.

 

So with the facts out of the way let’s talk about how the bike feels, it feels cool. Maybe it’s because I saw Akira when I was younger or because I’m from the computer games generation or perhaps because at that point I’d had rather too much coffee but I liked this bike, quite a lot.

 

Yes it’s futuristic and weird. Yes it’s not really a commuter bike, or a crusier, or a racer or well anything really but when did bikes become entirely about having a purpose in life? Most race-rep bikes will never get properly raced, how many 1200 GS will get taken around the world, or even off road? When was the last time you saw a KTM covered in mud? Actually that last one does happen fairly often but that’s not the point.

 

Most people ride bikes because they are fun, and the DN 01 is fun. in fact it’s really good fun. Not ‘oh my god I’m going so fast my head is about to fall off’ fun but a different sort of enjoyment that makes you chuckle into your helmet.

 

The twist and go gearbox is really impressive so if gears aren’t you thing that won’t hold you back and the sitting position requires a bit of mental adjustment, and trouser adjustment but after that it’s really entertaining. If I lived somewhere hot and I had a cool silver jacket with like lasers on it then I’d consider getting a DN 01, if you want a relaxed riding style and you don’t want a chopper or a bit of vintage iron then it’s something to think about.

 

I’ll write about what happened when I took a Fireblade around Silverstone next.