Motocylopedia: Adventure Bikes part 2: Middleweight Hybrids

Monday, August 4, 2008

Adventure Bikes part 2: Middleweight Hybrids

The next category of adventure motorcycle is the group of bikes that are for dirt and road. These differ from the thumpers in that that they have more than one cylinder and are generally more street oriented. These types of bikes are popular in Europe. Sales for these bikes in the United States have never taken off, but interest is growing with models like Suzuki's V-Strom. The model of this type was the Honda Transalp. The Transalp was based off of Honda's V-twin Hawk, and was intended to be a road going version of their Paris-Dakar African Twin. The Transalp was only available in the US for a short time but in Europe the bike flourished. Yamaha's TDM was also sold in the US for a short time, but was dropped due to low sales. Like the Honda, the Yamaha TDM is a dual-purpose liquid cooled twin, made for on/off road touring. Suzuki's V-Strom motorcycles are based off the popular Suzuki SV bikes (650 and 1000cc's). These are the only Japanese machines of their type to have caught on in the US. Kawasaki recently released their own version of this type of bike the Versys, which is based off the company's Ninja 650 model. Finally BMW introduced the GS version of their new F800 parallel twin bike. The F800GS fits nicely in between the F650 and the R1200 in BMW's line up.