The Bike I Avoided On Purpose

BMW of Roswell asked me to come ride a GS more times than I can count, and every single time I said no. Not today. Another time. I'm busy.

It was never because I thought it would be bad. It was because I was worried it would be good. My dream bike is a Ducati Multistrada Pikes Peak, there is an entire series about it, and I had this quiet fear that one afternoon on a GS would take the whole thing apart.

So I finally rode one. And I regret to inform you that this motorcycle is exactly as good as everybody says it is.

Performance Highlights

The boxer is the reason. It's a 1,300cc flat twin making 145 horsepower and 110 lb-ft, and the torque is simply there, from wherever you are, in whatever gear you happened to pick. Roll on and it pulls, and then it keeps pulling, and then at the point where you expect a big touring twin to run out of ideas it just carries on into the distance. Anybody calling this a dentist bike has never opened it up.

The 40-80 run tells you more about the electronics than the engine. I started in second, because first is geared too tall to be worth using, and it still went 3.02 seconds. What I got on the way there was power, then no power, then all of the power at once, right in the face. That's traction control making a decision I didn't ask it to make, and it means 3.02 is the slow version of this bike. Later in the day I found the menu that turns it off, and the GS immediately became the thing it had been pretending not to be.

Suspension is electronic and it is glorious. If you have ever wondered what the cloud in a Mario level feels like, go ride a 1300 GS. It floats. The only place it loses me is a genuinely tight corner, where the feel goes a bit vague and you stop knowing exactly what the front is doing.

The brakes are the one honest weak spot. They are strong, and there's plenty of stopping power in there somewhere, but there's no bite the moment you grab the lever. Coming down from highway speed behind a semi I found myself waiting on them, and you can feel all 523 pounds asking to be slowed. That surprised me on a bike this expensive.

Rider Experience & Tech

The seat is perfection. Not good for an adventure bike, perfection, full stop. It finds the exact line between soft and supportive, and combined with that suspension the GS crushes a highway the way a Gold Wing does. Sixth gear at 80 and there is nothing coming through the bars or the pegs at all.

The screen is the best on any motorcycle, and I say that as somebody who is not a BMW guy. Fast, clear, every rider aid you can name behind it, including radar cruise that manages your following distance and a collision warning that genuinely flashed at me when I got greedy behind a car. The buttons take a day to learn and then they make sense.

Not all of it lands. The clutch is heavy. The quickshifter gut punches you anywhere outside the meat of the rev range. My left boot catches the center stand when I stand up, which matters on a bike people actually stand up on. And the aids, before you go turn them down, want you to ride exactly the way they think you should.

But then there's Adaptive Height Control, which drops the rear at every stop. I'm 5'10" with a 32 inch inseam, and I'm flat footing a 33.4 inch seat with bent knees. On a 523 pound motorcycle that changes everything about how big it feels.

The Chase Score & Final Thoughts

With a Chase Score of 82 out of 100, the R 1300 GS lands in Great tier and takes second place overall on the board, the highest any adventure bike has scored here. The brakes are the only mark under a 7, and that one is earned.

Buy it if you want one motorcycle in the garage that handles the commute, the two up weekend, the long trip and a hard left onto a dirt road, and you never want to apologize for the choice. Skip it if you're newer than you think you are, or if $28,070 as configured makes the do-everything argument stop being an argument.