On Track Off Road No.183

It looks as though 2019 will be the year
of the middleweight adventure bike.
KTM’s 790 Adventure and Yamaha’s
equally eagerly awaited Ténéré 700 were
stars of last autumn’s shows. Largecapacity
adventure bikes are great, the
thinking goes, but who needs all that
horsepower, size and expense when a
middleweight can provide exciting performance
and comparable sophistication for
much less money?
Those two newcomers might be highlighting
the trend, but in some ways
they’ll already be playing catch-up.
BMW’s F850GS, very much from the
same market sector, has been in showrooms
for several months already. The
F850GS was launched midway through
last year, comprehensively updating the
F800GS that had been an adventure
class mainstay for over a decade.
At the heart of the update is a new parallel
twin engine, with capacity increased
from 798 to 853cc, increasing maximum
output by ten per cent to 94bhp. The bottom-end
is redesigned with a new firing
order, and there are twin balancer shafts to
kill vibration. (Continuing BMW’s confusing
tradition, there’s also a new F750GS model,
replacing the F700, with identical 853cc
capacity and lower, 76bhp output.)
In styling terms the F850GS has a beaky
look that brings it visually closer to the
R1200GS boxer. Its steel frame and other
chassis parts are new; the fuel tank is
conventionally located rather than at the
rear. The drive chain is now on the left and
the exhaust on the right, partly to facilitate
manoeuvring the bike off-road. (Most riders
push from the left, where the hot exhaust
was.)
The extra capacity gives the GS some welcome
extra acceleration, and it’s impressively
flexible as well as quick. It’s strong at
higher revs too, and feels smooth, especially
as the top three gears are slightly taller.