On Track Off Road No. 190

TEST
MOTO
Guzzi was
so inundated
with orders for
the V85TT earlier this year that the firm’s
old factory on the banks of Lake Lecco in
northern Italy struggled to keep up. Such
enthusiasm for a Guzzi adventure bike was
unprecedented, given that the firm’s previous
Stelvio 1200 made little impact and
the more recent V7 Stornello, powered by a
744cc V-twin engine, was produced in tiny
numbers.
Perhaps one reason for the 853cc newcomer’s
positive reception is that it combines
the Stornello’s retro styling with a good
chunk of the bigger, 1151cc Stelvio’s performance.
Mid-sized adventure bikes are all
the rage this year, with KTM’s 790 Adventure
and Yamaha’s 700 Ténéré among the
stars.
The V85TT, with its chunky old-school look,
also taps into the seam mined by Scrambler
models from firms including BMW, Ducati
and Triumph. Its twin headlamps and wide
bars sit above the engine’s sticking-out
aircooled cylinders. A high-level front mudguard,
long-travel suspension and wirespoked
wheels (with a 19in diameter front)
give a suitably tough off-road image. The
single shock is diagonally mounted on the
right, opposite a high-level silencer.
The V85TT’s pair of round headlights echo
those of the Quota, an ungainly dual-purpose
Guzzi that sank without trace in the
early Nineties, when models like this were
still called trail bikes. But the TT – whose
initials stand for Tutto Terreno, Italian for
All Terrain – is a more refined machine that
works best as a pleasant and fairly versatile
roadster.
It manages to have plenty of the Italian
marque’s traditional quirky character, despite
being distinctly more modern than it looks.
That trademark aircooled, transverse V-twin
engine, for example, shares its capacity with
the previous V9 unit that powered Bobber
and Roamer roadsters, and still opens
its valves with pushrods. But a long list of
updates including titanium inlet valves reduces
weight and friction considerably, and
increases peak output from 54bhp to a much
more useful 79bhp.
The chassis is also new, based on a tubular
steel frame that uses the engine as a
stressed member.