Australian Motorcycle News Vol 69 Issue 03

WHEN I FIRST began working for this magazine, back in 2001, you couldn’t sell an adventure bike in this country. No one wanted one and I was bewildered as to why. This vast country is perfect for Adventure riding – both on and off road – and getting lost on a bike in Australia is one of my favourite things to do. Getting lost on a bike in Australia is one of my favourite things to do In 2019 we have so many excellent, dedicated Adventure bikes to choose from, it’s been a total reversal in Adventure bike status, and not just in Oz. Why? Because as the chance to make your own decisions on how and where you go anywhere dwindles, motorcycles still offer that last bastion of individual indulgence and…

AS WITH THE current Africa Twin, there will be four models in the range. At the moment, the line-up includes the base ‘CRF1000A’, the DCT-equipped ‘CRF1000D’, the larger-tanked, more off-road-oriented ‘CRF1000A2’ Africa Twin Adventure Sports and its DCT-equipped sibling the ‘CRF1000D2’. In 2020, the range will be made up of the CRF1100A2, CRF1100D2, CRF1100A4 and CRF1100D4, and all the bikes are believed to be closer to the existing Adventure Sports model than to the base Africa Twin. As a model range, they go under the internal codename SD09, where the 2018-2019 Africa Twins are classed as SD06 models and 2015-2017 versions were SD04.…

The model menu for adventure riders has never been so tempting RIDERS’ APPETITE FOR new models is revving up the Adventure Touring segment of the Australian market. In the first six months of 2019, two new offerings from BMW and one from KTM have stormed into the top five sales results, with BMW’s R 1250 GS Adventure grabbing second place. Still to come this year is Yamaha’s all-new Ténéré 700, while Honda is rushing a larger, more powerful Africa Twin into production. As well, new off-road models such as Triumph’s Scrambler 1200 and Ducati’s updated Desert Sled are starting to reach showroom floors and will boost overall sales figures as the year progresses. From retro to high-tech, from middleweight to super-size, the model menu for adventure riders has never been so…

EARLIER THIS YEAR we exclusively revealed Honda’s plans to relaunch the CRF1000L Africa Twin in 2020 with a larger-capacity engine (AMCN Vol 68 No 17). Now we’ve got our hands on detailed technical specifications long before Honda wants them to be made public. As expected, the main news is that the new 2020 model will use a 1084cc version of the parallel twin rather than the existing 998cc unit, the extra 86cc giving a helpful power and torque boost and making it easier to meet incoming Euro-5 emissions rules. Power rises to a claimed 75kW, compared to 70kW for the current version, with the peak arriving at the same 7500rpm. The torque figure isn’t included in the spec sheet we’ve seen but we’d expect it to rise in proportion to the capacity…

THE STRONG MESSAGE coming from Yamaha’s Ténéré Tour of Australia and New Zealand is that Australia played a decent-sized role in the development of the all-new Ténéré 700 twin. And while we know Aussies are the laid-back types, we’re not sure whether that explains why the bike has been well over three years coming. The concept of a middle-sized, twin-cylinder lightweight adventure tourer to replace the existing big single was first shown way back in September 2016. The next year, running prototypes were being tested and developed, with Australian input. “Right from the beginning Australians were involved as we are highly regarded by the factory on the back of our sales of the WR450 and WR250,” a Yamaha spokesman said. Yamaha Australia has also turned the Japanese-market-only WR250R into an adventure bike for…

YAMAHA HAS GOT next year off to an early start with a surprise reveal of its heavily-revised 2020 YZF-R1 and R1M. In an unusually early unveiling at the Laguna Seca WorldSBK round in California, it revealed a host of changes to improve the performance, appearance and cleanliness of its range-topping Superbike. The basic bones are the same as the existing model, which has been with us since 2015, but the YZF-R1 gets new bodywork and significant engine updates to meet Euro 5 without suffering from a drop in power. As in previous years, the R1M’s limited production run will be sold via an online pre-ordering system, while the base-model R1 will go out to dealers in September. The early sale date may allow Yamaha to homologate it to race before the end…