Which one would you buy?

SMSW said:

You might consider a BMW for sport touring. Unfortunately, maintenance can be expensive if you don't DIY.

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I'd love to have a R1200RT, but I'm friends with a former service manager at the local BMW dealer, and heard way too many horror stories. His advice was pretty much anything but BMW. I DIY, but would like to as little as possible. On top of that, the local dealership was just taken over by a bunch that has a BBB rap sheet a mile and a half long. Crookeder than the letter "S". I will go out of my way to avoid them, but it's going to be hard, they are acquiring dealerships (auto and other) like there's no tomorrow. R1200s, for the same year and condition as an ST1300, are double the money.

I will be taking a look at the ST registry. I would rather this next bike not be 10 years old, but I don't imagine one with less that twenty thousand miles would be an issue...

There's an '04 ST1300 for sale locally, well relatively, in Calgary. From the pictures it has a trunk, and a reported 49k km, but no other details. The owner is asking $4250, which seems reasonable as I bought my '04 in 2010 with 52k km for $10,000. It now has 157k happy km and should be good for 200k at least. There's no mention of ABS on the ad, but I've not missed it on mine, although I'd be hard pressed to go to a bike without an electric windshield after the ST.

Why don't you contact gmtech. He said in this thread he had an 07 you guys could talk over. Maybe he still has it. I bought an 07 2 years ago for 6000 USD with 29,000 miles on it. Just changed oil and tires and cleaned the air filter. It has 43,000 mile on it now.

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