A quiet Friday at work had me curious...are those big BMW bikes I see on the highway as amazing as I suspect they might be?
I swung by our local BMW dealership and had an absolutely wonderful, hassle free, test ride experience.
I was interested in looking at the K1600, within 10 minutes of arrival I was pulling out the parking lot on the K1600 having been told to bring it back in 40 minutes or so. I seriously couldn’t have asked for a better experience.
I had built the K1600 up in my mind and was truly excited to ride it. Somehow it didn’t quite live up to the hype I’d created for it. It was comfy, nice weather and wind protection, clearly more than enough well behaved power. On the downside, it felt like I was riding a bike with flat tires ( they weren’t ), and I felt like the brakes weren’t anywhere near as good as what I’m used to on the ST. I also found the ride by wire throttle made me feel disconnected from the bike, making it feel more “transportation” than “motorcycle”. Don’t get me wrong, I loved it, just not as much as I thought I would. One thing that blew my socks off, the quick shifter, truly amazing.
When I pulled back into the parking lot, they had a K1200 waiting for me and offered me a ride on that next. I hadn’t asked about the K1200 or even thought about it, but jumped at the chance to ride another bike.
The K1200 felt noticeably smaller in every way after the K1600. I liked it, but didn’t love it. It felt rough to me, the engine was like a coffee can full of marbles which when idling made the windshield and mirrors vibrate, a lot. I don’t have a ton to say about this bike ( I would clearly make an awful motorcycle journalist ), but nothing about it blew me away. I will say I felt more at home on it, likely because the size is more similar to my ST1300 than the K1600 was.
They had evaluated my ST1300 for a trade in value while I was out riding. For those who are curious, my 2003 ST1300 with 21000 miles, great condition, is worth $1900 to them. They pointed out that it needs new fork seals and brake pads all around, which would cost them $870 to fix, bring the trade in value down to $1000. The upside of this is I didn’t realise it needed any of that, so now I have some projects on my hands.
Again, I can’t say enough good things about the BMW dealer test ride experience here in San Jose, it was a dream and I was truly grateful to get to ride 2 bikes that I’ve been highly curious about.
If anyone has questions about these bikes I’ll be happy to answer based on my experience today.
Please bear in mind these are just my INITIAL thoughts based on a VERY limited amount of ride time.
Which bike did I like best?
Honestly, my ST1300.
