Domestic Bliss Vs. Mid-Life Crisis
Domestic Bliss VS. Mid-Life Crisis
Honda Gold Wing or BMW K1600GTL: There you are all settled in for the long haul, when a hot new thing comes along. Can this carriage be saved?
JOHN BURNS
SAY, HYPOTHETICALLY, YOU HAVE A NOT-SO-OLD FLAME WHO PUT you on the back burner but likes to keep you on “simmer,” and say you rode the 2012 BMW K1600GTL a couple hundred miles into the desert to meet up for a nice dinner. Say things went swimmingly, but the ambiguity of the relationship remains. How does that make you feel? Happy? Sad?
Whispering homeward on the desert highway under a bright full moon with the suspension set to Comfort and the cruise control set to a nice 85 mph or so at about 4000 rpm, why not scroll through the Sirius channels? What’s that, all Sinatra all the time? Someday; when I’m awfully old, when the world is coooold, I will get a kick just thinking oooof you, and the way you look tonight.
Sniff...
You can stay on the freeway all the way home or you can take the Angeles Forest Highway, which twists its way up the back of the San Gabriels and spits you onto the famed Angeles Crest, down which you spiral a few thousand feet into the billion lights of L.A. and most of the ships at sea. It’s a route you know like the back of your hand, and on the last straight before the curves begin, you switch from Comfort to Sport, crank up a little grip and seat heat (all on the fly with the Multi-Controller at the left grip) and decide enough Frank is enough. What else we got, left thumb? Ted Nugent? Motor City madman? Why not. Here I come again now baaaaby, like a dog in heat!
You need to be a little more careful after dark. But not quite so careful when you’ve got an Adaptive Headlight that swivels into the tum. The 753-pound (no gas) BMW weighs 134 pounds less than the class-standard Honda Gold Wing (about one medium wife with assault pack), rolls on a 3.2-inch shorter wheelbase, and steers with a light, quick accuracy that—along with Ted Nugent screaming at the moon—snaps you out of your torpor and has you noticing that there are quite a few digits beyond the “6” on the tachometer (a place you never need to go at all when you’re touring happily along in traditional fashion).
What happens when you send the tach needle zinging around over there is you basically unleash 133 snarling, hungry horses (at 7850 rpm, with 112 ft.-lb. of torque at 5200) that transform your flaccid tour into a heart-pumping gallop on the world’s biggest sportybike. Pretty soon you find yourself using footpegs and body position to drive the thing off the comers the way you would a Yamaha Rl GOTYOUINA STRANGLEHOLD BABY!, instead of just steering, like you do the Gold Wing. And the funny thing is the big GTL responds to that kind of treatment. Cornering clearance isn’t an issue on the street, really the thing has no issues. And by the time you get to the bottom of the mountain, panting slightly, neither do you. Chicks be crazy, man, and I am going to roll down the hill and mingle with all of them...
I could go on, but our esteemed EIC Hoyer already heaped similar praise on the GTL in his exclusive first test back in May, and about the only place we currently can find disagreement is in the heat department: It’s been unusually cool in SoCal lately, but in the course of this test we rode the GTL through some nasty traffic and temps pushing 100 degrees. In those conditions, the BMW gets toasty enough between the legs to have you contemplating why your lower legs are called calves, as in veal.
At least you can electrically tilt the windshield back and get a little air over the top, as well as beneath it. The Gold Wing dissipates engine heat better, but sitting behind its fixed windshield on a hot day is like a prison visit.
Other BMW imperfections include a slight excess of driveline lash and longish shift throws. But for the few little niggles you find wrong with this motorcycle, you can find a big thing right that makes you feel like a heel for criticizing anything. The brakes, for instance.
Last month, Don Canet got the ZX6R and GSX-R600 to a stop from 60 mph in 124 feet. The GTL did it in 114, with its Duolever front end/partial integral ABS cocktail making that kind of decel not even all that dramatic. Another imperfection is a rear brake that pulsates a tad through the ball of your foot upon initial application, but that’s a small price to pay to know the rear ABS is working—an excellent thing for adjusting/steadying a big bike like this one midcorner, since the rear isn’t linked to the front on the BMW. The Gold Wing’s rear-to-front linked brakes are having none of it.
In fact, the Gold Wing is having none of a lot of modern tricks the GTL is unembarrassed to perform. The new question is, do Gold Wing riders care? The reactionaries are already saying most Gold Wing riders just don’t want 133 horsepower and the ability to scream down mountain roads in the middle of the night. All we know is that when the GL1800 was new in 2001 (and the ’12 model’s chassis and running gear are barely changed), it was all about performance, complete with smoky burnout commercials featuring Nicky Hayden. Have ’Wingers grown old and soft in the meantime? Is it suction-cup Garfields from here on?
In a lot of ways that don’t have so much to do with outright speed and handling, there are places where the Gold Wing remains superior—comfort being the main one, fit and finish being another. Actually, as riders, we’re ergonomically split between the Honda and BMW (the Honda’s got a cushier seat and a bit more leg room, the BMW’s a tad sportier), but nearly all passengers will prefer the Honda’s comfy, secure highchair. You can doze right off back there without worrying about falling off (and adjust your own seat heat and entertainment preferences), which makes it a good choice for long-term monogamists who travel together—especially if the person at the controls has a permanent “slow down” bruise between the shoulder blades.
And when it comes to super-slabbin’ cross-country, the Honda’s bigger, lowerrevving boxer-Six (the 100-hp jig is up at 5300 rpm, with 108 ft.-lb. at 4000) is a silent, powerful partner that contributes to a lower center of gravity than the BMW’s, which seems to make it even more self-righteously stable (though the BMW’s 438-lb. load capacity is greater than the Gold Wing’s 400-lb. one).
From the Gold Wing’s 6.6-gallon tank, we averaged 35 miles from each gallon of minimum 86 octane fuel; the BMW (7.0-gallon capacity) burned a gallon of 89 octane every 38 miles.
BMW’s got built-in Bluetooth. Gold Wing counters with a two-way intercom, and our Audio Comfort Navi XM ABS testbike’s (yours for a mere $27,099) killer GPS navigation system even tells you which lane you need to be in, and routes you around traffic jams and heavy weather (if you spring for the XM subscription). A big thumbs-up for lighting all the buttons, too. Both bikes carry enough electronic equipment to keep tech heads busy for days scrolling through menus, selecting things, synching iPhones, playing with buttons. Soon you’ll be able to see the CW app ...
But here’s the thing: The BMW is at least 90 percent the over-the-road touring rig the Honda is, but the Honda’s only half the sportbike the BMW is. The BMW allows you to lose your baggage, literally and figuratively: Top trunk and sidebags pop right off, so you can have your domestic tranquility when you want it, and your 133-hp dog-off-leash freedom when you don’t. Sinatra and the Nuge are equally at home. On the Gold Wing, the three-bedroom ranch and Barcalounger are always with you. On it, maybe you just hit the cruise and stay on the freeway listening to torch songs, instead of heading over the mountain, howling at the moon and reconnecting with your boys.
What the hell is going on in Bavaria? The other manufacturers gave up trying to beat the Gold Wing 20 years ago. BMW knocks it out in Round One.
