BMW F850GS Rallye X

Adventure Rider Issue #32

• It’s what we do – adventure motorbike magazine
• BMW GS Safari Enduro = adventure motorbikes, news, reviews, publication
• BMW F850GS Rallye X
• Strap Yourself In
• The Dempster
• TomTom Rider 450
• Read Between The Lines
• Locked Gates – motorbike magazine, australian motorcycle publication
• Ural Adventure Ride 2018
• Sri Lanka – adventure motorbike tour, motorcycle magazine
• The Best Job In The World = australian motorbike magazine
• Wet Arses
• Yamaha Tracer 900
• Congregation 2018
• We Didn’t Have PLBs In Those Days
• Sahara To Sunraysia = australian motorbike riding tours news event magazine
• Managing Risk with Miles Davis
• Thinking Big? Start Small with Andy Strapz
• A Precautionary Tale from Karen Ramsay
• Checkout
• Fit out – australian adventure motorbike riding

BMW’s about to set the Australian midweight dualsport class alight. The new F850GS is here, and Adventure Rider Magazine was lucky enough to get a quick ride.

Detail on the fourth day of the GS Safari Enduro might seem a little light on in our story, and that’s because,thanks to Nigel Harvey at BMW Motorrad, we were lucky enough to spend that day putting the only F850GS Rallye X in Australia through its paces. What we’re sharing here is a set of overall impressions, not a focused review.

We were having far too much fun to concentrate too hard on the specifics.

The F850GS felt more dirt-oriented than the 800GS models we’ve tried.

Driving force

The motor on the 850 is an 853cc, water-cooled, four-stroke, in-line twin with four valves per cylinder, dual overhead cams, and runs a dry sump. BMW says power output is 95hp and torque 92Nm at 6250rpm.

We don’t want to get tied up in the spec sheet here. We’ll have full coverage of the bike next issue.

What we’re excited about is what the bike’s like to ride, and believe us. We’re very excited.

The 850 is a complete blast to ride.

Briefly

To try and put things in a nutshell, the F850GS felt more dirt-oriented than the 800GS models we’ve tried. The bike felt slimmer and lighter, and as soon as we grabbed the ’bars we were looking for a berm or set of erosion mounds to destroy.

Handling is fast and precise for a bike of this size, and throttle response is sharp.

It seems to us the natural comparison is to the F800GS, and that’s been our favourite Beemer since its release. We loved both the GS and GSA models, and we’ve been fortunate enough to spend a lot of time on both in various years. The 850 feels more nimble than the 800, and it seems to us it barks a little harder. We jumped off a 1200 Rallye X to ride the 850, so that needs to be taken into account.

The fog on Jacobs ladder was heavy…not that made any difference to the editor. Once he got hold of the 850 he didn’t wait for anyone or anything.

Top spec

One of the things that instantly hit us with the 850 was the TFT dash and, as the dash clearly showed, a full suite of electronics.

The bike we rode was apparently the same spec as the 1200 Rallye X we’d just ridden, including the electronics,riding modes and ESA suspension. It also meant cruise control and an incredible array of parameters and settings available at the touch of a jog dial on the left-hand ’bar.

The icing on the cake was a quick-shift system giving fast, smooth, clutch-free gear changes, up and down.

We’re not sure if our ride bike had an accessory dongle fitted, but we were able to select Enduro Pro and could fiddle around with parameters for each setting, like choosing the ‘Rain’ setting for the motor and turning off the rear ABS, and then having those selections remain even when we turned off the ignition.

And there’s another interesting thing.

The 850 has keyless ignition.

The bike was apparently the same spec as the 1200 Rallye X we’d just ridden, including the electronics, riding modes and ESA suspension.

Quick

We’ll have a full rundown next issue, but right now our eyes are bugging out of our heads. The 850 is a complete blast to ride.

On the road we pushed it out to some serious speed and worked the brakes hard, thrashed the gearbox and settled into some sedate, cruise-controlled sight-seeing, and the bike was fantastic. Off the road we gave it as right-royal a thrashing as we could, and the 850 revelled in it.

It was way beyond us to drive the bike to its limits unless we intentionally held it in low gears or purposely abused its functions.

We know this is a bit of a tease because there’s so much left unsaid, but we’ll fill in those gaps for you next issue when we’ve had time to ride the bike more extensively.

Right now, if you’re wondering whether or not the 850 might be the bike for you, we can only say it’s definitely a bike we’d be happy to have, and the rougher the terrain, the happier we’d be on the 850.