We almost didn’t take this bike out for a test ride because we didn’t want to like it!

Why?

Well call it the Ewan and Charley factor.

Ever since their globe trotting adventures the world and his wife have got one of these bikes, including well known world travellers Kevin and Julia Saunders – so it has plenty of pedigree just not much individuality.

But it would have been a serious mistake on our part not to have taken it out.

We had already sat on the BMW Adventure at the bike show a couple of years ago. First off it was too tall and second after sitting on for about 20 minutes, whilst chatting to the sales guy, I got to thinking “this pillion seat isn’t very comfy”.

So pretty much put off, it was with some trepidation that we climbed aboard the naked version with the lower seat height.

What a difference the Low seat version is to the Adventure, for a start, Pete, who is 6 foot tall , could place both feet flat on the ground, which made it easy to handle both at a standstill and at low speeds. It also seemed to be a lot lighter than the Adventure.

A quick look at the spec sheets for the two models reveals that the naked version does in fact have a 20kg weight advantage over the Adventure (Dry weight – Low: 203kg Adventure: 223kg) and the seat height is almost three inches less (Low: 33 inches Adventure: 35.8 inches).

Once accustomed to the quirky indicator switches (now changed on the later models) and ignoring the ‘brake failure’ instructions (!!) on the easy to read display, we set off.

Within five minutes of riding this bike I was in love – tsk! Yes it is quirky, it shook it’s head a bit as BMWs do and it was a bit vibe-y at slow speeds in high gear but we could forgive all of that because the comfort was sublime.

As far as the rider goes Pete tells me the controls were easy to use, handling was fantastic with the tyres feeling extremely planted which gavce confidence through bends. The bike picked up it’s skirt easily and we were soon cruising with ease.

In the end we were sad to have to return the bike and strangely (or not) we felt we could have ridden around the world on it.

If we were to seriously consider buying one of these motorcycles we would have a much longer test ride on it. I also did some investigation of UK dealers via the various online BMW rider forums which would point you in the direction of the good ones and ones where you would get good deals and after sales service.

As far as we go the jury is out on this one – we loved the bike, but prefer individuality which no way would you get on one of these.

Motorbikin verdict: 9.5/10